THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH ALUMNI : AN ANALYSIS OF ONLINE ALUMNI PORTALS

Abstract

Universities have as one of their functions the formation of qualified professionals for professional practice in society. As a result of the training process, propitiated by Higher Education Institutions, there is the alumni, understood as a graduated student. The alumni are a permanent part of the Higher Education Institutions and are an important asset for these because they can provide valuable contributions to the quality of the courses and training of current students. One way to strengthen the relationship between universities and their alumni is to develop virtual portals. This study aimed, through a case study of a specific set of sites, to check for alumni portals of the top ten Brazilian public higher education institutions, according to Ranking Universitário Folha 2015 and analyze them based on the prototype portal proposed in the literature. As the main conclusions, we highlight the lack of due attention to alumni portals by much of Higher Education Institutions studied, the absence of only and centralized alumni portals and, when it exists, the lack of a page that centralizes professional opportunities for alumni.