Permanência de graduandos da UFRB durante a pandemia de COVID-19, segundo a raça/cor da pele

Abstract

Higher education expansion policies greatly diversified the profile of incoming students, and the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB) was created in that context and is at the epicenter of that change. The greater insertion of students belonging to the most vulnerable social strata, within a pandemic context, has raised the need for more dialogues about academic permanence, which is understood here as material and symbolic. This research aims to analyze the conditions of student permanence regarding socioeconomic and health aspects in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to race/skin color, thus making it possible to offer UFRB information that allows it to operate in the guarantee of permanence of students and fulfilling their social role. This is a cross-sectional study, with socioeconomic, health, and permanence variables, with descriptive analyzes and the chi-square test being performed. The survey included 464 UFRB graduates, with black race/skin color students representing 41.3%, brown 36.5%, and white 19.4%. Race/skin color was associated with several factors, and black students were linked to a lower monthly family income (p<0.001), to the place of residence without urban cleaning service (p<0.001), the lack of infrastructure for rainwater drainage (p<0.001) and lack of sewage treatment (p=0.005); food insecurity (p=0.002), lack of access to N95/PFF2 protective masks (p=0.004), disposable tissues (p=0.005) and private health services (p<0.001); secondary education in a public school (p<0.001), mother's (p<0.001) and father's (p<0.001) low education level. Brown students were more associated with a low probability of continuing at UFRB in the next semester (p=0.008), a worse assessment of the quality of instruction received (p=0.018), and a low perception that their course is concerned with their intellectual growth (p=0.025). And white students had a lower perception of the supply of their individual needs by UFRB (p=0.001) and also about student participation in decision-making processes (p=0.033). In this way, the present study demonstrated that the economic issue appears as the main and first consequence for black students, who have a lower income than others, and thus ends up directly interfering in the place where they live, how they eat, how they go to the university and how they see the academic environment and the opportunities around them. As a result of this work, a scientific article was produced entitled “Sociodemographic profile and food insecurity among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic”, a proposal for monitoring undergraduate students and a dashboard with research data that will be made available to the Pro-rector of Undergraduate studies at UFRB.