The community university in its formative dimension

challenges in the face of the crisis scenario

Abstract

This text aims to raise questions for discussion regarding the current crisis scenario faced by community university institutions. To achieve this, it presents two lines of reflection: the first one retrieves the historical and circumstantial context in which most of these institutions emerged, emphasizing the formative dimension expressed in democratic self-management; the second one addresses knowledge management, which, in the case of academic institutions, is expected to be formative by preserving a critical and reflective sense of the teaching-learning processes, based on the very reasons that confer legitimacy to knowledge. Based on these reflections, the text suggests an assessment of the current crisis of community institutions considering a possible mismatch in relation to both the conditions and assumptions that gave rise to them, as well as the assumptions of knowledge management based on broad critical discussability, as expected from knowledge disseminated in the academic sphere.