Higher Education; Professional and Technological Education; Higher Technology Course; Technologist Training.
The Fundação de Apoio à Escola Técnica (FAETEC) manages the Rio de Janeiro State Network of Professional and Technological Education, affiliated with the Secretaria de Estado de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (SECTI/RJ). FAETEC is primarily responsible for expanding and diversifying professional and technological education in the state through secondary technical schools and higher education technology institutions. The Faculdades de Educação Tecnológica do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAETERJs) offer Higher Education Technology Courses (HETs) in Technological Areas and aim to meet the demand for training technologists capable of keeping pace with market changes and demands in the various regions of the state. Given this reality, we chose to analyze FAETEC's role in Rio de Janeiro state policy to expand and diversify the HETs offerings offered by FAETERJs in specific regions of the state. For our analysis, we used the experience of FAETERJ in the municipality of Duque de Caxias, in the Baixada Fluminense region, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as an empirical reference. Our objective is to explain the sociopolitical determinants of FAETEC's actions and how this initiative embodies the national policy on vocational and technological education. This is basic research, with an approach based on historical-dialectical materialism, with an explanatory purpose, and its technical procedures link it to the category of documentary research. As a partial result, we highlight that the policy of expanding and diversifying the provision of vocational and technological education implemented under FAETEC's management is guided by a pragmatic, immediate, and self-interested perspective on human development. Furthermore, it reproduces the dynamic of lean and flexible training for a broad segment of the population, while other privileged segments of society follow more robust educational paths. Thus, this policy ratifies the old duality of education, which was previously restricted to Basic Education but now also extends to higher education.