Por que eles abandonam? evasão de bolsistas PROUNI dos cursos de licenciaturas

Abstract

Higher education has been expanding in the country characterized by an increased number of institutions, registration rates, as well as the creation of new academic courses. To provide further access to higher education, the Brazilian government created the program named University for All (ProUni), aimed at young people from state high schools. Concerning teacher training programs, which is the object of this dissertation, the dropping out level is high including those who received the ProUni scholarship. The theme of this research is the dropping out of ProUni students in teacher training courses in a private university in the South of Brazil. Our general objective is to identify and analyze the causes/reasons ProUni students from these undergraduate courses drop out. We present the context of the current scenario of higher education and the theoretical background about dropping out. We discuss public policies concepts about dropping out in the educational area. It is a qualitative research which utilizing methods such as interviews and documental analysis. Also, we used content analysis for the data collected. The participants of the field research were the students who dropped out, course coordinators, the teacher training course’s manager, and institutional documentation. The cohort period was the first and second semester of 2013 and 2014, the total of participants were 18, eight dropping out students, eight course coordinators and a manager. As a result, we found that the causes that led students to abandon their courses are related mainly to economic and financial reasons, learning difficulties, the difficulty of managing studies, work, and family and finally undervalue of education. These students who dropped out expressed interest in returning to the university and their courses. It is clear that dropping out in such courses is related different factors. The present study becomes relevant as it listens to these dropped-out students, feels their realities, realizes their feelings and anguish, contributing to researches on the field and indicating preventive and reductive options to dropping out. Listening to the coordinators of those different teacher training programs was also relevant so that the institution could discuss the topic of dropping out with them. Surely this research is going to make possible other preventive actions to dropping out.