Who Participates in Undergraduate Research?

A Study on Socioeconomic Inequalities in Access to Undergraduate Research Opportunities at FFLCH-USP (2010–2022)

Abstract

The article investigates socioeconomic inequalities in access to undergraduate research programs (Iniciação Científica, IC) at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP), focusing on cohorts that entered between 2010 and 2018 and were followed until 2022. To this end, we use administrative data from the university containing socioeconomic information on ten cohorts of incoming students, as well as records of those registered in the database of students linked to IC scholarships. We conducted a descriptive analysis of these data and applied a logistic regression model, taking participation in IC as the dependent variable. Among the main results, we observe that ascribed characteristics traditionally associated with educational inequalities, such as parental income and education, have limited explanatory power for the likelihood of engaging in IC. Other variables related to employment status and sources of financial support during higher education prove more relevant. The study suggests that, although inequalities based on ascribed characteristics in access to higher education persist, the necessity of working becomes the dominant mechanism restricting access to academic opportunities within higher education, such as undergraduate research.