A Universidade flexível: reestruturação e expansão no Bacharelado em Tecnologia da Informação na UFRN

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze the processes of restructuring and expansion of the “Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte” (UFRN). These processes have been intensified by the “Programa de Apoio a Planos de Reestruturação e Expansão das Universidades Federais” (REUNI), and its materialization in the "Bacharelado em Tecnologia da Informação" (BTI), specifically, in the expansion of the offer and in the academic-curricular flexibility of this interdisciplinary grade in the "Instituto Metrópole Digital" (IMD). To undertake this research I have endorsed a historical-dialectical approach, committed to a critical and transformative reflection. Among the technical procedures used in this investigation are the literature review, the documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with the Pedagogical Coordinators (BTI / IMD). The bibliographic review allowed me to deepen important concepts on the subject of this thesis, prioritizing contents referring to the studies related to the traditional university models and the university reform, the restructuring and expansion of the Brazilian federal universities, and the reconfiguration of the UFRN in the last decades. The documentary analysis considered those key international and national guidelines that influenced the policies of Brazilian higher education, in that the use of semi-structured interviews revealed the contradictions of the institutional reality underlying the discourse of the Pedagogical Coordinators (BTI/IMD). This research indicates that, in what concerns the restructuring and expansion of the UFRN, the adhesion to the REUNI caused various institutional changes related to a view of the organized management as based on the agreement of goals, indicators of performance, and of evaluation linked to the transfer of resources. To achieve the ambitious goals of the REUNI (2008/2012), agreed for the five years of validity of the program, it was essential an institutional restructuring that allowed several actions such as the expansion of the vacancies, the creation of new courses (night, distance, interdisciplinary bachelors), and a significant increase in the student-teacher ratio, evidencing the rationalization of human resources and the existing physical structure. In this context, the new training model was implemented in cycles of three years, allowing the formation of a "generalist bachelor" that made its holders able to enter the labour market, complement their professional training, or make a post-graduation (2nd and 3rd cycles). This model of interdisciplinary graduation, adopted in the "Bacharelado em Tecnologia da Informação" (IMD/ 2012), has entailed a resignification of the current university model by intensifying the restructuring and expansion strategies by means of the academiccurricular flexibility, defending the discourse of digital inclusion and the culture of entrepreneurship for the construction of a technological pole that links, in the academic spaces of the UFRN, the public and private sectors.