Cotas para pronafianos, assentados da reforma agrária e empregados rurais no ensino superior público: um panorama analítico.

Abstract

The Quota Law, apart from its social contour, deals with ethnic-racial criteria and allows institutions, based on their particular social reality, to use, as affirmative action, the creation of a reserve of vacancies, aiming at benefitting other minority groups. This article, therefore, aims at analyzing the policy related to the reserving vacancies for children belonging to PRONAF families, settlers of agrarian reform and rural employees who are taking up Public Higher Education. In addition, it aims both at discussing the legal bases concerning this affirmative action, in order to identify the Public Institutions that adopt this quotas policy, and at presenting the offered courses as well as the number of vacancies reserved for rural students. As to its methodological procedure, it was based both on qualitative/ quantitative research, and on indirect and descriptive documentation. The results show that the adoption of the Quotas Law represented an undeniable advance in terms of democratization, taking into consideration the access to the once historically excluded groups. It is important to point out, however, that there are only few institutions adopting such system and benefitting children who belong to PRONAF families, settlers of agrarian reform and rural employees. They are only 3 in Brazil - IFPB, IFSEMG and IFTO. Besides, they belong to specific Campuses and are mostly related to courses which are directed to the rural area. In this sense, and taking into consideration a significative disadvantage in competition between urban and rural students, a lot still has to be done in order to achieve the objectives of affirmative action: democratization of access to Higher Education, university space desegregation, and the achievement of citizenship for rural students.