Curriculum and Computer Technologist: tensions and challenges

Abstract

This article aims to question tensions and challenges of diverse curricular visions in the framework of the institutional co-management of the Computer Technologist career, considering its relationship with the labor market. This degree initiates from an agreement signed between ANEP-UTU and Udelar as a short tertiary educational option with a rapid labor entry in an area that presents a high demand for professionals and accelerated processes of change. It is characterized by being a specialized undergraduate proposal focused on the needs of the productive sector, an aspect that has influenced its curricular design and that is articulated with a high-level professional education, delimited by a closed curriculum and strong framing from the Faculty of Engineering. With the emergence of a new educational actor in the figure of UTEC, a collaboration agreement is signed for it to assume the academic management of the degree outside of the capital of the country. This implied the maintenance of the syllabus and the entry into an institutional logic based on flexibility to educate future workers in a context of technical-economic evolution of society. In addition, the degree was incorporated into an educational offer with specific proposals in the area of computing developed under a flexible curriculum concept oriented to match the dynamism of the labor market. In this framework, for the Computer Technologist degree, tensions emerge around the curriculum and its articulation with the future demands of that labor market.