Políticas de cotas: desempenho acadêmico e determinantes de acesso à Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte.

Much has been discussed on the affirmative actions adopted by public universities and its character of assistance. Several papers have been developed questioning this approach, but few with empirical methodologies needed to more conclusive criticism. In an attempt to close this gap, this study intends to verify the impact of some socioeconomic variables have on the performance of candidates to the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and, concomitantly, to compare performance between students with access to affirmative actions and students without access to affirmative actions, through the index of academic performance. The data used for analysis were a census of the years 2006 to 2010, allowing a quantitative analysis and providing data for a discussion and evaluation of the affirmative actions policy adopted by the institution. The study shows that the most important factor to enter the University is the origin school of the candidate and, despite the benefits of access offered to students from public high schools, the better results are still recorded by students coming from private schools. This demonstrates that there is a discrepancy between the teaching done in these two types of schools. However, once admitted on the University, there is a tendency to stability in academics performance. Thus, it can be concluded that considering only the academic performance there seems not to be a gap between students. However, since it is a social emergency, there must be investment in basic education and a plan for that not be necessary to use affirmative actions as a permanent policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]