The present study has as its theme, “Higher education: a study on the policy of student
assistance in the trajectory of Ufopa”. The research proposal was limited to the three
Units of the Institution located in the Municipality of Santarém-Pa: Tapajós Unit,
Rondon Unit and Amazon Unit. The analyzes pertinent here are based on the historical
process of insertion of higher education in Brazil, going through the policies of the
student's permanence in the Universities over time, until reaching the main focus of
this investigation, which is the approach with the Ufopa actors, directly involved with
the management of student assistance in the academic environment. The analysis
discusses the meanings of the student assistance policy, its materiality, the right to
education, permanence in university and equity. It is a qualitative research with
quantitative data, based on the historical-dialectical materialism method, understood
here as the most appropriate for this type of approach, for allowing a better
contextualization of the investigated object. As a problem to be solved by this study, it
was asked: "How did the Student Assistance Policy of the Federal University of
Western Pará materialize throughout its trajectory?" Thus, the central objective is to
analyze the process of implementing the student assistance policy at the Federal
University of Western Pará, in its historical path. As instruments that will support this
study, some institutional documents were used, such as resolutions, legislation,
management reports, budget tables and institutional histories, in addition to semistructured interviews with administrative technicians, managers and ex-managers of
the Pro-rectory of Student Management, as well as informal conversations and
questionnaires applied on the Google Forms platform for students with active links at
Ufopa, who are users of student assistance. As a preliminary hypothesis, it is stated
that it is possible to identify in the Institution some constraints to the equalization of
human rights to education, given that in view of the political context, student assistance
is sometimes linked much more to the logic of service than to law. Even so, it can be
seen that there is a relationship between the receipt of aid and the performance of
assisted students, since, according to the analysis of secondary data, it was evident
from the reports, the improvement in the academic performance coefficient, after
receiving the assistance aids. The results obtained indicate that although there is a
need to expand in quantitative and qualitative terms, the student assistance programs existing at Ufopa are of great importance for the permanence of students in conditions
of socioeconomic vulnerability.
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