INTRODUCTION

This article was inspired by research that addressed the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education from the perspective of university management. We seek to understand the relationship between the legal imperatives of inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education and how contemporary postulates about inclusion in the university influence managers in the definition of institutional policies. We adopt a post-structuralist perspective on research, which warns us to “refrain from theoretical approaches that prioritize the explanatory and prescriptive character of knowledge to take approaches that stimulate denaturalization and problematization of the things we learn to take as given” (^{MEYER; PARAÍSO, 2014}, p. 59).

We live in times of expansion of access of students with disabilities to institutions of higher education (IHEs), and several studies have been published on the subject. We searched the databases of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and on the site of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education (ANPEd), for the period from 2008 to 2014, and found studies that highlight inclusion in higher education from the perspective of students with disabilities, professors, families and others, which address inclusive education policies, as well as official statistics, etc., which explain the increase in enrollment. However, we did not find studies that mention the complexity of the inclusion process from the perspective of university managers. In this venture, the need arises to confront architectural, attitudinal, programmatic, instrumental, and communicational barriers, which, over the course of time, have been built up, and even considered natural.

We have found that truths about people with disabilities are transient. If in antiquity and the medieval period such people were exterminated, hidden, and ignored, and in modernity they have been categorized and classified, in contemporary times they are considered to have rights, including the right to difference. However, the debate about respect or recognition of differences represents a paradox in the face of discourses of hatred and prejudice that have been disseminated in society with regard to distinct identities. When we affirm an identity or mark a difference, we are dealing with power relations and, in this sense, Silva warns that,

[…] before tolerating, respecting, and admitting difference, one must explain how it is actively produced. A strategy that simply admits and acknowledges the fact of diversity becomes incapable of providing the tools to question precisely the mechanisms and institutions that fix people in certain cultural identities, and that separate them through cultural difference (2014, p. 100).

When we mention aspects of historical treatments, we do not do so with the ingenuity of believing that there has been only one way to treat people with disabilities throughout history. We well know that linear and generalizing history is an invention of those who have the power to narrate it. For Foucault, truths are produced in the course of history, permeated by power relations. Societies have their own regime of truth, depending on the context of certain epochs. For Foucault.

Truth is of this world; it is produced in it by multiple constraints, and produces regulated effects of power in it. Each society has its regime of truth and its ‘general politics’ of truth, that is, the types of discourse that it welcomes and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances that allow us to distinguish true statements from false, the way one sanctions oneself and others; the techniques and procedures that are valued for the attainment of truth, the status of those who have the burden of saying what works as true (^{FOUCAULT, 2011}, p. 12).

In contemporary times, inclusion is permeated by narratives based on an unquestionable and little problematized viewpoint, in which advances in the democratization and expansion of university access are represented by promising statistical figures. In this context, we challenge ourselves to emphasize certain truths put forward, such as reflection on the processes that constitute the network of threads that weaves the context of the inclusion of students with disabilities in the university. For ^{Veiga-Neto (2007}, p. 23),

All of us who today practice teaching or research in education have had an intellectual and professional formation in the Enlightenment. One of the consequences of this is that we may not be sufficiently able to face, even in private life, the rapid and profound cultural, social, economic, and political changes in which we find ourselves immersed.

In this manner, inclusion policies function as political provisions in the service of population security, and the procedures for controlling and delimiting discourses generate subjectivation effects. We appeal to Foucauldian notions through Revel, who defines subjectivation as,

[…] a process by which one obtains the constitution of a subject, or, more precisely, of a subjectivity. The ‘modes of subjectivation’ or ‘processes of subjectivation’ of the human being correspond, in reality, to two types of analysis: on the one hand, the modes of objectification that transform human beings into subjects—which means that there are only objectified subjects and that modes of subjectivation are, in this sense, practices of objectification; on the other hand, the manner in which the relationship with oneself, by means of a certain number of techniques, allows one to constitute oneself as a subject of one’s own existence (^{REVEL, 2005}, p. 82).

Despite the transformations undergone by higher education, expansion has not effectively democratized this level of education, which historically evidences marks of selection and exclusion. Admission, especially in private IHEs, is facilitated by the increase in the number of places available for this level of education in recent years. However, many high school age students are still excluded, irrespective of whether or not they have disabilities. Others enter, but do not complete the courses of study.

The access, permanence, and learning of students with disabilities are strengthened by policies of inclusion and accessibility that go beyond legal determinations, and even the good will or possibilities of managers of IHEs.

We agree with ^{Pieczkowski and Naujorks (2014}, p. 130) when they assert that “the term ‘inclusion’ has been used indiscriminately, adopted as a passing fad, in virtually every section of society, as a self-justifying and self-evident need.” However, the backstage of this scenario can reveal perversities.

THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL PATHWAY

We begin this topic with a reference to Costa, who states that,

The originality of the research lies in the originality of the view. Objects in the world are not waiting for someone to come and study them. To conduct research on an object, it is necessary that an inquiring mind, equipped with a fecund theoretical apparatus, problematize something to constitute it as an object of investigation. The view invents the object and enables interrogation about it. (^{COSTA, 2007}, p. 148).

In other words, the choice of theoretical lenses permeates all the stages of research, from the manner of asking to conceptualizing the object of research, to analyzing empirical materialities, to the very identity of research.

