There are many ways to evaluate a university selection process. Candidates are certainly eager to see their names on the lists that associate them with a career that they imagine will be capable of bringing rewards in their personal and professional trajectories. Institutions, in turn, display in their processes the expectations and profiles of entrants they desire for the next degree cycle. The general knowledge test, the essay proposal and specific tests are more than a list of topics or part of a classification process for those seeking a place in higher education.
The preparation of a test such as the entrance exam or broader processes such as the ENEM must escape the triumphalist model that some will exhibit for passing. If we think that, approximately, more than 2 million young people compete for almost 240 thousand places in universities through the Unified Selection System (SISU) or almost 84 thousand candidates registered in the Unicamp Vestibular were in the running for 3.340 places, there is no reason for arguments like meritocracy or that of an outstanding trait due to the indices obtained. The data indicates that, despite advances, admission to public universities is highly selective and young people face fierce competition.
The university, in its teaching, research and extension tasks, demands qualified people who will contribute to the development of science, technology, services, education and culture. The comfortable place is that the dispute, even in a context of inclusion, signals a horizon in which vacancies are filled based on a careful process. The balance between the proposals for increasingly accessible higher education and the demand for cutting-edge scientific research carried out at the university is desirable. The uncomfortable place is that in the name of the latter, academic and scientific communities see forms of entry as an end in themselves.
High school graduates arrive at the entrance exam with the fullness of their desires and a high level of personal expectations. The demands on young people fall on themselves, their families, schools and the environment in which they live. What is not always said is that, despite their commitment and effort, they bring with them the cultural, historical and social conditions of their relationship with the knowledge and knowledge required by schools and universities.
When skills are not made clear to students, the arbitrariness of the process to which candidates for higher education undergo is hidden. The existence of a minimally defined level with objective rules hides the differences that marked previous experiences. It is not determinism, obviously, but young people cannot alone carry the results in highly competitive processes: not even in the success of an approval that would attribute a straight line of success; nor the idea that failure in a selection would make future choices unfeasible.
Society, as a whole, and educators and guardians, in particular, must be careful in how they deal with the sensations experienced by candidates. We cannot transfer socially and historically constructed ills and privileges to individuals in isolation. Access to higher education only explains part of who we are as a society. The main universities in the world, the most prestigious, are widely contested. The problem is when there are no effective alternatives for those left out of this dispute or when the alternatives are marked by previously defined precariousness.
The test and its meanings
The social and critical function of universities must be continually explained. Entrance exams, in this sense, are the opportunity to present guidelines and desired perspectives to students. An institution can, for example, carry out an admission process for classic content that speaks directly to consolidated scientific knowledge. Or, in a more daring way, signal that your assessment requires reading the world, based on widely disseminated school knowledge and scientific references that will be necessary in university life, at the same time that it signals a stance of commitment to plurality and respect for human rights. There is no possibility of considering academic training without this prior commitment.
The Unicamp Vestibular has expressed an identity since its creation. In the last edition, many themes were highlighted around social contextualization and which allowed candidates to develop and elaborate aspects necessary to discern information and positions and their uses both for scientific, cultural and technological knowledge, and for their actions as citizens. The test was also consistent with the perspective of a public university committed to society and that wants to have all possible diversity within it, without this having meant disregard for more abstract, complex and creative elaborations, such as those required in the exams. specific skills.
Every year, the Permanent Commission for Entrance Exams (Comvest) holds meetings with teachers and visits dozens of schools with the aim of presenting the structure of the test, its ways of conceiving it and the criteria for its selection system. It is a commitment to transparency so that students know what to expect in the test and, therefore, reduce the incidence of chance. Unicamp has goals defined by legislation and the University Council, such as increasing the presence of public school students and representing the population in terms of ethnic-racial aspects.
Multiple systems
Unicamp's protagonism and recognition, over its more than 50 years, is achieved through a large number of variables. The way of selecting students is part of this process. It is desirable that candidates have the prospect of finding the path that seems best suited to their profile. The changes for entry in 2019, such as the reformulation of the PAAIS, the Indigenous Entrance Exam, the ethnic-racial quotas, the ENEM notices and Olympic vacancies, alongside ProFIS, allow us to envision an even more interesting picture for next year.
Thinking about candidates for higher education, it is desirable that there are multiple systems and tests. The adoption of ENEM as a criterion for the majority of public universities in the country, especially federal ones, has positive aspects, but it hides problems and restricts students' options when SISU is operationalized with only 2 course choices in a wide range of courses and universities. Even the idea that the system federalizes or causes regional diversity is debatable. How many people from Acre attend a federal university in São Paulo? And how many people from São Paulo occupy positions in Cuiabá and Teresina, in courses such as Medicine? Such issues, evidently, are not unavoidable, nor are they the main facet of the process administered by Sisu/INEP/MEC. But, in their eagerness to produce a national exam, universities lose some of their autonomy regarding the criteria for choosing their entrants.
It is important that Unicamp, as well as USP, Unesp and other institutions maintain their selection processes. Combination with other systems is also desirable, but the first aspect of the university is the test it carries out. The student aims for university and seeks to familiarize himself with its tests and profiles. In this sense, the results of the entrance exam, when announced next week, will not surprise us: we will have students who express multiple voices and vectors of society, will have a critical and contextualized vision and will be protagonists in the areas of arts, culture, science and technology.
