From South America to Europe, Scholars Discuss Equity

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Sarah Lake
Mar 17, 2008, 00:05

While affirmative action programs are being challenged in the United States, Brazil is readily adopting these admissions policies in their colleges and universities as the morally correct thing to do to address the socioeconomic exclusion of Blacks, according to research done by Fulbright New Century scholar, Dr. Michele S. Moses.
Moses previewed the findings of her study, “Affirmative Action in Brazil and the United States: Understanding the Moral Foundations, Disagreements and Imperatives,” at the Fulbright New Century Scholars symposium on Friday. Moses, an associate professor in the department of Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was one of 12 Fulbright scholars to discuss their research on “Higher Education in the 21st Century: Issues of Access & Equity.”
Moses’ research asserts that the goal of affirmative action in the United States is not to support human rights, as it is in Brazil where government officials are trying to enhance educational opportunities for Blacks and mulattos, who have been excluded from higher education, through remediation and compensation. “In Brazil, affirmative action is justified primarily as a moral imperative,” Moses said. “But here in the United States, the justifications are primarily instrumental.”
The Fulbright New Century Scholars Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, collected a group of 36 researchers from around the world to study the topic of access and equity in higher education in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe.
Dr. Petr Mateju, head of the department of education and social stratification at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, found that access to higher education in East-central Europe was limited to those from more affluent backgrounds.
“Most of the European systems of secondary education show low permeability, high stratification and vocational specificity, which makes social background really important in making decisions about going to college or not,” he said while presenting the findings from his research, “Can Supply-Driven Educational Systems Achieve Higher Equity? Institutional, Economic and Social Conditions for Achieving Greater Equity in Access to Higher Education in East-Central Europe.”
Mateju suggested the educational system be “profoundly reformed” to encourage students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to attend college and increase expectations of economically disadvantaged students. “Isolated changes in secondary education or on the tertiary level won’t do the job,” he said. [To see the entire article, go to: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_10833.shtml ]