Meyer and Paraíso emphasize that the methodology of research construction is considered as “a certain manner of asking, questioning, formulating questions, and constructing research problems, which is connected to a set of information gathering procedures […]” (^{MEYER; PARAÍSO, 2014}, p. 18).

To write this text, we have chosen one of the thematic clusters of research that constitutes the master’s thesis in which the authors of this article are involved, either as author or as advisor. In addition, we have expanded the text with considerations that are not present in the thesis, which discuss how the access of students with disabilities in higher education reverberates in university management practices with regard to the rights of this group. In other words, the article addresses the perception of university administrators regarding the increased enrollment of students with disabilities in the university and the conditions of observance to inclusion policies, which are elements that evaluate and regulate courses of study and institutions.

Eight university managers were interviewed who were working in four IHEs in the municipality of Chapecó: one federal public university, one state public university, one community college, and one private university. Chapecó is located in the west of the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina and has approximately two hundred and ten thousand (210,000) inhabitants. In addition, it has 25 IHEs (community, public or private), which offer face-to-face and/or distance education.

The criteria for selection in the IHEs were as follows: a) location in the city of Chapecó; b) belonging to one of the different administrative categories mentioned; and c) being among the institutions with the highest number of students enrolled, including students with disabilities.

In Table 1 below, we show some characteristics of the institutions surveyed.

The criterion for defining the managers interviewed was established by the position held in the institution, as academic director, administrative director, or equivalent. They are professionals who occupied management positions during the research period, who have responsibilities related to actions of accessibility and inclusion of students with disabilities in universities. The name of the position is in accordance with the organization and hierarchical structure of each institution surveyed.

The interviews occurred with the managers who worked on a university campus in the municipality of Chapecó; however, the description and data on the students are general information from each institution. Due to the specificity of university management activities, this characterization extends to the entire structure of the university, provided the accessibility sectors meet the demands of all campuses. The managers work with a unique structure of financial resources, personnel, legal obligations, and institutional rules.

In possession of the Terms of Agreement, signed by those responsible for the institutions involved in the study, and subsequently with the approval of the research project by the Ethics Committee on Research Involving Human Beings¹, we approached the research subjects, who signed the Terms of Informed Consent. Participation of the research subjects occurred through narrative interviews, recorded and subsequently transcribed.

For ^{Andrade (2014}, p. 175), the narrative interview “[…] offers a possibility of resignified investigation in the field of post-structuralist research from an ethnographic perspective.” In addition, the author states that “[…] narratives are constituted from the connection between discourses that network and overlap, that add up, or even that differ or temporize” (^{ANDRADE, 2014}, p. 181).

The interviews followed a script, with topics related to the demands derived from the presence of students with disabilities in the IHE; to the perception about the movements generated by the inclusion of students with disabilities in the researched universities; rules on the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education and how they reverberate in institutional policies; to the challenges faced by university management in consolidating inclusive policies for students with disabilities in the university (economic, personnel training, architectural accessibility, attitudinal, communication-related, methodological, digital) provided in the ministerial instrument for accreditation or institutional re-accreditation, and evaluation for the recognition or renewal of recognition of undergraduate courses of study.

The narratives were grouped thematically, considering the discursive recurrences that emerged from the careful reading of the generated material, which was examined from the perspective of discourse analysis, supported by Foucauldian references. In this perspective, the analysis is not intended to work with language as an abstract system, but with its role in the production of meanings or effects. “[…] it is a question of analyzing why it is said in that manner, at a given time and in a given context, asking about the ‘conditions of existence’ of the discourse” (^{SALES, 2014}, p. 127). According to Foucault,

[…] the production of discourse is, at the same time, controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a number of procedures whose function is to conjure its powers and dangers, to dominate its random events, to avoid its heavy and fearsome materiality (^{FOUCAULT, 2009}, p. 8-9).

The author warns us to observe that discourse is not a neutral and transparent element, but rather an element of control and power, because “the prohibitions that affect it soon reveal its connection with desire and power” (^{FOUCAULT, 2009}, p. 10). It is a manner of thinking and talking about things in a historical/contextual discourse, supported by a system of institutions that impose what should and should not be said and accepted.

For Revel, “Discourse generally designates a set of statements that may belong to different fields, but which nevertheless obey common rules of operation” (^{REVEL, 2005}, p. 37) that reveal an “order of discourse,” that is, the discourse recognized in a given period, which puts into operation the production of knowledge. They are discursive provisions that support practices, echoes of the connection between knowledge and power.

^{Fischer (2007}) points out that we need to assume that we are not only passing on the present problems in all areas, but also the many possibilities we have to go beyond common sense, “[…] to produce in ourselves and from of our own forms of existence, for much more than the dominant logics propose to us […]” (^{FISCHER, 2007}, p. 51). The author’s proposal is not to seek truths, but to question, to contextualize these truths, or to doubt the truths of our time, understanding that we are subjectivated. It is important to recognize that we are immersed in problems and possibilities, and we speak from them.

This perspective on educational research is based on qualitative aspects, in which the researcher is conceived as an integral part of the process of knowledge construction. According to Fischer, for Foucault,

There is nothing behind the curtains or under the floor that we step on. There are statements and relationships that the discourse itself puts into operation. To analyze the discourse would be to give an account precisely of this: of historical relations, of very concrete practices, which are ‘alive’ in the discourses (^{FISCHER, 2001}, p. 198-199).

