Cooperação e integração regional na perspectiva Sul-Sul: contribuições à internacionalização da educação superior

Abstract

This Professional Master's research was developed in the Policies and Management line of Basic and Higher Education, in the Graduate Program in Public Policies and Educational Management, of the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM, RS), and it refers to the academic cooperation, from the perspective of internationalization, as one of the pillars capable of boosting South-South cooperation. The problem arises from the daily tensions that lead to the need to recognize how the implementation and advancement of academic cooperation between border HEIs in Brazil and Uruguay occurs. The objective is to analyze the international cooperation, in the South-South perspective, between UNIPAMPA (Campus Santana do Livramento) and Udelar (Centro Universitário de Rivera), with a view to presenting contributions aimed at achieving and strengthening solidarity and inclusive regional integration. The contextualization of the theme starts from the rescue of educational frameworks emanated by international organizations and topics of national legislation, which sediment education as a human right. The proposal legitimizes the importance of innovating and qualifying the processes inherent in the management of higher education, considering the demands of public policies and emerging contexts. The research methodology, from the perspective applied and implicated to the researcher's context of action, is based on a qualitative case study, being used as sources of evidence: documents, file records, online questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The recognition of the field of study began with the research of the state of knowledge that pointed out the themes and literature needed to deepen the reflection and design applied research and data construction. The literature review privileged a multidisciplinary dialogue where the first axis seeks to recognize the nuances of coloniality, globalization and South-South cooperation and the impact on the internationalization of higher education. The second axis provides an overview of the border integration. The third axis prioritizes the concepts inherent in understanding why and for whom the internationalization of higher education is important. The fourth axis aims to understand how to internationalize, for this research was based on internationalization management strategies. The fifth and sixth axes illustrate the main policies directed to the internationalization of higher education in Brazil and Uruguay. The construction and interpretation of data is organized in such a way as to correlate the theoretical references to the constructed data, to respond to specific objectives through content analysis. From this perspective, the perceptions of UNIPAMPA managers and course coordinators and Udelar professionals about cooperation, the projects developed, the influencing factors and the strategies considered viable to cooperation are analyzed. Aligned with international educational frameworks, legislation and the perspective of institutional norms, confronted with the theoretical framework, the educational product “Borders 2030” International Cooperation Program is formed, aimed at building a shared agenda for innovative models in higher education. It is considered that the scenario of the internationalization of higher education, in the context of South-South cooperation, is in constant motion and does not find a unified echo due to the economic asymmetries between countries. The panorama points to the conclusion that the challenge of internationalization of these frontier HEIs involves the improvement of local relations, the appreciation of multicultures, linguistic aspects and citizen formation as drivers for sustainable regional and local development.