By GUSTAVO NAVES FRANCO*

Public university in crisis: between the emptying of campuses and the urgency of reinventing it as a space for welcoming and transformation

1.

There must be a German or Japanese term that defines this. This feeling that a university professor has (when a class of in-person classes dwindles over the course of a semester, or from one term to the next) that one day he or she might arrive in class and find himself alone, with no students, in a silent building, hearing the sound of cars on the road in the distance.

I'm not talking about numbers and statistics, I'm talking about something more intangible, although the numbers and statistics on university dropouts are there to support this feeling. There must be a new technical name for this, or some acronym. If there isn't one, we'll invent one. It's the fear of the University closing down.

At least I have felt this way. I feel it often, to tell the truth. There are good days, there are positive signs, there are reasons to be happy, but overall the feeling that the end may be just around the corner prevails. And, as every catastrophic prognosis implies a diagnosis of the current reality, the fear of the University ending is an assessment that we cannot stay the way it is, otherwise the road to hell will be paved with good Lattes CVs. It is true that the idea of ​​a university crisis is not new. But our time seems capable of taking to its ultimate consequences what was previously only intuited as a remote possibility for a parallel universe.

So, there is a chance that the university will cease to exist. Not “the good old university as we know it” – that never existed, it was an elitist fantasy – but the university itself, as a place for a congregation of humans around the common goal of transmitting and producing knowledge. Forgive me for being frank, because the subject of emptying the campuses of our public universities is to some extent taboo. But I am starting to write this text motivated by the idea that we need to openly discuss ideas to postpone the end of the university.

Yes, there are excellent initiatives, good projects, promising ideas, and a lot of work involved in achieving the basics. But this has been insufficient, and it is this feeling of insufficiency that I want to address. We, professors, administrators, technicians, the organized student movement, and other actors involved, live with it, as if at any moment the pendulum of our spirit could swing once and for all to the side of resignation. And I believe that, to change this trend, it will take more than just work, efficiency, and good indicators. It will be necessary to rediscover an image that moves us. It will be necessary to romanticize the university.

The university, in fact, is a great example of how impoverishing the argument that we should not romanticize our experiences is. The university is romantic by nature, in many aspects, and to subject it to the aridity of a functional and aseptic language is to abandon something intrinsic to its creation, leading to the sacrifice of the university's place in the collective imagination. The symbolic dimension is as important to the university student as their concrete conditions. The very improvement of material conditions and student assistance must assume that its objective is not to allow the student to attend any place. It is to allow them to go to university.

Remembering that the effort to combat fake news may very well reduce us to an exasperated instance of fact-checking. The need to produce true news should not make us forget that there are other ways of producing truth. There is a poetic truth that is a source of encouragement and life; the right knows this, and offers God, Prosperity, Family, knowing that none of this depends on a literal interpretation. We deconstruct these promises with the reality of numbers and criticism. In this way, we stop creating our own fantasies, because it is the act of fantasizing itself that is suspected of collusion with the forces of evil.

The “good old university” never existed; it was a fantasy, then. Nothing wrong with that. What we lack is a fantasy about what the good new university will be like. All we need to preserve is the idea of ​​the university as a different place, of the university as a special place. And that idea survives, despite the disappointments it may cause.

This shock is also intrinsic to the university experience, which implies a broadening of horizons, but also a certain degree of discomfort and strangeness, including contact with different people, a strange language, and unfamiliar terrain. Entering university is like traveling to a foreign land.

We are therefore faced with the paradox that, after having managed to secure air tickets for groups of the population who have never been able to visit other countries, we claim that the trip is not worth it. It is a lot of hassle and does not give anyone a future. It is true that we need to go beyond the tickets and also offer adequate accommodation and food, so that the experience is not limited to the hassle. But we are moving in this direction – and, even so, we are far from being able to affirm, with renewed conviction, that the university experience is worthwhile, that being a university student is worthwhile.

To achieve this, I believe we will need to use the language of care more frequently, effectively communicating it to the public as a characteristic of university life. We will need to offer Welcoming, Inclusion, and Community, even though we know we are far from ideal. We will need to contrast this with the virtues of conquering individualism and show our recognition of human fragility and vulnerability, of the need for time to develop our skills, and of the place of affection in our social dynamics.

It is necessary to imagine the university as a land that is both transformative and supportive. A place of freedom and change, and at the same time a safe place, a place of protection. This type of ambivalence can only be resolved on an imaginary or metaphorical level, which involves contradictory values ​​and vectors, without the need for a dialectic capable of resolving its contradictions. The question then remains: what metaphor best applies to Brazilian public universities today? What is the university we want to imagine?