Thus, we emphasize what processes and management strategies are put into operation in the production of a particular manner of managing the university for inclusion, and how they occur. Tension is part of the perception of inclusion, supported by an unquestioned and unqualified normative vision, in which advances in democratization and expansion of university access are represented by promising statistical figures.

LEGAL PROVISIONS ON INCLUSION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Starting with this topic, we highlight the concept of persons with disabilities present in Law 13.146/15, which, in its Article 2, states, “A person with a disability is considered to be a person with a long-term, intellectual or sensorial impediment, which, in interaction with one or more barriers, can obstruct their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with other people” (^{BRASIL, 2015c}). The wording reproduces Article 1 of the New York Convention, promulgated in Brazil through Decree 6.949, dated August 25, 2009, and enshrined in the country as a Constitutional Amendment, in accordance with Article 5, paragraph 3 of the Federal Constitution (^{BRASIL, 1988}). Thus, the disability no longer resides in the individual; rather, it is considered in the social context that precarious accessibility produces limitations. It is in this scenario that universities need to adhere to the proposal of inclusion.

The most recent Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities deals in detail with the rights of this group. Based on the principle of equality and the concept that disability is also determined by the existing barriers in environments, it specifies the treatment related to the accessibility of women and children; the right to life; access to justice, health, work, and education, among other specific demands. The text of the convention has as its goal “[…] to adapt legislation and administrative practices, to ensure that disability is just one more characteristic of human diversity” (^{BRASIL, 2012}, p. 11).

The perception that the limiting factor is in the environment, and that it is collective actions and public policies that must affect the equalization of opportunities, is reflected in the educational policies of access of people with disabilities to Brazilian universities, and implies the accountability of their managers. With regard to the interrelationship of the objectives and understanding of documents approved by international organizations, the text of the convention is the last and most recent document. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a more comprehensive document because it relates disability to vulnerability, when added to situations that may aggravate the social risks of this group. It therefore spells out the commitment of States to ensure the full exercise of all rights for this group and “[…] take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination based on disability” (^{BRASIL, 2012}, p. 29).

In Article 24 of the aforementioned document, the text presents the responsibility of States to implement the right to education without discrimination, with equal opportunities at all levels of education. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to provide adaptations according to individual needs, required support for students, and academic and social development, to reach the goal of full inclusion. In item 5 of the same article, higher education is mentioned in a specific manner:

Participating States shall ensure that persons with disabilities can have access to higher education in general, vocational training in accordance with their vocation, adult education and continuing education, without discrimination and on equal terms. To this end, participating States shall ensure the provision of reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities […] (^{BRASIL, 2012}).

The discourse of education as a “right of all,” written, rewritten, and ratified, in the sense that formal institutions of education must attend to all who arrive, becomes more incisive and a process of acceptance in the system of people with deficiency, with a movement of search and recuperation of young people who are outside the system. Explicit responsibility is given to the manager, in the sense of assuming a commitment to include and to take actions to involve the entire academic community in this purpose.

Educational legislation is directing the actions for inclusion; the imperative of the norm is explicit in Article 8 of Law 7.853/89, which specifies that it constitutes a crime punishable by imprisonment for two (2) to five (5) years and a fine: I - “refuse, charge additional amounts, suspend, procrastinate, cancel, or terminate student enrollment in an educational establishment of any public or private course of study or degree program, because of their disability.” The normative recurrence of inclusion built on the perspective of an unquestionable right also gained strength through coercion, control, punishment, and evaluation. The wording of this article was recently ratified by Law No. 13.146, of 2015, known as the Statute of the Person with Disabilities.

We emphasize that the first legal initiatives to address the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education date back a little more than twenty (20) years, and were put forward subtly, gaining increasing expressiveness with the passage of time.

Edict No. 1.793, of December 1994, was one of the first initiatives of the Ministry of State of Education and Sport, recommending, in its Article 1, the inclusion of the discipline “educational, ethical, and political aspects of the normalization and integration of the person with special needs,” as a priority in the courses of study of Pedagogy and Psychology, and in all the degree programs.

The Edict was followed by Circular Notice No. 277/MEC/GM, dated May 1996, through which the Ministry of Education suggested to the presidents of IHEs an effort to facilitate access for people with disabilities. The text proposes actions conducive to the process of enrollment in higher education, especially in the university entrance examination, and orients the IHEs to promote educational services and adjustments in the infrastructure, as well as to provide training of human resources.

With regard to legal regulations, we also highlight Administrative Rule MEC/GM No. 3.284, dated November 7, 2003, which “provides for the accessibility requirements of persons with disabilities, to instruct the processes of authorization and recognition of courses of study and accreditation of institutions.”

