This article presents the results of an investigation that sought to understand higher education students' relationship to knowledge, using Bernard Charlot's Relationship to Knowledge theory as a theoretical reference. The field studied was a community university in a mid-sized city in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and the subjects were 400 students at 24 undergraduate courses. The collection of data was performed using balances of knowledge, a tool proposed by Bernard Charlot which consists of asking subjects to produce a written composition about their learnings. After presenting the quantitative aspects of the classification of learnings mentioned by students, the article discusses the predominance of learnings related to personal development, and uses the categories of mobilization and meaning to achieve deeper understanding of the accounts produced by students in their balances of knowledge. We concluded that the subjects' relationship to knowledge is based on the valuing of their personal development-related learnings also with regard to what they have learned in the university, and that some of them are able to recognize the specificities of that particular institution as a learning space. The study identified three core topics around which are organized the meanings attributed by students to undergraduate education: achievement of a better life, changes in their worldviews, and mobilization relating to knowledge itself.
Higher Education; Relationship to Knowledge; Students
