O trabalho do assistente social na viabilização do acesso à assistência estudantil na Universidade Federal da Bahia

Abstract

The National Student Assistance Program (PNAES) was created in 2010 and aimed to warranty the permanence of undergraduate students in Federal Institutions of Higher Education (IFES), particularly those in socioeconomic vulnerability, as a way of reducing inequalities and retention and school evasion in higher education. A program that gained notoriety and importance, given the expansion of vacancies in IFES that took place from 2007 onwards, was created with the Support Program for Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities (REUNI). At the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), student assistance actions are intertwined with the history of the university itself. They have existed since the foundation of the institution in the 1940s. At the same time, increasingly affected by the advance of the neoliberal agenda and by the context of the economic crisis that, inevitably, has reflected on it is coverage and daily challenged social workers, who are on the front line of the operationalization of aid and benefit of student assistance at the University. The dissertation presented here has as it is central theme the work of the social worker in the feasibility of student assistance, with the locus the Pro-Rectory of Affirmative Actions and Student Assistance of the Federal University of Bahia (PROAE/UFBA), the institution responsible for the execution of the assistance actions for undergraduate students at the university. In this regard, the work has like objective to evince how the work of social workers in the Pro-Rectory of Affirmative Actions and Student Assistance (PROAE) feasibility student assistance at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), in the period between 2012 and 2019, in addition, to contextualize the reform and counter-reform movements of the Brazilian State and their repercussions on the labor market and social policies; to evince the work of the social worker is facing the social issue in the country; to introduce the historical trajectory of student assistance in Brazil and at UFBA; and to describe how the work of the social worker feasibility access to student assistance. The methodology adopted here is descriptive and quantitative and qualitative. Three work methods were used for it is accomplishment: bibliographic research, documental research, and content analysis, where the analyzes were carried out based on the dialectics perspective. It is concluded that, despite the relevance and representativeness of the investigative Dimension (25,9%) of professional work in the feasibility acess student assistance actions – compared to the Approach social issue (18,5%) and socioeducational Dimension (11,1%) – the barriers to student assistance management Dimension (44,4%) had the most significant impact on the work of the social worker, with emphasis on the “Financial Resources” subcategory, given that the budgetary limitation prevents a greater coverage of PNAES actions and evince the challenges of guarantee the conditions of permanence of the federal public university. Considering the worrying economic and social indicators that historically characterize the Northeast region of the country, in the state of Bahia – strongly affected by the high rates of unemployment, poverty, informality, and low schooling – the precarious coverage of student assistance is a preponderant factor for the permanence of the students at UFBA.