Countless norms may be added to these; we do not intend to exhaust them in this text. We may cite only a few more that have impacted in the context of higher education, such as Decree-Law No. 5.296/04, which establishes basic standards and criteria for promoting the accessibility of persons with disabilities or with reduced mobility; of Decree-Law No. 5.626/05, which, in Article 3, includes the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) as a compulsory subject in teacher training, (undergraduate, Pedagogy and Special Education) and makes it optional for students of other courses of study of higher education and professional education. Thus, although the students’ study of LIBRAS is optional, the IHE is obliged to include this component in undergraduate curricula. This is an item present in the evaluation instruments for the recognition or renewal of recognition of the courses of study and accreditation or re-accreditation of the IHE. Several aspects related to inclusion and accessibility are present in the External Institutional Evaluation Instruments, which guide the process of accreditation. These requirements are more visible in the Instrument for Evaluation of Undergraduate and Distance Courses, published (updated) in August 2015 by the Ministry of Education (^{BRASIL, INEP, 2015b}), which presents changes in legal and regulatory requirements. These requirements are regulatory and mandatory. The instrument presents 17 legal/normative provisions, three of them related to inclusion/accessibility of people with disabilities or reduced mobility and with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Most recently, the Ministry of Education/INEP has published a new version of the Evaluation Instrument for Classroom and Distance Undergraduate Courses (^{BRASIL/INEP, 2017}) for processes of recognition and renewal of recognition. The glossary of this instrument, as well as the previous one, includes the concept of accessibility, transcribed in Law 13.146/2015 - Article 3, item I, in the following terms:

Possibility and condition of access for use, with safety and autonomy, of spaces, furniture, urban equipment, buildings, transportation, information and communication, including their systems and technologies, as well as other services and facilities open to the public, for public use or private for collective use, both in urban and rural areas, by people with disabilities or reduced mobility (^{BRASIL/INEP, 2017}, p. 43).

Following the instrument, the concepts of Attitudinal Accessibility, Communication Accessibility, Digital Accessibility, Instrumental Accessibility, and Methodological Accessibility are explained. There is also present the concept of Specialized Educational Assistance (AEE) as “Special education service that identifies, elaborates, and organizes pedagogical and accessibility resources that eliminate barriers to full participation of students, considering their specific needs” (^{BRASIL/INEP, 2017}, p. 44).

Law No. 13.409, dated December 28, 2016, provides for the reservation of vacancies for persons with disabilities in the medium and higher-level technical courses of study of the federal educational institutions. In Article 3, it is stated that,

In each federal institution of higher education, the vacancies referred to in Article 1 ^o of this law will be filled, by course of study and shift, by self-declared blacks, light brown-skinned people, and indigenous people, and by persons with disabilities, according to the legislation, in proportion to the total number of places at least equal to the respective proportion of blacks, light brown-skinned people, indigenous people, and people with disabilities in the population of the federal unit where the institution is located, according to the latest census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) (^{BRASIL, 2016}).

To highlight some of the legal provisions that address the inclusion of students with deficiency in higher education, we refer to ^{Silva, Cymrot, and D’Antino (2012}, p. 669), with regard to the recognition of advances in the legal area. The authors acknowledge the merits of such provisions; however, they believe that they “[…] do not themselves alter social reality, characterized by divergent positions and contradictory practices within self-appointed ‘inclusive’ educational institutions.” For the authors,

The debate is grounded in the ongoing educational policies, and it is up to the universities to expand their production and dissemination of knowledge, informing the community about their practices with undergraduates with disabilities who have access to it. If, by virtue of the legislation, the architectural barriers have been gradually confronted, it is necessary to investigate possible barriers of another nature experienced by the college, hindering the permanence of the undergraduates, thus explaining the role played by them in the process of university inclusion of the very small proportion of undergraduates with disabilities who have reached higher education after having overcome the selectivity of basic education (^{SILVA; CYMROT; D’ANTINO, 2012}, p. 669).

Citing these documents helps us understand how inclusion has been designed socially and educationally in the contemporary world. The framework of international norms is reflected in Brazil’s internal norms, and reverberates in changes that imply actions through governmental policies and the management of educational institutions, to call and to welcome those who are outside the scholastic system. However, inclusion in a generic manner deserves to be emphasized, so that the subject of inclusion, its needs and singularities, gains the necessary space, thereby releasing it from normalization. It is necessary to understand inclusion as a multifaceted process, for which the most different social spheres are responsible—which limits the rapid resolution in university management.

NARRATIVES OF MANAGERS ABOUT INCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES IN THE UNIVERSITY

On asking the managers to tell what they think of the expansion of admission of students with disabilities in the university, and how universities are structured to meet the demands of inclusion and accessibility, tensions and silences emerge in the discourse. The managers’ perceptions about the presence of a student with disability in the university reflect the discourse of education as the right of all, made natural and unquestionable. For the same question, narratives also emerge that reflect the situations of doubts and anguish about this process. The speeches demonstrate the multiplicities, the unforeseen, the myriad of events in the educational context.

The managers report situations in which, in order not to be questioned and pressured, they show that “everything is fine.” They are subjectivated to narrate inclusion as something necessary, a proposal that presupposes the engagement of all, and, despite the difficulties that inclusion demands, the narrative that stands out in this context is, “we need to give an account” (Manager A1). Asked about how the manager assesses the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education, he reports as follows:

I am in favor, because I think that if I did not have these moves, we would not have gotten where we are. […] I think it is important for us to create an institutional routine, because we need to be aware of it (Manager A1).

The managers’ narratives, anchored in the principles of the guaranteed right to education, express institutional accountability for inclusion, as can be seen in the narratives that follow:

[…] it is essential to have them with us, because without them we would not have made progress (Manager A1).

