Participation of the community in institutional self-evaluation in universities of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay: the cases of UFFS, UNE, UNNE and UTFPR

Abstract

Institutional evaluation in universities, and within this universe, self-assessment and defense of community participation in the processes, have been developing with greater force in the last three decades, having gained important contours and forms with the public policies aimed at level education higher. In this sense, we analyze in this article the participation of the community in the institutional self-assessment carried out in public universities of Argentina (UNNE), Brazil (UFFS, UTFPR) and Paraguay (UNE). The theoretical basis was based on a review of the specialized bibliography of the theme; the methodological resources used are the comparative study, the documentary research and the content analysis, with quantitative and qualitative approaches. We highlight the contradiction between the constant advances in theories, texts of norms and institutional documents, which defends and encourages community participation in institutional self-assessment processes in universities, and, in a different way, the movement operated by neoliberal politics, especially on public universities , since in promoting the managerialist management model and the conception of objectivist evaluation in its environment, it values the concentration of the strategic decision spaces and the instrumentalization of community participation, reflecting in its weakening. These traits are identified in the analyzes of the data and information of the institutional self-assessment processes, in the four universities surveyed. In this way, we point out that there is much to be re-evaluated, reflected and corrected in the self-assessment processes studied, particularly with regard to the greater participation of the community in its elaboration, planning, execution, that is, in its effective involvement in the construction of the whole of the action evaluation.