Ações afirmativas e permanência de cotistas negros na Universidade Estadual do Piauí nas primeiras décadas do séc. XXI

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how the State University of Piauí (UESPI) has implemented affirmative action policies, with an emphasis on the access and retention of quota students, especially Black men and women, from 2009 to 2024. The research is based on the context of Federal Law No. 12,711/2012, which regulates quotas in federal institutions, and the recent amendment to State Law No. 5,791/2008, replaced by Law No. 7,455/2021, which expanded the quota policy at UESPI. We analyze the legal advances, the contradictions, and gaps in the process of implementing affirmative action within the university, as well as the inconsistency in the distribution of reserved places and the scarcity of systematized data on quota students; and the absence of explicit criteria for access to student retention programs. The methodology adopted is qualitative in nature, based on document analysis and an interdisciplinary approach. Institutional notices, internal university resolutions, state and federal legislation, minutes of senior councils, regulations for student assistance programs (such as Food Assistance, Housing Assistance, and Work Grants), and the results of extension programs (PIBEU) and research (PIBIC) were examined. UESPI's admission notices, both via the university entrance exam and the Unified Selection System (SISU), were also analyzed to verify the correspondence between the number of reserved and filled places. The time frame covers 2009 to 2024, encompassing different periods of the institution's quota policy. The work is anchored in theoretical frameworks that discuss affirmative action policies and student retention, such as Gomes (2005), Gomes (2017), Santos (2018), Felipe, Lima (2022), among others. It also relies on the methodological contributions of interdisciplinary research, as proposed by Fazenda and José (2016), highlighting the importance of listening, experience, and dialogue with multiple knowledge areas. The author's experience as a quota student, student movement activist, and participant in institutional spaces at UESPI—such as the DCE, higher education councils, and affirmative action committees—is understood as a constitutive element of knowledge production. As a contribution, the proposal is to create a Provost's Office of Affirmative Action at UESPI, with an autonomous structure and its own resources, in addition to the expansion of material and symbolic retention policies aimed at quota undergraduate and graduate students. As a result, the research highlights the importance of public policies aimed at historical reparations, racial equity, and the democratization of higher education in Piauí and Brazil, as well as the need for greater institutional attention to policy within the university, from access through retention and monitoring.