[…] I think if we did not have this pressure at the federal level, the institution alone would not change. It was going to be one more thing left out, to be forgotten. Macro legislation comes with force, it imposes. […] The MEC requires of us two half-yearly reports of what is done (Manager A1).

With regard to changes and adaptations, they are quite positive, not least because everyone benefits (Manager B2).

The institution is receiving these students in a quite harmonious manner, and it is not something for us, my God, how are we going to do it! Everything is so quiet in here; I am thinking aloud so that you can perceive (Manager D1).

In the field of education, some manners of talking work as a promise to resolve social problems, based on values of equality, justice, and peace. When talking about their perception of the expansion of admission of students with disabilities at the university, the managers report the discourses of the norms of inclusion as a human moral imperative and an unquestionable right.

As a result of the imposition of inclusive practices that constitute a series of strategies, specific terms, failures, and difficulties are sometimes denied or left unmentioned, and the discourse of inclusion as a right becomes a self-justified statement. However, we also observed tension and conflict narratives experienced in management practice, coupled with experiences as a teacher (since six of the eight interviewees perform both roles at the university), as explained by managers A2 and C1:

How do we handle a diversity of demands from a university that is in six places? Because one thing is to have to provide this in one place. We have seven translators from LIBRAS and we know that we do not meet the demand. What about investments? Because we are going to be called to account for that. But we are not the ones who determine the size of resources passed on to the university to invest (Manager A2).

In my perception, inclusion is the commitment to learning, to the well-being of this student and, I say, not everyone needs to be in the same places: if that space generates pressure, suffering, because that student who has an intellectual accentuated disability, for example, who cannot learn calculus, how can he be in an engineering course? We have to ask ourselves if he needs to be there, if he can and wants to be. Sometimes it is just the family’s wish (Manager C1).

The criticism that emerges from this discourse addresses the standardization of individuals, the idea that everyone should be in the same place and that they should be included in the university due to a desire to be in a space currently valued by young people and their families. Here, it is worth highlighting that being at the university is in line with the desire for standardization, a place for the construction of knowledge, considered socially privileged. This generates a false idea that being at the university can erase or soften the disability toward the intended direction of the inclusion of all. The following narrative problematizes the logic of standardization.

Depending on the degree of the disability, the person can overcome and live with the disability, receive training and exercise a profession afterward. [...] However, the deficiency may not allow him to perform the profession afterward. It has two sides. The view that I have is that a standardization of things has to include everyone, and it is not quite there. Those who are alike are the same and those who are different are different. When we ignore this, it hurts individuality; the person is hurt and ends up being excluded. It turns out that the person does not have the potentiality for some activities, but has that for others. Despite that, we want them to do everything. No one can develop everything. One has potentialities that even people who do not have disabilities fail to develop (Manager B2).

Manager B2 continues his words, commenting on the institution’s obligation to adapt, and that it is necessary to discuss the aims of the university, the specificities of its courses of study, to receive people with disabilities. He emphasizes that since the university is an area of professionalization, it is necessary to think about what is required for each area of knowledge, because the skills required for each profession are specific.

The specificity of attending an undergraduate degree program is commented on by Manager B3, when he questions the possibility of a student with an intellectual disability to deal with complex concepts required in undergraduate courses.

In this sense, Manager B3 emphasizes inclusion only as socialization by mentioning practices perceived by him:

[…] they take everyone, and even somebody who is not learning manages to pass. This is what is happening in elementary school in many schools. […] You are simply keeping such people in social interaction, but it is not helping them become independent in a little while. You include them, in the sense that they are developing, but exclude them in the sense of knowledge. […] In higher education, you will not be able to close your eyes to the goals that a student is expected to achieve by the end of the semester. He has to develop skills and competencies by the end of the course of study […] (Manager B3).

Despite the expression, “we have to give an account,” used by some managers, questions about the role of higher education in contemporary times emerge, individual limitations due to deficiencies, limits of choices and actions of managers, and the complexity of each case is unique. Emphasizing inclusion presupposes denaturalizing the belief that access to some technologies and some specific knowledge can meet all the needs and demands of inclusion. According to ^{Pieczkowski (2014}, p. 182),

The ambivalence of inclusion manifests itself in the fact that the inclusive school signalizes principles, such as different temporality, solidarity, and respect for difference, but to organize predominantly based on principles of solid modernity, with fixed times and spaces for all. At the same time that the state’s appeal is for inclusive institutions and professors, universities are evaluated by standardized results-focused indicators. At the present juncture, evaluation and regulation assume great prestige, and institutions are compared and encouraged to compete with each other in the search for better placements. What is the place, for example, of people with intellectual disabilities who are also enrolled in higher education in this scenario?

We agree with Ross’s statement by pointing out the intense and unmanageable dimension of difference. For the author,

Understood as affirmative intensity, difference is a force capable of getting out of control. Even if we try to master it again, label it. Moreover, we will only be able to do so in part. We can always hold on to and learn only minimal parts of the concept of difference. It has much more to offer to our educational practices and learning experiences. It is in this sense that we need to question the logics rooted in the context of the university, enabling experimentation and the experience of something with a new significance in education, to be more interesting and more powerful. This seems to me to be the most lucid hope for changes: micro, partial (^{ROSS, 2009}, p. 29).

