Opinion – Michael França: We still haven’t dealt with endogamy in universities

Brazilian society has made advances in the democratization of access to higher education in recent years. However, the same cannot be said about graduate studies. There are still considerable challenges to be faced if the objective is to create the necessary conditions for low-income talented young people to succeed in academic careers.

These young people overcame the most varied barriers to reach higher education. However, the fight does not end when they pass the entrance exam. Graduation is a period marked by the challenge of continuing to study with the low financial support that parents can give, and, in many cases, universities are located in distant neighborhoods or in other cities.

Work and commuting time deprive these young people of the opportunity to dedicate themselves with greater commitment to university life. Many will find it difficult to participate in events, extension projects and do scientific initiation. This can decrease academic interest and, consequently, negatively impact the number of those who apply for master’s and doctoral degrees.

Low involvement with undergraduate activities can also have a negative impact on the curriculum and performance, thus reducing the chances of them being able to pass the most competitive graduate programs.

On the other hand, high-income candidates tend to have greater family support and usually have the opportunity to spend a period preparing themselves exclusively to participate in national and international selection processes.

Thus, even the best low-income students will struggle in academic competition. Despite their efforts, the results achieved are not only a reflection of their cognitive abilities but also of the neglect that Brazilian society has with their trajectories.

In recent years, there has been a significant cut in scholarships and, under the blindness of the merit discourse, several postgraduate departments allocate the few remaining scholarships to high-income candidates and, thus, disregard that many talented students from low-income people have gone a much longer way to get there.

However, even with a scholarship, the cost of living in big cities is high, and many still need to help their parents financially. In many cases, family pressure and the higher initial return from the job market are sufficient conditions for them to give up continuing their education.

Thus, there is a set of circumstances that are beyond the individual’s control and make the cost of continuing on the academic path for low-income students higher than for their high-income colleagues. This scenario has a profound impact on the diversity of graduate studies and contributes to the fact that a significant portion of university professors is just a portrait of the elite.

However, we know that this is not a particularity of universities. Given the functioning architecture of Brazilian society and our incompetence in reducing inequality of opportunities, what we have in the country is a kind of endogamy in positions of higher social status.

However, this fact is even more worrying when we consider the centers of production and dissemination of knowledge. This is because, just as genetic variability is essential for the evolution of species, the diversity of thoughts is fundamental for the advancement of ideas.

Without greater inclusion of minorities in our postgraduate departments, perhaps elite doctors will have difficulties in understanding the complexity of Brazilian social reality. It is worth remembering that until recently, the thesis was defended that the country lived in full racial democracy.

The text is a tribute to the song “Freedom”, performed by Charles Mingus.