2.

Now, I have to admit that part of my motivation here is personal. Today, I also work as a student assistance manager at a public university, and I need to see some meaning in what occupies my routine. As I saw, for example, when we recently published the announcement that a group of students would be exempt from paying for meals at our University Restaurant, for food security reasons. Among the comments from students on the post announcing the measure, there were several in the same tone, saying that, with this progress, the university was becoming “more and more like a mother” to them.

Anyone who works with student support at universities is well aware of this type of manifestation. Just as we are well aware (and how) of the recurring expressions of dissatisfaction, frustration and abandonment on the part of students, especially those who are most vulnerable in socioeconomic terms. They are two sides of the same coin. But it would be hasty to dismiss this behavior as childish, or because it confuses public rights and private affections. It is important to understand what is at stake here, assuming that the idea of ​​the “university as mother” is a problem, both for the university and for mothers. It can also be a solution. In both cases.

For if, on the one hand, there is a difficulty for the university to reformulate its own image and identity in these terms, on the other hand, there is in fact a projection of a collective desire for it to reconfigure itself around values ​​associated with motherhood. And also with materiality. It is no coincidence that these two terms are cognates, that they share the prefix mater. The most fundamental matter on which we depend to survive comes from the maternal body, and it is natural that this association reappears when we receive food, care or protection from other sources.

Naturally, the university's main activities must continue to be the three pillars of teaching, research and extension. But the institution should assume more clearly its role as a provider of the material bases for these purposes to be achieved. The obstacles to this are not only budgetary, but also historical and cultural, since the university environment is traditionally associated with spiritual activities, assuming that bodily needs will somehow be resolved within the family. But this seems to be only the most obvious obstacle in a matter that involves other factors.

For my part, I must say that I feel a certain discomfort with this contradictory and ambivalent image of the maternal university, perhaps above all because of the expectations it creates. But if my assessment is correct, we need to feel increasingly comfortable with this position and these expectations, and also be careful that they do not become so excessive that they nullify all our efforts. And here comes into play a less obvious but decisive factor that can condemn us to the feeling of eternal insufficiency: the problem of everything we expect from the figures who assume the role of mother in our society.

We are facing a social impasse generated by the idea that 'there is only one mother', the gold standard of a classist and racist imaginary developed since the 19th century in Europe. This is what psychoanalyst Vera Iaconelli denounces in her Antimaternalist Manifesto: psychoanalysis and the politics of reproduction (Zahar). She argues that the nurturing mother, who is entirely responsible for caring for the new generations, is a collapsed and unsustainable construction. And, by recovering the notion of the 'good enough environment' of pediatrician D.W. Winnicott (instead of the famous 'good enough mother', or good enough), Vera Iaconelli reminds us that the task of care needs to be shared by a group of community agents (as we know, "it takes a village to care for a child"), since the primary maternal concern itself would not be a phenomenon reserved for mothers.

This reflection has two important implications when viewed from the perspective of higher education. The first, simpler and more obvious, is that universities need to integrate our social efforts to support Brazilian families in caring for the new generations. Although the students we receive are generally young adults, they are still, and increasingly, the children of a 50-year-old black woman who works informally and who, in addition to being happy to have her child in college, would be reasonably satisfied with the idea of ​​him continuing his studies with two meals a day guaranteed.

The important detail here is that, for this woman, the separation between the private and public spheres, which underpins the questioning of intersections between family and political values, never existed. The world outside, public, political, historical, has always been part of her subjective and family constitution, through marks of inequality and violence from which her home has never been immune; quite the opposite. Thus, when her daughter or son gains access to a facet of the state world that gives them access to rights and benefits, it will seem very natural and appropriate to her to share the task of caring for the university.

The other conclusion, which must accompany the first, is that the university cannot and should not take on the idealized functions attributed to the maternal figure in the restrictive family setting. To do so would implode its capacity to contribute to the care environment, making all its efforts subject to frustration. When we talk about a university that incorporates maternal values ​​into its identity, we need to know what kind of motherhood we are talking about. There is a connection here: the values ​​to which the university should associate its image are precisely the community values ​​of motherhood exercised by mothers from the outskirts of the city.

So, when a student says that the university is becoming a mother figure for him, this does not necessarily mean that he is trying to fill a void. It means that he is adding the university to a set of figures that include his own mother, who, clearly, cannot be alone in this task. Knowing how to count on the help of strangers is a survival strategy that accompanies the fragility of the species. It is also a value that prevents the fraying of our network of bonds in atomized family units, and that the university needs to take upon itself, as part of its institutional mission.

3.

