A recente interiorização da Universidade Pública e desenvolvimento: O caso da implantação do campus da Universidade Federal de Campina Grande em Sumé PB

Abstract

This study is an exploratory research with a descriptive approach, treating the recent process of expansion of the public university, through the deployment of new campuses in regions far from major centers of education and research. We built our analysis around the following question: Which matrices, concepts, guidelines discourses of public universities have been gathered in discourses which emerged during that process? Regarding the theoretical perspective adopted, the present dissertation is based on the main guidelines of public policies on university expansion, in conjunction with the theoretical discussion on its development, focusing on the concepts of university and its historical background and social struggles related to it. It also presents a reflection from the theoretical contribution of authors connected to the discussion on regional development, emphasizing the contribution of the university to that. We argue that the process of endogenization of development, with the emergence of a model that privileges the Government decision processes and mobilize regional and local politicians is subsidizing the universities expansion, establishing new development agendas with the linkage of institutions to a innovation system which is still in an early stage. The locus of the empirical study is the Center for Sustainable Development in Semi-Arid city Sumé - PB, where we interviewed actors from inside and outside the university, including community leaders and common individuals and also political leaders, about the representations they constructed on the newcomer university, being presented perceptions, expectations of immediate development and about the perception of changes attributed to the arrival of the university. The study suggests a reflection on what kind of development is being proposed and about to what extent it is heading toward the conceptions of the various social strata, even taking in account that is not yet possible to establish a clearer picture of the direct and indirect impacts, because the phenomenon we are studying is quite a recent one. From the study it is also possible to discuss the conditions and challenges posed to small towns so that they can provide answers to the demands of the population, emphasizing the lack of connection between the public universities system and the local and regional chains of innovations, what can represent an obstacle to a beginning of a development project in which the University would have clearly defined its role.