Racionalidade instrumental, competitividade e individualismo de estudantes universitários

Abstract

This study aimed to understand the meaning and motivation that exist in student participation in various extracurricular activities in public universities, particularly in undergraduate research and student organizations. The degree course chosen for this research was Electrical Engineering at Unicamp. A questionnaire was used, which was answered by 111 students, and in a second step, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 of these students. The topics covered in the interviews were: life trajectory; education in public universities; undergraduate research and student movements, focusing on the action of the Centro Acadêmico (CA) and the Diretório Central dos Estudantes (DCE). Other issues were a result of these themes, like the academic performance coefficient and the práticas in other student organizations, like Empresa Júnior, Atlética, Trote da Cidadania, Mercado de Trabalho em Engenharia and Solidare. The discussed analysis categories were: formative trajectory and life project; the meaning of the public university and the confluences with the life project; and the meaning of the student movement and different interpretations of student participation. The analysis was based on concepts of alienation, surplus-value, use-value and exchange-value and relations of production, proposed by Marx, and of alienation, estrangement, suspension, subjectivity, intentionality, teleological pose, possibility and alternative, proposed by Lukács. From the reports of students, one could note the competitiveness and individualism found at the university life, always in the midst of many contradictions. It is concluded that the meaning attributed to student participation in extracurricular activities, permeated by instrumental rationality of this universiy life, rests predominantly on pragmatism and utilitarianism, despite the occasional moments of resistance.