A Assistência ao Estudante Universitário na UFAL, no contexto da Pandemia de COVID- 19

Abstract

The present work, of a quantitative and qualitative nature, studies the assistance to university students at Federal University of Alagoas-UFAL, in context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aims to analyze the challenges to university student assistance at UFAL and their trend in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bibliographic and documentary research was used as a methodological procedure, whose source is the empirical material that constitutes the research corpus, specifically, the documents that make up the legal framework of assistance to university students, namely: the Federal Constitution of 1988, the Decree No. 6,096 of 2007, which instituted REUNI and Law No. 7,234 de 2010, which consolidates the Nacional Student Assistance Program-PNAES as a government policy. The present study initially makes a historical contextualization of assistance to university students since the 1980s. It also discusses the demands of the National Forum of Pro-Rectors of Community and Student Affairs-FONAPRACE and the university student movement in the field of student assistance and structuring of PNAES in the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It reveals the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and student assistance at UFAL, highlighting the differences between restricted and expanded student assistance and makes a comparison between the socioeconomic and cultural profile of UFAL students, traced in 2018 and the scenario that is outlined in the pandemic context, discussing the challenges and the trend of assistance to UFAL university students in this period. Finally, it concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light and also amplified the challenges that students in a situation of socioeconomic vulnerability have already faced and that the trend presented in this period was to expand assistance to restricted university students, with a predominance of the offer of scholarships and financial aid. The present study also draws attention to the importance of expanded student assistance, which meets all the needs of students and not just those of basic survival, being, therefore, understood and materialized as a policy and right, essential for permanence in higher education and for the academic success of the low-income college student.