Dropping out of college is delicate, but it can be liberating – 01/20/2024 – Education

In Brazil, the idea that having a degree is the key to ensuring career success is common sense — and voluntarily giving up on graduation is still a sensitive topic.

But the diploma, although desired, is reserved for a few. According to IBGE data, the percentage of people aged 25 or over with completed higher education was 19.2% in 2022.

The Higher Education Map, from the Semesp Institute, also indicated that, in recent years, higher education has lost strength. The report analyzed data from 2017 to 2021 that shows that 55.5% of students dropped out of university and only 26.3% completed their courses.

The decision to give up higher education, most of the time, involves three main “lacks”: of interest, of time to combine studies with the work routine, and of money. The Semesp Institute study also shows that, despite private higher education accounting for 80% of the offer, the number of scholarships granted by Fies and Prouni has fallen each year.

Giving up on higher education is not easy and one of the most feared moments can be communicating with your family. Derek Macedo França, 33, from Rio de Janeiro, remembers that when he decided to drop out of mathematics college, which he was studying at Uerj (State University of Rio de Janeiro), his family was disappointed.

He says he heard complaints from parents such as “you managed to get into a public college, many don’t”.

Derek laments that everyone is put on the same treadmill, as if they are all the same. “Young people are different, but they face pressure at home. Many people study any course just for the sake of doing it. I’m glad I was able to see this before and dropped out of my course,” he says.

He entered university straight after school and at the beginning of the course he started working as a teacher. When trying to balance both workloads, he saw that little of what he learned at university was applied in the classroom.

That’s when he met a colleague in a firefighter’s uniform. Conversation goes on and on, the friend talks about the profession. Hunger combined with the desire to eat and at the beginning of 2012, in his third year of graduation, he decided to drop out of the course and take the exam for the Fire Department.

Today, he works as a teacher within the Fire Department and says he has a rewarding career. “I’m grateful to the beginning of my career that I learned to teach, to what I learned in college and also to the teachers I worked with at the time. This all made me work in the field that I like,” he says.

The decision, however, is not always accompanied by so much certainty. Julia Nascimento, 27, fears that her lack of a diploma will affect her chances of being promoted at work.

She studied literature with an emphasis on German at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). In the middle of her graduation, she stopped the course and resumed when all she needed to do was complete her TCC (course conclusion work) and work some extra hours. However, she gave up.

“It’s always a negative weight,” he says. She criticizes the fact that, in general, students are “spitted from school to college without knowing anything” and are already forced to choose a profession that will determine their future.

“When I gave up, my life moved on,” she says. “My family asked, this tormented me and during an informal conversation I made it known that I had dropped out of the course.”

“I knew they would be sad. It’s a hidden topic in family conversations,” he says. Today she works at a law firm as a process analyst and the foreign language makes a difference, as many of the clients speak German. But she says she fears the future.

“I think that in order to get a raise, this might be important. I would also like to live outside the country and, for that, having a higher education degree would make a difference in the process”, she says, who considers taking a technology course, which is considered higher education by the MEC (Ministry of Education), but lasts between two and three years.

Another factor that can influence graduation evasion is the employment scenario in which recent graduates are inserted. A survey by Geofusion, released at the end of last year, crossed data from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor to investigate the transition of recent graduates to the job market in Brazil.

The study, which used data from 2018 as a basis, demonstrated that one in ten people who graduate are able to enter the higher education market.

For researcher Isabela Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, the market has increased the requirements for vacancies that would be intended for those who completed high school. Therefore, she says, it is common for a professional who invested in training to leave university earning less than what they paid in tuition.

“This also flattens the ruler for those who don’t have a degree”, laments Albuquerque.

There are also experts who attribute the lack of interest to other factors, such as access to social networks and the desire to create your own business at an early age. Career manager and neuroscientist Andrea Deis assesses that part of the new generation is influenced by the idea that formal education is not necessary to enter the job market.

But she warns that, despite being able to make money, it is a generation that discovers the technical difficulty after founding a business. “They often start out disorganized, they don’t know how to lead or do financial planning, and by the time they go to ask for help, it’s already too late.”

Of course, lack of identification and wrong course choice influence decisions, but financial issues have always been and still are the main motivation for giving up on a course.

Sergio Ricardo Sobrinho, 57, owns an automotive center in Jundiaí, in the interior of São Paulo, but his dream was to become an agronomist.

After high school, he entered college in Santo Antonio do Pinhal (SP) and began studying what he loved most.

At the time, the father had just retired and was financially well enough to keep his three children in private colleges, but the family did not count on the confiscation of their savings during the Collor government in 1990.

When this happened, the father had a large part of his investments frozen. As a result, he started reselling products to support his family. Sergio followed his father’s tiring routine and started helping around the house. “We went to sleep with a lot of money and woke up with nothing,” he remembers.

At a certain point, he noticed that the situation was not good and decided to abandon his studies. “My father was dissatisfied, sad, he didn’t die happy with this decision”, says Sergio, who despite this managed to save money, opened a business and started helping even more at home.

“I have no doubt that I would have been a great agronomist, but I learned to enjoy working with what I also loved, cars, and this opportunity opened my mind”, says Sergio.