The need to create alternatives to deal with difference and the complexity derived from this scenario of change is pointed out by Manager C1, with regard to the expressive increase in enrollments in higher education in recent years. The interviewee mentions an MEC publication announcing a 933% increase in enrollment of students with disabilities from 2000 to 2010.

Some managers question the effects of expanding access to higher education, when in universities, mainly private and community², some courses have more vacancies than interested candidates and the admission process is conducted through the analysis of school transcripts. As the grades are classifications and not eliminatory, some students have entered higher education with great gaps and marked weaknesses in meeting the profile of graduates that the National Curriculum Guidelines (DCN) establish as necessary for the exercise of the profession. Manager C1 questions the quality of learning of some students with disabilities, although this problem may also be present in students without disabilities. The same manager points out that when analyzing the school transcripts of students with intellectual disabilities, he observes that even if they had not appropriated notions of elementary mathematical logic and the ability to write, read, and interpret basic texts, it is common to identify adequate grades to advance and conclude basic education with success from a documentary perspective. Expressing concern about the role of the university in professionalizing these students, Manager C1 says that,

[…] the commitment of an educational institution is not only toward the student, but also toward the service that this student will one day provide to society.

The words of Manager C1 stimulate us to think of the statistical data published based on the higher education Census of 2013 (^{BRASIL, 2015a}), recorded in the table titled, “Enrollment of students with special needs in distance learning courses, by type of special need, according to the unit of the federation and administrative category of IHE - 2015.” The table shows data for 2013, published in 2015, in which 1,683 students with intellectual disabilities were enrolled in the Brazilian IHE in that year. Of the 1,683 students, 476 were enrolled in public institutions and 1,207 in private institutions. It is noted that the community category is not recognized in these indicators, being included in the private category. However, in November 2013, the President of the Republic, Dilma Rousseff, signed Law 12.881, which regulates the functioning of the community institutions of higher education (CIHE). Through the new law, the definition, qualification, prerogatives, and purposes of the community institutions were established.

Contemporary truths of inclusion not only reflect the discourses of education as the right of all, but also the contradictions and the boundaries between the right to education and the selection of those who come to the university, as well as the strategies of evaluation and accountability of managers for inclusion actions.

By disseminating the discourse that everyone benefits from living with differences, public inclusion policies gain strength. These discursive strategies find support in the philosophical aspects related to the principles and values in the organization and formation of society from the perspective of order, respect to the law, and social harmony. However, the contemporary historical context shows us the contradiction of experiencing a series of not only social achievements, but also barbarism and restrictions on rights, including the right to be different.

We have observed that manifestations that showed concern did not appear at the beginning of the dialogues with the managers. However, as narrative interviews evolved, the subjects gained confidence to express their feelings, overcoming generalizations about inclusion as an unquestionable right. Thus, the managers gradually revealed some of the administrative obstacles that they have to deal with.

It is well known that to bid on something, it takes time […]. For example, a student now enters the institution and, if it is a structure that is not ready to receive them, it will take some time for modifications to be made, because it is not immediate (Manager B1).

The narrative of professional unpreparedness is recurrent, as well as the complaint that when providing courses of study, teachers, technicians, and students do not adhere, lacking commitment to them. Overcoming attitudinal barriers is listed as a greater challenge than overcoming architectural barriers.

[…] this is the most complicated job to perform, because having money, the physical adaptations you go there and get done. Now the formation of a faculty that has an entire trajectory, which has not been prepared for it, is difficult (Manager A2).

The research helped us understand the uncertainty experienced by the managers, between “welcoming” the student with disability and the pressure to build the “skills and competencies” related to the profile of graduates indicated in the National Curriculum Guidelines for each profession, and even the results expected by the National System of Evaluation of Higher Education (SINAES) created by Law No. 10.861, of April 14, 2004. SINAES consists of the processes of evaluation of undergraduate courses of study and institutional assessment, which, together with the National Assessment of Student Performance (ENADE), form the set of indicators to evaluate the courses of study and the IHEs for all Brazil. ENADE is considered one of the pillars of the evaluation of courses of study and the IHEs.

Estrela, a Portuguese author, comments on the European context, which, in this respect, is similar to that of Brazil. She emphasizes that universities are subject to political oppression and contradictory demands. These contradictions, says Estrela, are in the expectation that universities will include students “irrespective of their previous school pathways, and at the same time intend to become extremely competitive and ‘starters’ of a society equally competitive on a global level” (^{ESTRELA, 2010}, p. 23).

At the same time that the logic of inclusion is derived from solidarity, society values competition and individual merit. Therefore, we understand that inclusion is a paradox, resulting in ambivalence, since difference is understood from the affirmation of an identity, of power relations. For ^{Silva (2014}, p. 100),

[…] before tolerating, respecting, and admitting difference, one must explain how it is actively produced. A strategy that simply admits and acknowledges the fact of diversity becomes incapable of providing the tools to question precisely the mechanisms and institutions that fix people in certain cultural identities, and that separate them through cultural difference.

