Implementação de Políticas de Ações Afirmativas na Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR) Campus de Francisco Beltrão

Abstract

Affirmative action public policies are presente in the Constitution through the concept of equity – which refers to overcoming the merely formal interpretation of the principle of isonomy and thus respects the specificities of each group – and with the objective of correcting inequalities present in society, accumulated over years. Thus, this study seeks to analyze how the implementation of affirmative action public policies was implemented at the Federal Technological University of Paraná – UTFPR – Francisco Beltrão’s Campus. Federal Law No. 12,711 / 2012, stipulated the 2016 deadline for federal institutions to fully comply with the legislation, so it is important to verify whether universities have complied this prerogative and under what conditions. This study intends to understand how this process happened at UTFPR, Campus Francisco Beltrão, the only federal university in the city. The method in which the research was developed is dialectical historical materialism, in a qualitative and quantitative research, with documentary and bibliographical analysis and semi-structured interviews with the servers in the implementation process. Therefore, we start from the understanding that, in Brazil, the trajectory of higher education and affirmative action public policies are part of the dynamics of dependent capitalism, since the country follows this economic model and interferes in all spheres of society, including education. To this end, the reforms and counter-reforms of higher education from 1995 to 2016 were analyzed, a space that covers the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (with the intensification of neoliberalism, there were few advances in relation to public higher education), the governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (with a post-neoliberal program, there are relevant actions regarding the expansion of public higher education and working class access to this lever of education, especially through policies such as REUNI, SISU, UAB and FIES) and the governments of Dilma Rousseff (which continued the post-neoliberal policies of the Lula administration and the expansion of access to public higher education for the working classes, especially from Federal Law No. 12.711 / 2012 – the Quota Law). In this process, contradictorily, the demands of the working classes, social movements and the orientations of international organizations were complied. Thus, the role of international organizations in the implementation of affirmative action public policies in the world and in Brazil is highlighted, and how these policies can, at the same time, attend the aspirations of social movements, as well as the recommendations of international organizations in this dependente and contradictory society. Finally, the first experiences of the implementation of affirmative action policies in the Brazilian universities, both state and federal, and, more specifically, in the above-mentioned Campus from 2008, are presented. The presente study concludes by the positivity of affirmative action public policies, although, based on the research carried out, obstacles were found, especially due to the lack of adequate state invesments and a solid student assistance policy. However, it can be said that the years studied brought great achievements to the working class regarding higher education.