Origem social e escolha pelo curso de graduação: inferências a partir de dados do ENADE

In this work, we analyzed data from 861 thousand students who took the National Student Performance Exam between 2016 and 2018, concerning the reasons that lead them to choose an undergraduate course. We performed statistical analyses and adopted Bourdieu’s theory on social and school inequalities in order to interpret our results. We identified market insertion and distance-learning courses as reasons for the lower classes; the search for courses with low competition, but socially valued, in the middle classes; and the choice due to family influence or vocation in the upper classes. These results confirm the differences and inequalities of social classes in the Brazilian university system.