A little bit of what is already known about the quota law in Brazil – 05/05/2023 – Policies and Justice

One of the most controversial public policies completed ten years in 2022. We are talking, of course, about Law 12,711/2012, which instituted the policy of quotas. According to her, starting in 2015, all federal universities should reserve at least 50% of vacancies in each of their courses for students from the public education system. Within this 50%, some more restrictions are made according to the racial profile of each state and socioeconomic conditions of the students.

Even today there are arguments against not only the existence of quotas, but their design, mainly with criticism in relation to their racial component. Often, this dimension of quotas is justified with arguments of historical reparation, since the current condition of blacks in society is directly linked to the Brazilian slavery past. I chose to bring two other points that, in my opinion, are important to be considered when evaluating the quota policy and its current design.

The first is that, even among the poorest, the black population seems to be at a disadvantage in relation to the white population. In a text published in this same column, the fact that intergenerational mobility, already small in Brazilian society, is even smaller among blacks and browns was discussed. A study carried out by researchers from USP shows that public school teachers have a negative bias when giving grades to students. These two facts bring arguments, among many others that can be listed, that reinforce the need for the existence of a racial dimension in the Brazilian quota policy.

The second point is that there are benefits beyond historic reparation that must be taken into account when analyzing quotas. When thinking about the effects of this policy, we have to take into account that it generates benefits for those who entered a public university due to the policy, and harms for those who failed to enter the same institution. A USP master’s thesis in economics analyzes the UERJ law program and shows that those who were benefited have a substantially greater chance of passing the OAB exam when compared to quota holders who did not pass the entrance exam. Those who failed to join UERJ, on the other hand, did not show a difference in the approval rate when compared to other non-quota students who actually entered UERJ, indicating that they accessed higher education anyway.

Another argument used against quotas is that they would replace more prepared students either with public school students with a higher socioeconomic status —who could access higher education even without quotas—, or with students who would not be able to attend higher education , decreasing the graduation rate. Studies made for universities that had a quota policy before the federal law, such as UFBA, UNB and Unicamp, show that this does not seem to be the case. In addition, a national study shows that, while the entry policy unified by Sisu seems to have reduced the chances of students at socioeconomic disadvantage entering public universities, the quota law acts in the opposite direction, more than compensating for this loss.

We all hope to live one day in Brazil where the quota policy is no longer necessary and certainly there are still several impacts of this public policy that need to be better understood and evaluated. While this does not happen, it seems clear to me that it has been doing more good than harm to the Brazilian people and has been essential to combat the repeated exclusion of black people from the various elites of our country.

Editor Michael França requests that each participant in the space “Politics and Justice” of the Sheet suggest a song to the readers. In this text, the one chosen by Alei Santos was “Toda Friday”, by Attoxxa and Adriana Calcanhoto.

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