The Argentinean Academic Profession in the Knowledge Society: Challenges of knowledge production for all academics ?

MARQUINA, MÓNICA

Cancun

Congreso; XVII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies. The future of Education; 2019

WCCES

The objective is to present the Argentinean case within the international APIKS project (Academic Profession In the Knowledge Society), a collaborative initiative based on a common survey carried out by teams from more than 25 countries on different continents. The APIKS project will allow the development of a series of comparative thematic studies on the academic profession in today´s world, giving continuity to the CAP Project survey, carried out 10 years ago. The main purpose of the project is to take as a frame of reference the changes taking place in the so-called Knowledge Society (KS), and its impact on higher education systems and on the academic profession.The terms "Knowledge economy" and ?knowledge society? are increasingly institutionalised in political discourse and public policy forums (European Union, World Bank, OECD, UNESCO). A good part of the literature in the field claims the existence of a new paradigm of knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994; Ziman, 2000; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Ward, 2012) and focused on a set of critical issues as to what knowledge makes sense in advanced capitalist societies and why. A debate emerged between two main perspectives: that the dynamics of knowledge production and dissemination are mainly an endogenous phenomenon, located in the universities set and driven by autonomous academics only submitted to the peers control and regulation; and an exogenous phenomenon (Bourdieu 2008), where external demands for short-term results emphasizing marketable and transferable knowledge products are the new criteria of validity and reliability of knowledge (Santiago et al, 2015). In this latter perspective, research initiatives and design is no longer exclusive of universities and academics. Following this, researchers are involved in new regimes of responsibility and accountability towards a certain market order and to their customers, sponsors and stakeholders demands (Olssen and Peters 2005). The overvaluation of the instrumentality of scientific knowledge to wealth creation has led States all over the world to pay great attention to the creation and implementation of Science and Technology policies and to transform universities as the main players in this field. This new university mission can only be accomplished if a new alliance between the University/science, industry and the state is established (Etzkowitz, 2003) even if it can lead to knowledge and learning commodification (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004).The APIKS survey offers an excellent opportunity to explore how the academic professions of different countries, in different contexts, are experiencing the current changes, within the framework of the described global trends. This presentation regarding the argentinan case describes a panorama of the Argentine science, technology and innovation system and the main changes in the public policies of knowledge production in Argentina in the last two decades. Within this framework, a brief review of the relationship between universities and innovation policies is drawn up, pointing out the main current features of the Argentine higher education system, primarily related to massification. And the characteristics of the Argentine academic profession. Some preliminary results of the survey will be presented, linked to the relationship of academic work and the place of the "third mission". Finally, some hypotheses outline the main challenges: The weak dynamism of the productive sector, the academic culture, the insufficient incentives in academic careers and institutional disinterest may explain the low level of engagement of schlars with external activities. For the analysis of the topics studied, the theoretical perspective of the project is used (Gibbons et al., 1994, Ziman, 1994, 2000, Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, Bok 2003, Ward, 2012, Etzkowitz, 2003), and the methodology for implementation of the APIKS survey, based on a representative sample of 1000 university professors, from which four specific questions on the academic function of linkage with society were extracted for the analysis. In this sense, the contribution of the presentation to the general panel is linked to the particularities of the academic profession of an emerging country, with an academic profession strongly segmented between a cosmopolitan elite and a mostly local group (Clark, 1983).