Contesting prophecies: Path of university students of popular origin

This paper presents results of research carried out on young university students regularly enrolled at Sergipe Federal University (UFS), the only public university of the State. These young students come from popular segments of society who take part in the Programa Conex es de Saberes [Knowledge Connection Programme], which carries out initiatives destined to encourage these kinds of students to go on to higher education identifying their knowledge and main difficulties in remaining in the federal universities in the perspective of overcoming the dichotomy between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge. The schooling of most of these youths is continually submitted to “tension and discontinuity”. Despite scarcity of research one can observe in Brazil a growing number of youths that escape the vicious circle of poverty and low amount of schooling and who make it to public university. How do some youths escape their “destiny” of marginality and exclusion which theses sectors of society are usually “sentenced” to, and arrive at public higher education? To answer these questions we opted for a qualitative methodology placing the statements of these youths at the centre of the analysis.