Emphasizing inclusion also requires thinking about the limitations of the activities performed by Special Education professionals, such as the activity of the LIBRAS interpreter, especially when it comes to knowledge of specific areas that are not part of the context of the interpreter. Manager B3 discusses the challenges of interpreting terms for the deaf, which sometimes occurs in Portuguese sign, without the mastery of concepts and with precarious appropriations. Recognizing the fragility of actions in Inclusive Education makes the manager reveal that he too experiences limitations. Manager B3 declares that he does not feel capable, and that he finds it difficult to meet people with disabilities because he has not experienced this before. In addition, he claims to have experienced administrative difficulties in meeting the demands of the students included. The same kind of difficulties is explained by Manager A1:

[…] on another campus, we have a blind student in the Agronomy program. He was recently blinded in an accident. Therefore, he has a whole adaptation problem, and he is not yet acquainted with Braille. The difficulty is in adapting this material, since it has many laboratory and field classes. […] The option was to hire a fellow to accompany him in some field lessons and some laboratory exercises, in addition to contributing to the adaptation of materials. […] Another example, from another campus, is a blind student. We had nobody to ask for help, because the campus is located in a small town. […] We also received demands from some professors regarding students with disabilities, which I sometimes have no idea how to resolve (Manager A1).

We understand that inclusion occurs in a movement imbricated by various legal discourses, which impinge on the managers’ subjectivity, and which reflect the most recent manner of managing inclusion, through accountability, expressed by control strategies in the processes of regulation and other legal provisions. The term “dispositif,” adopted by Foucault, refers to techniques, strategies, and forms of subjection used by power. For Revel,

[…] these are both discourses and practices, institutions and moving tactics: this is how Foucault comes to speak, as the case may be, of ‘dispositif of power’, ‘dispositif of knowledge’, ‘dispositif of discipline’, ‘dispositif of sexuality’, etc. (^{REVEL, 2005}, p. 39).

Agamben inserts the term dispositif adopted by Foucault into the contemporary political context, asserting that it is “[…] anything that in any way has the ability to capture, guide, determine, intercept, and model; and to ensure the gestures, conduct, opinions, and discourses of living beings” (^{AGAMBEN, 2010}, p. 40).

INSTITUTIONAL POLICIES AND STRATEGIES TO PROMOTE INCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

The universities surveyed have deployed specialized sectors to deal with the inclusion of students with disabilities with different denominations: Center for Accessibility - University A; Directorate of Administration - University B; Accessibility Division Sector - University C; and Inclusive Education Center - University D, according to the structure and organization of each institution. The demands received and made by these sectors are diverse, as the following fragment illustrates:

My job is to meet the demands with regard to the topic that comes from the campuses that I manage: a cadastral student record. Assistance to professors is provided. The work also includes partners. I participate in the Municipal Council of People with Disabilities. Moreover, I carry out the purchase of equipment. In addition, I contribute to the organization of training and the organization of institutional events, among other demands, such as submitting a report on the actions taken at the institution to the MEC and responding to certain queries from the Public Prosecutor (Manager A1).

The strategy of subjectivation and accountability of the managers, through the commands of the State, are expressed in the report of the managers:

There is a resolution that says that the university must have a Center for Accessibility, which we call the Division. This sector of ours was created not by the law, but it was a necessity that we felt to promote inclusion in the university (Manager C1).

The managers report that they regularly need to respond to follow-up actions of the Federal Attorney’s Office, such as the need to hire, as a priority, deaf teachers to teach the Brazilian Sign Language - LIBRAS, which must be included in all undergraduate courses.

The demand arrives at the university’s legal office. However, it is referred to us. I am the one who writes the answer and the general attorney sends it; and in some cases, it comes directly to us. Moreover, even the referrals that the Public Prosecutor has suggested are being provided (Manager A1).

The manager embraces a commitment to promote inclusiveness and accessibility, transforming the university space, attending to judicial demands, students, teachers, the external community, and providing internal training for professors and technicians. The managers are under the surveillance of the external society, the Public Prosecutor, the MEC/INEP, and the academic community, in the tenuous line of correct decision-making, judged, valued or not, for prioritizing certain actions, often to the detriment of others. With this, we can see faithful narratives of legal discourses, highlighting the subjectivation of the managers. Subjectivation, for Foucault, “[…] refers to the manner in which ‘the subject makes the experience of himself in a game of truth, in which he is in a relationship with himself’” (^{FISCHER, 1999}, p. 42).

The effort to find possibilities to foster inclusion is also present in the report on training possibilities for the managers.

We had a national event that brought together the coordinators of the Center for Accessibility of all Federal Institutions, and it was organized by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. It is there that we realized that they are a reference (Manager A1).

Another strategy lies in training through courses, seminars and meetings that reflect the academic community’s conviction of the need for constant training.

When a blind student arrives, for example, he (the academic secretary of course) has to explain to the different sectors, saying that from now on they will receive a student with a certain disability, and then they will need to operate in the following manner…to serve him in the best possible manner (Manager A2).

Networking has many fronts at the university, involves several professionals; and the demands reach many sectors. Inclusive Education Policies, Stewardships, Commissions, and Forums are drawn up to listen to academics with disabilities, events to inform and raise the awareness of the academic community about disability. The demands occur not only due to the imposition of legislation, but also due to the needs of the institution generated by the presence of students with disabilities—which mobilizes us to learn from the difference. This is highlighted as positive in the recent admission of this public in the history of universities.

In 2010 and 2011, we created an Accessibility Policy for the institution. This sector manages the accessibility needs of the university, in the architectural and communication areas, and, for example, the hiring of interpreters for deaf students and readers for blind students (Manager C1).