Some premises for the university to move forward towards reconfiguring its identity as a public institution, based on this value, are quite practical. They involve, above all, strengthening student assistance policies, through scholarships and grants, and also investing in structural policies, such as University Restaurants and Student Housing. However, given the budgetary limitations, how can we convince the other stakeholders that the available resources should increasingly be used for this purpose, and not for others? Basically, by saying that this is what we are already doing. We just don't do enough.

And remembering that, at first, the change experienced in Brazilian public higher education in this century was focused on the issue of access. From then on, scholarships and assistance equipment began to emerge, as illustrated by Jefferson Tenório in Where They Come From, his most recent novel (Cia. Das Letras). Housing, food and transportation have entered the universities’ radar as the body’s needs for the achievements of the spirit. This is the great change we have experienced in terms of financing the university experience – but a change, to a large extent, silent and ashamed of its absences.

During this period, the National Student Assistance Plan (PNAES) was created and developed until it took the form of Law 14.914 on July 3, 2024. Through ups and downs, its funding reached the billion mark – but one billion is clearly insufficient for the size of the challenge. We need to reverse this problem, otherwise the transformation will have been at the same time grand and mediocre, decisive and inconsequential. A great journey begins with the first steps, but the problem now is that we are halfway there, and there are people paralyzed by fear that it was all in vain.

We need to continue on this path. Even though the ideal is far away, it is important to make progress day by day, even if it is only a small amount. This is what prevents us from entering despair mode, jeopardizing all the achievements of the last two decades. At the same time, consistent progress would give us the confidence to improve communication about the PNAES, taking advantage of its potential as a mark of the government's performance in the lives of the population. “I am a son of the PNAES” is a phrase that, said with due recognition and pride, has a lot to say about the academic and professional trajectory of many graduates of our network.

And, as the Federal Court of Auditors noted in ruling 2281/2024, which analyzed this very topic, student assistance provided by universities lacks more effective communication. The population that would be most interested in knowing about the availability of scholarships and incentives aimed at continuing in higher education is often unaware of these incentives. This is partly due to deficiencies in communication by public entities in general. But it also happens because universities live with the feeling that we offer very little.

We need to address this on both ends – the objective and the subjective. We need more resources, but we also need to understand that we are not facing an absolutely impossible, unsustainable and collapsed task. I understand that alarmist signals are given in order to guarantee the minimum, but I also realize that these gestures are not necessarily strategic, but rather genuine movements of frustration and disbelief.

We cannot succumb to these feelings, and not only because of our students, but because of the Brazilian public university itself – a phenomenon full of historical successes, which today needs student assistance not only to continue its achievements, but also to reinvent itself as a whole, around qualities such as care and acceptance.

My bet is that this adjustment would find resonance in society. For if, on the one hand, maternal virtues are denied by the heroic illusions of self-sufficiency of ultraliberalism, on the other hand, there are large contingents of people capable of recognizing their own vulnerability and seeking support wherever they can find it. This does not imply that they are devoid of strength or merit to support themselves. Often, it is exactly the opposite: along with the recognition of our limitations comes the time needed for the maturation of our projects, the chance of a more consistent success in the long term.

Ultraliberalism is not interested in people having this kind of time, in having the chance to acquire this autonomy. It is not interested in the university, as an incubator of vocations and talents, being able to offer these people, especially these young people, material and symbolic support to continue their studies. Time spent at university will never be wasted time, because it will have been time invested in experience, in the maturation of personality, which are atrophied by premature entry into the fantasy world of entrepreneurship.

Meanwhile, in our apocalyptic nightmares, we are entering a vicious circle: the feeling of insufficiency generates apathy, which in turn leads to the risk of becoming even more insufficent. We need to build a virtuous cycle, based on confidence in our ability to imagine and fulfill a new destiny, and on the desire to rebuild the perception of the university in the eyes of public opinion. Today, this involves financing the most basic and corporeal aspects of the academic experience, since student assistance is still largely a novelty, which can be mobilized in various ways to reconfigure our institutional identities.

The fear of the university ending, finally, needs to be replaced by the courage to transform the university. Curiously, however, in the boldness of this epithet lies a form of modesty. The university that emerges from this needs to be simple and effective in fulfilling its political role, renouncing, on the one hand, old ambitions about what the university is or should be, and on the other hand, assuming new images around which it can define itself.

These images may be contradictory, ambivalent, and insufficient, as are, for example, our mothers, our fathers, and all the other people who raised us. The important thing is that they are living images, charged with a new and at the same time ancient passion: that of the joint effort of an entire community for the survival and success of our children.

*Gustavo Naves Franco é Professor at the Department of Letters and Vice-Rector of Student Affairs at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).