Reflexão crítica sobre a qualidade do ensino superior de arquitetura e urbanismo, a partir de seus indicadores.

Abstract

The present work intends to contribute to a theoretical effort regarding important concepts around the theme of quality in higher education in architecture and urbanism, beyond preconceived ideas and, apparently, widely accepted among us. This is because recent discussions, not only in the professional and academic environment but also in society in general, indicate a supposed drop in education quality in this area which, without proper reflection, finds justification in the expressive increase in the number of courses and vacancies offered in the last decades. We will then seek to investigate the official data related to this scenario of expansion in higher education with a view not only to discuss its reflexes on the quality of teaching of students in architecture and urbanism courses, but also to relate them to the adoption of a political model that, from our point of view, understands education as a simple commodity. We start from the premise that the exponential increase in the number of courses has occurred within a financial and irresponsible logic, and that both the assessment instruments and the higher education quality indicators, which theoretically should be used by the education regulatory entities to evaluate and approve the opening of courses, seem to be insufficient to guarantee the quality of higher education. This fact would eventually facilitate the unrestrained opening of courses that do not have the conditions (nor concerns) to provide the students with nor the minimum knowledge necessary for full professional practice nor the critical and ethical basis for these future professionals. The understanding of teaching (and the universities) as a fundamental agent for the promotion of political emancipation and social expansion illuminates all the work in order to further analyze, in the context of the growth in the offer of places and courses, the existence of political-economic power involved in this process of neoliberalization of education, as well as its impacts on the quality of higher education in architecture and urbanism.