Who goes and who stays: Betting on higher education in the context of expansion

The intense debate on the adoption of social programs for entry into higher education in its various formats (reserve positions, PROUNI, financing etc.) caused a huge rush for the production of data and building diagnostics on access to the  university in Brazil according to gender, race, class or socioeconomic group. The present work aims to analyze the discussion from these and other aspects such as access to higher education as a mechanism of social reproduction or ascension, conditions and restrictions of this bet. Thus, the study presents three levels of data production (macro, meso and micro) and their analysis. At the macro level we tried to map the changes between young people (ages 18 to 29 years) in relation to investment in education and among those, who continue investment in higher education according to gender, color and family income through data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) for the years 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008. At the meso level will be discussed data from a survey conducted with students of the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) about perceptions of inequality and mobility. And at the micro level, we carried out a series of qualitative interviews with selected UERJ’s students according to the situation they are breeding, growing, and not shareholders and shareholders course he did.