EPAA/AAPE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place. EPAA/AAPE publishes issues comprised of empirical articles, commentaries, and special issues at roughly weekly intervals, all of which pertain to educational policy, with direct implications for educational policy.
Daniela Veliz-Calderon Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Chile
Assistant professor and Vice-director of Teaching and Learning at the School of Education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research interests relate to the academic profession, internationalization, student affairs, and gender. Ph.D in Higher Education from the University of Maine and MA in Student Development in Higher Education from the same university.
Daniel Theurillat Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Chile
Researcher, Centro de Estudios de Políticas y Prácticas en Educación (CEPPE).
Victoria Paredes Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Graduate Assistant, School of Education.
Astrid Pickenpack Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Researcher, Centro de Estudios de Políticas y Prácticas en Educación (CEPPE).
The evolution of the academic profession in research universities in Chile
Daniela Veliz-Calderon, Daniel Theurillat, Victoria Paredes, Astrid Pickenpack
Abstract
Faculty members are fundamental for the development and success of higher education organizations, and building strong academic cadres is a major challenge, especially for research universities. While there are no fully-fledged research universities in Chile (Bernasconi, 2007), a few strive to get closer to that ideal by way of the professionalization their faculty. This study follows this process guided by the question “How do academic rules and guidelines in six research-oriented universities in Chile reflect the professionalization of the academic profession from 1967 to 2016?” Findings show that universities have converged in the structure they provide for their tenured and tenure-track faculty. The requirements to enter the “tenure track” career have become stricter over time, while adjunct faculty experience little regulation of their duties, governance rights, and benefits, even though they still constitute the highest proportion of faculty members overall. Lastly, it seems that these universities have changed their academic regulations over time as a response to internal processes rather than external pressures.
Keywords
Faculty; Professionalization; Research University; Chile
Bernasconi, A. (2007). Are there research universities in Chile? In P. G. Altbach & J. Balán (Eds.), World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America (pp. 234-59). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Berríos, P. (2015). La profesión académica en Chile: Crecimiento y profesionalización. In A. Bernasconi (Ed.), La Educación Superior de Chile: Transformación, Desarrollo y Crisis (pp. 345–369). Santiago, Chile: Ediciones UC.
Teichler, U., Arimoto, A., & Cummings, W. K. (2013). The Changing Academic Profession - Major Findings of a Comparative Survey. New York, NY: Springer.