Unicamp will use facial recognition to prevent quota fraud

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Unicamp (Universidade Estadual de Campinas) will use facial recognition technology in this year’s entrance exam to validate the self-declaration of candidates who compete for the vacancies reserved for blacks, browns and indigenous people.

The system works with the use of a tablet and was tested for the first time in the 2019 entrance exam. On the day of the test, photos of the candidates’ faces are taken, which are then checked at the time of registration.

All candidates who complete the second phase of Unicamp’s entrance exam will undergo facial recognition. For candidates who chose to compete for the vacancies reserved for blacks, pardos and indigenous people, technology could also replace the hetero-identification bank.

Until last year’s entrance exam, every candidate who ran for the racial quota had his self-declaration checked by a panel of university professors and employees. With the use of technology, only cases in which there are doubts about the declaration will be submitted to the bank — this includes both possible suspicions of fraud and when there are technical problems with image recognition.

“This way, we speed up the enrollment process for those who pass the entrance exam. The hetero-identification committee, in the same way as before, will only check cases in which there are technical problems or when there is a question that makes verification difficult”, said José Alves de Freitas Neto, director of Comvest (Unicamp’s vestibular committee).

Racial self-declaration check boards have been created in almost all public universities in the country that have adopted racial quotas to prevent fraud. Some institutions, such as USP, only created groups for this purpose after having registered cases of fraud.

Unicamp reserves 50% of the places in each course for students who studied in public schools, 25% of which are reserved for self-declared black, brown or indigenous candidates.

In all, Unicamp’s entrance exam will offer 2,540 places in 69 undergraduate courses. Another 639 are disputed by Sisu (Unified Selection System) with the scores obtained in the Enem (National High School Exam).

For the first time, Unicamp also announced that it will release double enrollment for students who completed high school in a public school. That is, they can compete for vacancies through the university entrance exam and also through the Enem. Until then, candidates had to choose one of the modalities.

“Our objective is to allow public school students to have a better chance of being admitted. We observed that 27,000 to 30,000 candidates are from public schools in the entrance exam, but only 15,000 apply for the Enem notice. Now, they will be able to apply automatically,” said the director.

Another change for this year’s vestibular will be the distribution of questions from the 2nd phase of the vestibular. On the first day of exams, there will be a reduction of two questions in the language test and the inclusion of two interdisciplinary questions of natural sciences.

According to José Neto, the change was made after realizing that the candidates were overloaded on the second day of tests, when they take the assessments of mathematics, human sciences and natural sciences.

Unicamp vestibular calendar 2023

Registration and payment of the Registration Fee – 8/1 to 9/2/2022 (payment until 9/9)
1st phase of entrance exam – 11/6/2022

Disclosure of those approved for the 2nd phase – 12/3/2022

2nd phase of entrance exam – 12/11 and 12/12/2022

Disclosure of the first call – 2/6/2023

Online registration of the first call – 2/7, 8 and 9/2023

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