The university while a (not)place: reflections on factors of engagement and student placement

Abstract

Higher education institutions, in a scenario of increasingly competitive competitiveness, currently share the same challenge: in addition to attracting new students, how to maintain them? How to engage them in daily life so that they consider the University a place of permanence and not only a (not)place of passage (AUGÉ, 2010, 2012)? We chose the anthropological perspective on places and non-places proposed by Augé to provide reflections on student engagement, as a central dimension in the management of permanence and fidelization in Higher Education. Augé defines the places as spaces that are intended identities, historical and relational. Environments endowed with value, feelings, experience, senses, of links. Non-places, on the other hand, are spaces, usually of circulation, where they do not subscribe lasting relationships and relationships are based on contracts, with prescriptive, imperative, which do not generate links (AUGÉ 2010, 2012). We believe that the strategies of engagement of the HEIs are configured in fundamental dimensions to make the academic environment anthropological places, relational, full of meaning for their students, developing not only their cognitive skills, but generating meaningful and relevant experiences and learning. Such involvement, in turn, positively influence the academic performance of the student (GUERREIRO-CASANOVA, POLYDORO, 2010; ASTIN 1977, 1993), also contributes to the permanence of the student and the consolidation of his trajectory (TINTO, 2000), impacting on institutional sustainability. According to Augé (2012, page 87) "Just as anthropological places create an organic social, non-places create solitary tension." In this perspective, the place is built amid sensitivities and fragments of the subject's identity and / or dimension which is there. A staged dimension means to say that there is a bond between it and the place, a connection that makes it part, a sense of belonging. The purpose of the article is to reflections on student engagement at a confessional university in Rio Grande do Sul as a place. Methodologically, this is a bibliographical study from the reference authors, already mentioned, complemented with documentary analysis.