Abstract:

The Brazilian education underwent a period of expansion in which coverage of elementary education exceeded 95% in the 1990s. At the other edge of the education system, higher education experienced a substantial expansion from the end of the 1990s and, especially, during 2000s. Although the number of chairs and admission increased, the number of graduates did not proportionately follow this trend. Actually, there is even a record of a decline in the number of graduates. On the other hand, policies to stimulate the growth of the higher education system have supported a commercial notion of education, favoring the private sector – which occupies more than 80% of Brazilian higher education. This issue opens space for the discussion about the existence of a real democratization of higher education or for its massification. The literature suggests that higher education students can be conditioned on the choice of course (access), performance, permanence and promotion (conclusion) regarding their social origin, economic situation, gender and race/color. Thus, cultural and economic capital from belonging to a particular social class can influence the capacity of individuals to limit their freedom of choice and objective possibilities of achieving an educational promotion, such as the defined by the proposal of a democratic education system. In order to support this discussion, the present work has the objective of outlining the sociodemographic profile of the population of students completing higher education courses through the use of ENADE database (2017). Based on the concepts of cultural and economic capital, it is possible to trace the profile of undergraduate students who are graduating from their courses with the Grade of Membership (GoM) method, which calculates their membership in certain profiles and with varying degrees of belonging, according to the logic of fuzzy sets. Among the results, it was noticed that individuals with lesser cultural capital, lower economic capital and, in general, from private higher education institutions have a lower participation as concluding undergraduates while individuals with elevated cultural and economic capital and from public higher education institutions have higher participation as graduates, perform better in ENADE exam and have institutional support (scholarships, grants, opportunities to participate in international activities and so forth).

Keywords:

Cultural capital, Educational inequalities, Higher education.