The introduction of a technological university in Brazil: difficulties and challenges

Abstract

In July 2001, the government of the federal state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, created the Universidade Estadual do Rio Grande do Sul - UERGS, as a public university maintained by the government. The circumstances of federal political life, whose traditional polarisation worsened particularly under the aforementioned government, gave rise to a series of vicissitudes and improvisations during the establishment phase of the new university, seriously jeopardising the original project, which envisaged a technology-based university aimed at innovation and insertion within the productive sector of the federal state. The article analyses the initial vicissitudes and the measures adopted for recuperating, as far as possible, the initial project, as well as attempting to design a framework of possibilities and alternatives to technological higher education within a context that is, if not hostile, then at least indifferent towards such an initiative.