Abstract
This study aims to understand the academic trajectory of lower-class students in the course of Electrical Engineering, created in the context of university expansion. In theoretical terms, the research is based on the concepts of habitus and dispositions, in the perspectives presented by Bourdieu and Lahire; in the notions of integration and university affiliation, made, respectively, by Tinto and Coulon and in the studies about unlikely school trajectories. Out of 99 students, nine were identified as belonging to the lower classes, out of these nine students, eight participated in the third phase of the research, the construction of the “sociological portraits” intended to understand which dispositions and types of behavior of these subjects provided conditions for entry as well as the integration and affiliation to higher education. The increase of places together with the reformulation of the selection processes for university admission are structural issues that benefitted these students to be admitted in a course considered of high social prestige. However, the absence of academic restructuring to welcome students from different social backgrounds turns out to be a contrary factor to the real democratization of higher education. In addition, completing basic education, even though has allowed access to the college, seems not to have provided students with the skills, abilities and knowledge required to affiliation to higher education. Therefore, structural school issues, occurring in basic education, stand as an obstacle to college success. Thus, rational pedagogy and the pedagogy of affiliation, formulated by Bourdieu and Coulon, respectively, seem to point to a university restructuring process in an inclusive perspective.
Lower-class students; University expansion; Democratization of higher education