The specialized sectors of the institutions compose the list of actions to meet the demands of this public. According to the managers’ reports, functions of such policies include the creation of instruments and programs to manage and identify the students included, such as student records and the monitoring of their academic performance. The identification of students with disabilities is conducted since the enrollment in the university entrance examination, or another form of selection process for admission, continuing to follow the registration procedures or access to scholarships when it comes to community or private universities. The deficiency is a factor that prioritizes the contemplation of scholarships in the community university researched, the result of an institutional policy.

In turn, Manager D1 illustrates the inclusive movements when reporting the processes of student identification and referrals.

One performs the registration and places him there as a special needs person. When you print the list of registrants and organize the test books, you check and select those who have special needs. When we have this information, we call this student to find out what the disability is, which is limiting him, and then we organize what he needs (Manager D1).

This article does not allow us to extensively report the movements of each IHE surveyed in terms of inclusion and accessibility. However, we can highlight the immense effort observed, although not in the same proportion as that in each university investigated, since some stand out more than the others. The community university, for example, mentions, through Manager C1, that it does not receive public resources to promote accessibility. Nonetheless, it has invested considerable funding in actions of accessibility and values this as one of its differentials. Furthermore, it points out that since community universities are predominantly supported by student fees, these are the managed resources for accessibility. In other words, it is necessary to prioritize and sensitize the academic community for inclusion, which is not always easy. Some students demand, for example, air conditioning in rooms, upholstered chairs, and more bibliographical works in the library, among other comforts and investments, saying that this benefits the majority, while ramps, elevators, adapted toilets, suitable doors for the passage of wheelchairs, computer programs with systems of voice for the blind, podotactile floors, printers in Braille, adapted and covered parking spaces, and the hiring of interpreters and support professionals for students with intellectual disabilities benefit few.

It is in this aspect that the principles of Inclusive Education need to be diffused in the sense that the deficiency is not only in the subject, but also in precarious physical and social structures. Solidarity is essential in the inclusion process. If we consider that “The results of the 2010 Demographic Census indicated 45,606,048 million people who declared having at least one of the deficiencies investigated, corresponding to 23.9% of the Brazilian population” (^{IBGE, 2010}, p. 73), numbers that include elderly people (but who do face challenges), we will conclude that an inclusive and accessible society benefits everyone. If not today, in the near future for some, and in more distant future for others and their families.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

In this article, we emphasize that normative discourses weave inclusion as an ideal project of education, built on the principles of solidarity, justice, and equality, terms reiterated in the documents that guide Inclusive Education. Numerous legal regulations deal with the inclusion of students with disabilities and the guidelines for actions in higher education.

In the work of listening and reading the narratives, it became evident that the interviewees experience the pressures of state control through the regulations, because they deal with demands that mobilize the managers, due to the positions held, social expectations and evaluations, and the control of the institutions. The manager’s commitment produces changes in the structure of the university through his choices and positions. The impact of student presence not only creates tensions, but also opens up prospects for accessibility and inclusion that would not happen without this audience.

We find that, often, the success of inclusion is expressed and measured through statistical data, which shows the significant increase of this public in higher education in recent years in the country. In addition, we find that the structural changes, amounts invested, and learning conditions of the individuals involved are more evident. This factor is difficult to evaluate.

In the process of inclusion, the managers are challenged to learn from difference, to set priorities, and to create new possibilities for institutional organization of spaces and times. They discover the plurality of inclusion, beginning to understand it as an expression with multiple meanings, which not only causes a certain malaise but also generates mobility, appropriation of the new, and deconstruction of standardized appearances. Confronting difference provokes a rupture with mechanical ways of thinking and undergoing higher education, so that even if the student is placed in categories (hearing impairment, physical disability, intellectual disability, visual impairment, multiple disabilities, etc.), each is unique and has particular demands.

The study shows us that structural accessibility is not the greatest challenge, but rather dealing with attitudinal barriers, such as paradoxical logics, including, competitiveness, individual merit, and the solidarity, present in contemporary society.

Foucault warns us that thought does not exist to comfort us. It exists to open our eyes to the dangers of our time, to an ethical and political attitude of confronting them rather than pointing to supposedly general solutions. To problematize inclusion does not mean to be against, but to denature truisms from the perception that some knowledge becomes true in a certain time and place.

The evaluation network to which universities are currently submitted generates a need to incorporate a standard consistent with the paradigms of the State. The media discourses are potent in the production of subjectivities that classify universities in terms of quality, based on indicators that do not always evaluate inclusive attitudes—which becomes visible in periods of dissemination of the results of ENADE/CPC³/IGC⁴—which represent, for the State, the quality indicators.

What we want to highlight in this text is that, although institutions and managers are responsible for inclusion, the process is much broader. It extends to every society and requires real conditions to be constituted with the necessary effectiveness. Inclusion is much more than benevolence, presence, or indicators of increased enrollment of people with disabilities. Inclusion is the right to the recognition of difference. It is the right to learning, but not only to learning that is standardized by legal provisions. How can the university become a place for all? Could it be strengthened through university extension to welcome people who, because of their characteristics, have limitations to appropriate concepts essential for professional practice, such as people with marked intellectual disabilities, who have also entered universities? These are provocations to reflect on as the subsequent steps.