The Cost of Opportunity? Higher Education in the Baixada Fluminense (2017-2018)

In Brazil, higher education enrollment has nearly tripled since 2000. A strong quota system and government financial support have revolutionized the racial and class composition in the for-profit private sector and the better-quality tuition-free public university system.

Rio de Janeiro’s poor urban periphery – known as the Baixada Fluminense – has the country’s highest concentration of young people. Located in this region, the new Multidisciplinary Institute of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (IM/UFRRJ) is a source of hope for this racially and socially stigmatized community.

The Cost of Opportunity team began in collaboration with faculty, graduate students and undergraduates at the Multidisciplinary Institute. In 2017-18, the project team engaged in targeted field research, including a week of interviews with Ministry of Education officials in Brasília. The team organized a speakers’ series on social mobility and access to higher education in the developing world. Team members also participated in collaborative work with their Brazilian counterparts, including participating in a meeting with a delegation at the UFRRJ and helping organize a “Cost of Opportunity” conference.

Timing

Summer 2017 – Spring 2018

Team Outputs

Nova Iguaçu “Open University” Conference Sparks Continued Reflection (Riley Allen)

“Christ the Redeemer Turns His Back on Us: Urban Black Struggle in the Baixada Fluminense,” dissertation by Stephanie Reist ’18 (Ph.D. in Romance Studies)

“Last Stop Destination: Poverty, Anti-Blackness, and University Education in the Mississippi Delta and the Baixada Fluminense (Rio Lowlands) in Brazil,” honors thesis by Chloe Ricks ’18 (International Comparative Studies); winner of the International Comparative Studies Honors Thesis Prize

Cost of Opportunity 2018 Conference: Educate to Liberate, April 20, 2018

The Cost of Opportunity? Higher Education in the Baixada Fluminense (talk by Joseph Beck and Riley Allen), EHDx, April 19, 2018

The Cost of Opportunity: Revolutionizing Public Higher Education in Brazil Since 2003 (poster by Riley Allen, Eduardo Ángelo da Silva, Joe Beck, John French, Andrew Guinn, Travis Knoll, Adair Necalli, Chloe Ricks, Cesar Santos), presented at Bass Connections Showcase, April 18, 2018, and EHDx, April 19, 2018

Travis Knoll (Ph.D. Program in History), Bass Connections Follow-on Student Research Award

Open University: The Right to Higher Education, conference organized at the Universidad Federal Rural de Rio de Janeiro, March 1, 2018

Project team website

Is Lady Justice Blind? Reading Brazil’s 2012 Affirmative Action Decision through the Struggle for Gender Equality (Travis Knoll)