Abstract
In the last 20 years, the academic profession in Argentina has undergone a strong higher education reform. The changes tended to modify the material and symbolic conditions of academic work resulting in the emergence of new styles of performance and professional development strategies. How are duties distributed? How the different roles are made compatible? Which are the academics’ preferences? What does it mean to teach and do research at the same time? These are some of the questions this chapter will try to answer. The analysis is based on the results of the CAP survey administered to teachers of public universities in 2008.
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- 1.
The 1918 reform was a large-scale students’ movement that took place in Argentinean universities and influenced the rest of Latin America. It aimed at the updating of contents, the opening of job positions to a new generation of professors, as well as the inclusion of alumni, students, and teachers in the university governance. The reformers’ main complaints concerned the backward state of the scientific field and teaching system. The lack of renewal of the teaching staff foreshadowed the continuance of outdated contents together with an encyclopedic and theoretical approach as well as a rigid organization of disciplines.
- 2.
Such complexity sheds light on many current problems in the governance of the biggest and most traditional universities. In many cases the percentage of teachers assessed in due time through the mechanism of “concurso” is low, not only because of the complexity of the mechanism itself but also due to political decisions that delay or move up the “concursos” what has the potential to determine the political composition of university government.
- 3.
Presidential Decree Nº 2427/93 for the creation of the Incentive Program specifies that, out of the totality of positions within the university system, which is estimated at a hundred thousand (100,000), only 15 % takes part in research activities.
- 4.
According to Araujo, empirical evidence shows that professors use different strategies to meet evaluation requirements, some of which lead them to use certain manipulative practices or CV-forging practices.
- 5.
According to qualitative research about incentive programs, the demand of research production involving all Argentine university teachers is structured according to such logic that those who do not engage in research see themselves as outside the university system. They consider that “the university system is a social system to which you either belong or are excluded from” (Leal 2003).
References
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Decreto Nº 2427/93 de Creación del Programa de Incentivos. Anexo: I, II, III. (Decree Nº 2427/93 for the Creation of the Incentive Program. Annex: I, II, II).
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Leal, M., Marquina, M. (2014). Current Challenges Facing the Academic Profession in Argentina: Tensions Between Teaching and Research. In: Shin, J., Arimoto, A., Cummings, W., Teichler, U. (eds) Teaching and Research in Contemporary Higher Education. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6830-7_13
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