A permanência de estudantes autistas no ensino superior: práticas de governamento

Abstract

This research analyzes educational policies focused on the access and retention of autistic students in Higher Education, utilizing a post-critical epistemological framework with an emphasis on Foucaultian studies. It employs governmentality as a tool-concept to understand how knowledge and norms guide institutional practices. The central objective is to examine legal documents, guidelines, and policies published between 1988 and 2025 that regulate access and, primarily, the retention of these students, articulating these analyses with experiences narrated by autistic university students on social media. The results indicate that while extensive legislation regarding access exists, a rationality anchored in the knowledge of clinical governmentality prevails, producing significant gaps in retention conditions. The research highlights that the university space, historically governed by norms prioritizing medical knowledge, remains structured by regulatory practices that undermine the visibility of the subject of rights in Higher Education. It is observed that, in the governmentality of these students, practices emerge that articulate education, clinization, and power, demonstrating how clinical knowledge and norms guide institutional practices and regulate bodies within the university context. The study concludes that Higher Education remains structured by regulatory practices that give little consideration to the diversity of learning modes, evidencing a lack of support, inclusion, and academic retention.