Prestige

It has been very informative to visit the different schools here in Rio de Janeiro so far. Our first experience was to visit Pookie (this is how it is pronounced but it is the Pontifical Catholic University, and it is a foundation and nonprofit). This private university is widely considered one of the most prestigious private universities in the country and I was eager to learn about what set Pookie apart from other private schools that are trying to close the prestige gap. One of the first things I learned was that there are relatively few afro-Brazilians in the areas of law, medicine, and engineering. These subjects seem to hold the most prestige. My intuition was that there is a sort of spectrum of universities in Brazil, with free, prestigious public schools on one end, and costly, lower reputation, private schools on the other end. Pookie would actually seem to be closer to the public school side of the spectrum than the other because it is more prestigious and slightly cheaper.

We then learned a little bit about the history of pookie, which is important to me because I am curious in how prestige reproduces itself. There used to be no universities in Brazil for quite a long time, because the idea was that it would be better for slavery to keep the population dumbed down. Everyone in the ruling class would learn abroad in Europe. There however were a few theological institutions and this has helped to pave the way for schools like Pookie in the future. In the 1930’s (Independence was in 1822), the government created the university where there were basically only Jesuit schools beforehand. The first university was USP, or University of Sao Paulo. This university is unique in that it is a state university as opposed to a federal university, yet is probably the most prestigious university in the country. We were told that there are some good state universities and some bad ones, but the federal universities are the most prestigious because the backing of the state is the most solid. The next most prestigious are the Church schools such as Jesuit schools, Catholic schools, Lasathian schools, and even Macaansi (Presbyterian) schools which are actually rather well respected. Pookie began as a plantation in the early 19^th century. King John of Portugal gave it as a land grant to one of his followers and the plantation mansion is still in the center of the campus.

What was perhaps the most interesting thing about Pookie is how affirmative action works at the school. The university gives money to feeding institutions so that students can perform better on vestibulars, however, there are no quotas in place and in that sense, there still is little actual affirmative action. We were also told that there is a large resistance to affirmative action from the faculty at Pookie, and that in the law school, there is only one law professor that is sympathetic to change. Another interesting aspect about the community prep courses are that the students that are able to have their funding subsidized often commit to teaching the same prep courses when they get out of college. Once the students got into the school, some of their expenses were paid, and by their second year, more of their expenses were paid. In the last thirty years, Pookie has become much more diversified and the prestige of the school has increased in the same time span as well.

What is strange is that my first reaction to all of this is just an appreciation for seeing how everything works first hand and hearing it from the professors and students themselves. I love being able to finally put things into perspective, but upon further analysis I begin to wonder about whether and how real changes are being made. Universities may or may not be slowly increasing the number of afro-Brazilians on their campuses, but other students and professors are still hostile to change. I hope that I learn how to change the ideas and notions of administrators, professors and students so that they learn to appreciate diversity. I know that this is just one aspect of the affirmative action struggle, and I do not mean to overstate its importance, but I feel as though it is something that is lacking and something that needs to be addressed.