Proposal to change the rules for the occupation of quotas in the student entrance to federal institutions of higher education

Abstract

The policy of Quotas Law for entry into Brazilian federal institutions of higher education, has enhanced, over the last ten years, the inclusion of students from public high schools, from low-income families and self-identified black, brown and indigenous people into Brazilian undergraduate programs. However, one of the most neglected points in relation to the effectiveness of the Quotas Law concerns the way this policy is implemented through the Centralized Admission System (Sisu). Distortions in the way quotas are adopted in Sisu result in unfair rejections, in which quota candidates who would have sufficient performance to enter are penalized, both because it makes them compete only with other potential quota candidates, and by strategic behaviors that hurt the spirit of the legislation. In this article, we carry out a quantitative analysis based on microdata from Sisu 2019/1^st semester to present an alternative rule for the adoption of quotas. The results indicate that its adoption would completely eliminate unfair rejections and strategic incentives. This would come without significant changes in the proportion of black, brown, indigenous and low-income applicants, in the average score of those approved, or in the number of those approved in their first choice of course.