A relative democratization? A study on Unifesp's expansion

This paper presents partial results of a survey on the social characteristics of students of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), an educational institution that showed significant growth in enrollment over the past ten years. The procedures included an analysis of statistical data on the freshmen of the year 2011, as well as interviews with students. The main objective of the study was to examine whether and how old patterns of enrollment in higher education in Brazil would have been preserved or modified after the expansion. The results allowed not only the identification of a "quantitative democratization" of access, but also of the meanings of admission into a public university in the perception of students who have benefited from this recent expansion.

Expansion; Democratization; Higher education