Desafios da ação afirmativa de cunho racial na pós-graduação: o caso da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This paper aims at identifying the challenges to racial-based affirmative action in graduate programs, taking UFMG as a case. In 2017, UFMG passed an inclusion policy for blacks, indigenous peoples and people with disabilities. Most of the policy specifications – e.g., percentage of seats reserved for blacks (between 20 and 50%) – were decentralized to the graduate program collegiate bodies, in a bottom-up implementation. In this context, we addressed the following question: what implementation patterns and other factors may compromise the effectiveness of UFMG’s race-based quotas for admission to graduate school? We conducted document analysis of public notices of selection processes (which yielded a dataset of offerings, used in regression analysis) and content analysis of interviews with 18 actors – almost all members of graduate programs’ collegiate bodies. The data reveal that the reservation percentages are concentrated at the lower-bound value (20%), with practices that may reinforce the horizontal stratification: Humanities programs tend to practice a higher percentage than STEM programs, the latter considered to be of greater prestige. Occupancy of reserved places is very low: in 2022, 21.1% in the master’s and 12.6% in the doctorate programs. The inadequacy of the material and symbolic conditions necessary for quota students to stay in graduate school helps to explain this situation.