Is there a reversal in the students’s educational path from basic education to higher education in Brazil?

Abstract

This article aims to foster the debate about student’s performance in the National High School Exam (Enem), considering that the results of this exam constitute a tool that can contribute to the process of democratization process of access to higher education, within the context of the educational policies implemented in the last decade. We seek to answer two questions: “What type of Higher Education Institution (HEI) are students motivated to join?”; and “What type of basic education school do the students come from?” The study aims to develop a hypothetical structure about a possible reversal of the school trajectory. To this end, quantitative research was used, with which we sought to answer the questions based on microdata from the 2015 Enem and the 2016 Higher Education Census. The results of both analyses indicate that: 1) Enem candidates are highly motivated to enter public HEIs, but students from public schools are more motivated to enter private HEIs than those from private schools; 2) the majority of students at public HEIs come from private schools, while most students in private HEIs come from public schools.