Quota students’ path: entrance, stay and opportunities in higher education

The goals were to investigate the university quota students’ path after joining UFOP's undergraduate courses; compare the academic profile of quota and other students and investigate the seized opportunities in the university path by the students. We used quantitative methods: descriptive statistics and means comparison tests. The variables used were: socioeconomic status, ENEM score, general UFOP coefficient, grade retention, dropout and academic opportunities. 247 students (71 quota students and 176 from the regular competition), enrolled in the first semester of 2013, from six undergraduate courses participated: Medicine, Nutrition, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Law School and Social Work. Among the main results, we highlight: the majority of quota students, despite having a lower entrance ENEM score, has a similar academic achievement to the students of the regular competition. Several results found, in general, are in the same direction. For instance: in the sample as a whole, we did not find a statistically significant difference when comparing the grade retention and dropout proportion of quota and regular competition students. The quota policy has contributed to the access of a significant number of popular class students in Higher Education, especially in the most prestigious courses.

Keywords:
Quota students; Affirmative action policies; Higher education