![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/040-044_acoes-afirmativas_313-0-desktop-true.png\")
\n <\/picture>Although the MEC directive and university policies have helped to amplify affirmative-action initiatives, these have been unevenly distributed across academic fields. The expansion seen in 2018 was largely in the humanities, a field that accounted for 22.9% of the 737 programs incorporating affirmative action that year. \u201cThe humanities have a long tradition of research about social, economic, ethnic, and racial inequalities in access to higher education,\u201d says Joc\u00e9lio Teles dos Santos, an anthropology researcher at the Center for African and Oriental Studies, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), who was not involved in the study. \u201cResearchers in these fields are more likely to have a greater awareness of these issues and to implement strategies to mitigate them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conversely, programs in exact and Earth sciences and engineering were the least likely to create affirmative action initiatives. \u201cOur findings suggest that in graduate education, these fields in particular have been the most reluctant to introduce affirmative action,\u201d notes Jo\u00e3o Feres J\u00fanior, a political scientist at UERJ and one of the authors of the studies. This trend is clearly evident: of the 134 programs that have implemented affirmative action as an internal decision, 50% were in the humanities and only 1.5% were in the exact and Earth sciences.<\/p>\n
Not a single engineering program in Brazil has adopted affirmative action voluntarily in the last few decades. \u201cThey only acted when prompted to do so by state laws or university resolutions,\u201d says Venturini. \u201cIn these cases the policies apply to all programs across the board,\u201d says the researcher, noting that programs can establish their own criteria for student admissions, unlike in undergraduate education.<\/p>\n
Venturini believes the resistance seen in STEM fields could be related to what she calls \u201ca culture of conservative meritocracy.\u201d \u201cThe admissions processes for these programs attach less value to candidates\u2019 backgrounds and assume the best-qualified candidates are simply those with the highest test scores,\u201d she says. \u201cBut what they may not realize is that quota-aided students often have to work their way through university, which prevents them from engaging in activities that would give them a better shot at admission to a master\u2019s or doctoral program\u2014activities like scientific initiation programs, participation in research groups, and academic events.\u201d<\/p>\n
This kind of thinking is highly prevalent in STEM fields and makes them more resistant to policies designed to amend inequalities in higher education. \u201cMany graduate program coordinators that I\u2019ve interviewed said they didn\u2019t care about a candidate\u2019s skin color or background, but whether they were capable of keeping up with their coursework,\u201d says Venturini. \u201cAffirmative-action policies, they argue, are harmful to \u2018the more capable candidates.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Adriano Senkevics, an education sociologist at the National Institute for Education Studies and Research (INEP), adds that these fields \u201chave long been dominated by higher-education elites that are typically more resistant to change in their fields.\u201d This means that change is unlikely to come from within these programs. \u201cAffirmative action will only happen if it is mandated by universities\u2019 central bodies or by law.\u201d<\/p>\n In their studies, Venturini and Feres J\u00fanior identified similar resistance when intersecting data on affirmative action policies with program scores in the most recent four-year assessment by the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES)\u2014the CAPES assessment is used to measure the quality of master\u2019s and doctoral programs in Brazil and to inform the distribution of research grants and scholarships. Those rated 6 and 7\u2014the two top scores in the assessment\u2014accounted for 11.5% of affirmative action initiatives. Those with ratings of 3 and 4 accounted for 71% of initiatives.<\/p>\n The pushback from better-rated programs, says Venturini, could stem from concerns around issues such as recurring thesis deadline extensions, lower student achievement, and impacts on publishing, and how this can affect the program\u2019s quality and status. \u201cSo far, however, there\u2019s been no evidence that changes in admission criteria for graduate candidates have had any negative impact on program performance or CAPES assessment scores.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the 737 programs that have adopted affirmative-action policies in the last few years, 63.9% have done so through the quota system, in which a percentage of available spots is set aside for minority groups. Black, mixed-race, and indigenous students have benefited most from these measures. Some affirmative-action programs are also extended to people with disabilities, refugees, transsexuals, and transvestites. UFBA, for example, introduced a graduate affirmative-action policy for transgender people in 2017.<\/p>\n However, on closer examination of these strategies, Venturini found that in many cases, the admission process had changed little with the adoption of affirmative action. Quota beneficiaries and regular candidates go through the same stages in the admission process. \u201cMinority candidates are often eliminated in the early admission stages because they lack requisite proficiency in foreign languages, for instance,\u201d says Joc\u00e9lio dos Santos, of UFBA.<\/p>\n As an example, he cites the graduate program in human rights at University of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s prestigious School of Law (FD-USP). \u201cCandidates lacking proficiency in a foreign language were disqualified in the first stage of the selection process, with only 4 of the 61 candidates passing the foreign language exam.\u201d<\/p>\n FD-USP is now working to address this issue. Ana Elisa Bechara, the school\u2019s associate dean, notes that in 2021 the school launched a pilot project with 20 extra spots for black, mixed-race, and indigenous people and people with disabilities. \u201cFailing to pass the language proficiency test will no longer disqualify candidates,\u201d she says. \u201cCandidates can retake the language exam before the final qualification exam if they\u2019ve passed the other stages in the selection process.\u201d The school also has arrangements within the University and with student bodies to provide free language courses to minorities.<\/p>\n Rosana Heringer, a professor of sociology at the School of Education, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), believes \u201ctraditional admission criteria can undermine the effectiveness of strategies to expand minority access to graduate education.\u201d Adriano Senkevics adds that: \u201cGraduate education managers in Brazil are having to reformulate their programs to accommodate the needs of a new kind of student, and they have to realize that the barriers faced by low-income, Black, mixed-race, and indigenous people are not removed simply by creating quotas.\u201d<\/p>\n Joc\u00e9lio dos Santos suggests that graduate programs should lower the threshold score on proficiency tests for quota candidates. \u201cAt UNIFESP,\u201d says Ricardo Bertolla, the university\u2019s associate dean for graduate research, \u201cwe\u2019ve introduced parameters that better reflect the reality of students applying for graduate programs.\u201d One improvement, he says, was recognizing Portuguese as a foreign language for deaf and indigenous candidates.<\/p>\n But this can be problematic: some graduate programs are virtually impossible to pursue without some proficiency in English, explains Fernanda Estevan, an associate lecturer at Getulio Vargas Foundation\u2019s (FGV) S\u00e3o Paulo School of Economics. \u201cVirtually all the textbooks used in economics courses, for example, are written in English, and few have been translated into Portuguese,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it\u2019s pointless to do away with English proficiency tests if students will be exposed to English from day one in the program.\u201d<\/p>\n Estevan explains that program assessment metrics are standardized internationally, and typically include the number of papers published in high-impact foreign journals, the number of collaborations with foreign-based researchers and institutions, and the number of postdoctoral internships abroad. \u201cOf course our universities need to invest in strategies to fix historical inequalities in the research scene, but it isn\u2019t easy if you\u2019re going against the tide of what funding agencies and the scientific community itself require.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/040-044_acoes-afirmativas_313-1-desktop.png\")
\n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span>\n![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/040-044_acoes-afirmativas_313-2-desktop.png\")
\n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span>\n![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/040-044_acoes-afirmativas_313-3-desktop.png\")
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