O REUNI e a expansão da Educação Superior: dilemas e perspectivas no campus Binacional-Oiapoque/AP (2000-2022)

Abstract

This study is about “The management of REUNI's Educational Policy in an area of difficult access,” and the object of study is the repercussions of the Support Program for Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities/REUNI on the forms of organization and management of guidelines educational that were established at the Federal University of Amapá/UNIFAP, specifically at the Binacional Campus – Oiapoque, on the Northern border of Brazil. The problem asks: how did the expansion of higher education at UNIFAP occur, with the neoliberal ideals for education and its impact in an area of difficult access, such as the Binacional Campus? The objective is to understand the role of the capitalist State and the way in which this current mode of production affects the implemented social policy, such as in the case of REUNI, created in the Lula’s government, by Decree number 6,096/2007. With a qualitative approach, the Historical- Dialectic Materialism was adopted as an epistemological method, and in the procedure, the Case Study, properly supported by documental and field research. The locus is Oiapoque/AP-Binacional Campus, involving the social actors Manager, Technical-Administrative, Professor and Student, using the Conversation Circle, by email, because the social isolation required during the COVID- 19 pandemic period. The results of the Documental Research point to the total non-fulfillment of the global goals of REUNI, but UNIFAP with the Binational Campus partially fulfilled, providing access to Higher Education, offering new Courses, especially the ones of great prestige as Nursing and Law, for indigenous groups, the local community and adjacent municipalities, whose qualification in the Institution took place through the occupation of positions in the local labor market. As for the empirical point, the emphasis on the data provided by the research participants converge to situations not solved by REUNI in the Binacional Campus, such as: precariousness of the basic infrastructure - rooms, laboratories, equipment, internet access - insufficient for the development of work and academic activities ; the constant transfer of public servants and professors to other campi; the accumulation of functions; the instability of the internet; the fragile offering of student grants; and mainly, lack of financial autonomy. All these factors threaten the public University and compromise the full development of the Teaching, Research and Extension triad. The study concluded that REUNI, despite to contribute to the increase in the expansion of higher education, the REUNI did not meet conditions for a qualified formation on Binacional Campus-Oiapoque/AP