Affirmative actions in Brazilian graduate studies

the case of UFRGS

Abstract

The debate around affirmative action in Brazilian graduate education is relatively recent. The literature on the subject indicates that the adoption of affirmative actions by the graduate programs of Brazilian public HEIs dates from the early 2000s. The discussion was intensified in the second decade of the 21st century, in the context of the enactment of the 12.711/2012 Federal Law, which instituted the reservation of undergraduate vacancies for black and public school students in the federal higher education network, and of the 12.990/2014 Federal Law, which established the reservation of 20% of vacancies in public official selections for black candidates. More recently, the Ministry of Education published Ordinance No. 13/2016, which determined that federal higher education institutions should submit proposals for the inclusion of blacks, indigenous people, and people with disabilities in their graduate programs, also creating specific commissions for affirmative action. Within this broader context, we have sought to provide in this article an overview of the current scenario of affirmative action policies in graduate courses at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). The results mainly show that the implementation of the reservation of vacancies in UFRGS programs started in 2016, which may be a reflection of Ordinance No. 13/2016. Following a national trend, other social markers of difference in addition to ethnic-racial ones have been considered as criteria for reservation of vacancies; there are significant differences between the rules of the notices, given the lack of a general rule within the university for all programs.