UNIVERSITY MODELS AND CURRICULUM THEORIES

effects in the ways in which they are approaches

Abstract

The university models that are conceived today have direct effects on the conformation of higher education curricula, which generates tension in the ways in which they are related: they integrate, exclude each other, approach, and distance themselves, according to the different historical configurations in which they are inserted. This tension results in: i) what is meant by university, which responds to the concept of a modern university, translated by the inseparability between research, teaching and extension, and ii) what is meant by higher education, which prepares to serve the market and which, also, can be affiliated to a marketing conception. Thus, this article aims to observe how a given conception of university is related to a conception of curriculum. The proximities in the ways in which they are constituted showed different effects for the construction of a modern concept of university and for the emergence of a service-providing university (CHAUÍ, 2001). The service-providing university deconstructs the university as a social institution with inseparable teaching, research and extension. In the relationship of approximation between university models and curriculum theories, a public university model was also evidenced, largely restricted to its traditional function of training multipurpose professionals for the job market. This function of the public university is in correlation with the concept of a service-providing university.