The Ford Foundation Fellowships Program: 12 years of operation in Brazil

Abstract The goal of this study is to evaluate the first affirmative action initiative developed for graduate students in Brazil, which was called The International Scholarship Program of the Ford Foundation (IFP). The present quantitative evaluation is based on the description of its beneficiary students. The IFP provided postgraduate scholarships for candidates from black, brown and indigenous populations, preferably from Brazil’s North, Northeast and Central-West regions. Based on data from IFP’s records and from the Lattes Platform, we identified the 343 fellows and conducted their scientometric description. The contribution of this study consists in summarizing information about the program’s actual impact on the Brazilian context, as well as its importance to the academic trajectories of its beneficiaries.