Os limites e as possibilidades do Programa Reuni: um estudo de caso da experiência da UFT

Abstract

From the 2000s there was a significant increase in policies that seek to democratize access, mainly focused on access to federal institutions. In this context arises the program to support restructuring plans and expansion of federal universities (abbreviated as REUNI, in brazilian portuguese). The program was mainly aimed at increasing access to higher education in federal universities and provide a restructuring of curricula, with insertion of interdisciplinary training. Moreover, the program has a set of guidelines and goals that should be pursued and adopted as academic and pedagogical practices. However, it was not a disassociated political previous reforms as aimed to comply with the goals of the 2001 National Education Plan (PNE) - seeking to expand the service of vacancies for at least 40% in the public sector and 30% for young people between 18 and 24 years old. The program was implemented surrounded by two large discussions: First, it gives rise to a casualization of the teaching work and the commodification of education; second, it provides the internalization and the democratization of access and take the public sector to regain the leading role in meeting the demand for higher education in Brazil. Based on this conjuncture, this work has adopted as its main objective, to understand the REUNI program implementation process at the Federal University of Tocantins (UFT) and check from the perspective of managers and are being worked their guidelines. The methodology was qualitative approach with quantitative contributions regarding document analysis and the method adopted was the case study. The actors listened through semi-structured interviews were the University Campus directors of Palmas, Araguaína and Gurupi, who participated in the expansion, 13 coordinators of the courses that were created from the program, dean of undergraduate, vice dean and former rector of the university. The vice-chancellor and former president were heard to understand the process of joining the program in 2007 and its subsequent implementation by 2012. The results show that the REUNI the UFT was a very successful program from the point of view of the expansion, democratization access, meeting demands for new formations for the state, strengthened the degrees that will impact on basic education and engineering that will fulfill an important role in a state still in development and has provided the improvement of teaching staff. However, it has been a troubled program from the aspect of physical infrastructure, especially the laboratory, many guidelines have not received attention, such as the avoidance that has very high rates and was disproved program under the aspect of restructuring. Innovations for it propagated has been very incipient and little progress beyond the theoretical concepts.