ABSTRACT
This article focuses on a group of poor students enrolled in higher education courses whose trajectory is associated with two Brazilian federal public policies: the cash transfer Programa Bolsa Família and the Programa Universidade para Todos. It aims to understand the trajectories of these students and their individual and/or family members strategies so that they could access and remain at the university, as well as analyze their views on the Bolsa Família and the Programa Universidade para Todos. The research was based on semi-structured interviews with nine students of a non-profit university located in the state of São Paulo. The interviews suggest that this small group of people have been subjected to high doses of effort and personal deprivation that may be considered high even in societies that claim to be meritocratic. The constant presence of situations that denote the “I did myself” in the school pathways and in the current higher course corroborates this understanding. The Programa Universidade para Todos comes to be well valued than the Bolsa Família, since it fits better in an understanding of being a “meritocratic” policy, rather than the cash transfer policy.
KEYWORDS:
Programa Universidade para Todos; Bolsa Família; higher education