Impact of Federal University Expansion Programs on the Profile of Psychology Students

Abstract

In view of the expansion and restructuring of federal universities in Brazil, the present work aims to investigate its impact on the profile of Psychology students. It aims to draw a panorama of Psychology courses linked to the Federal Institutions of Higher Education in Brazil and to analyze the effects of the expansion and internalization in the access to federal higher education in the profile of students who have entered the Psychology undergraduate courses in Brazil. This is a documental study, based on microdata from the Census of Higher Education in Brazil and from the National Exam of Student Performance (ENADE), released in the public domain by the Ministry of Education (MEC). Only students from Federal Higher Education Institutions (IFES) were selected to compose the final sample of 3,059 students. The analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows version 21, based on the chi-square test (χ2) of independence and 0.05 significance level (p<0.05). Advances were observed in increasing the access of students with a less elitist socioeconomic profile in undergraduate courses in Psychology in the IFES, especially those coming from families with lower income, with mothers and fathers with less education, and who study in cities with smaller population, provided by the Higher Education Expansion Programs in the country. In this logic, it is possible to understand the importance of these policies as a strategy for de-elitizing the profile of the Brazilian undergraduate student.

Keywords:
Psychology; Higher education; University expansion