Dr. Gil questions the role played by Mexican university academics in the transformation of higher education during the nineties. After outlining the general context of change and its importance, the author proposes avoiding the false dichotomy between restoring the past or installing, without reflective mediation, a schematic future. He suggests taking into consideration the current national academic body composed of several generations of scholars. Three phases are established in terms of the modification of academic activities during the last decades of the twentieth century, and the changes in the level of higher education are considered. Dr. Gil asks if the academics have been actors, subjects, spectators or hostages-both in regard to regulations governing their activity and in the modifications of university processes and structure. The essay ends by proposing a general agenda for research in the field of university studies, and emphasizes two problems: the need for a detailed description of the type and depth of changes, and the definition of the academic as a central actor in institutional life.

Key words: Academics, academic profession, higher education.

• 5% with seniorities of more than 30 years as academic personnel, that is, they entered the market before the expansion of the seventies.
• Approximately 50% who were first hired in the seventies and early eighties, when expansion was very rapid and the wage and institutional conditions were relatively good.
• 20% who entered the profession in what we call the crisis–between 1983 and 1990–when wages were suddenly reduced and the institutions navigated as best they could, with what was indispensable, or even less, and
• Finally, the rarities, the 25% who obtained their academic position during the nineties, marked by the processes of income unequalization based on periodic evaluations.6

These are very rough estimates because we do not have enough official information–in the system environment or that of the institution–for greater accuracy, but what matters is not whether the proportions are exact, a question to which only specific studies could provide the answer, but the proposal for a national academic body with diverse histories and trajectories that would now permit the consideration of several generations.

Let us focus our gaze for a moment, on those who, according to my calculations, are the majority group: those who entered the academic field before 1982, and who have been working in the public sector up to the present. Let us consider that their average work seniority, today, is close to 20 years, and that in age, they are approaching their fifties. This group of academics lived, and built, the expansion phase of the institution, when because of the employment increase, there were more jobs available than people interested in filling them; people got academic work with pay and employment stability that later on would be seen as very positive. Under these conditions they began their careers, and were socially and institutionally recognized, with a certain amount of prestige for dedicating themselves, primarily, to the work of teaching so as to serve the increasing annual number of students. At one time, around 1982-83, wages and institutional conditions collapsed for this great body of teachers ; you could say that the crisis came and blew us away. Experts assert that the purchasing power of the teachers’ salaries fell by almost 60%, but above all, work references and requirements suffered a severe shock; that was when the famous, but terrible phrase was coined: “If you make like you pay me, I will make like I work.” Not everything operated in the logic of the structurally-favored simulation, but there were indeed times in which, for example, so as to hold onto a teacher giving only his classes, some institutions would offer what passed for a fulltime job, but in which the teacher would work only part of the hours, so as to improve (or keep) his previous income level. This stage much distorted the work space of which we are speaking, although, of course, it had different effects on different regions, institutions, disciplines and levels of study.

When we reached the nineties, here came the systems of differentiation of income by means of periodic evaluations. This same group faced the change in standards for recognition of work, and presumably, its quality. Such was the depression of the contractual salary, that the additional income became not occasional stimuli, but pesos and centavos destined for daily subsistence. Change, they said, or at least pretend to change so you don’t get left out of the new economic scenario and status distribution.

This group of academics, as a whole, has gone through three different general labor conditions in the course of their careers; first, a context of relative economic abundance and of stable conditions combined with low indices of academic hiring regulations. Then, they lived though the acute collapse of wages together with great reduction in the already-small amount of internal regulations required for job stability. And finally, they face the need of reconversion of their activity and profiles, in many cases, with the purpose of adjusting to the unequalization of income, regulated in a manner punctual and precise in the tabular sense of the term.

So much variation in the circumstances of a labor group, the majority of whom also inaugurated the exercise of a peculiar and specialized role, must unquestionably be taken into account when rebuilding and understanding what has happened. The required adjustments to this sector over time, in terms of organizational adaptation to sudden changes of reference, have not lessened, since having begun in relative abundance, they need research on how they have conformed and evolved, surely in all sorts of ways, in institutional and regional contexts and variable disciplines. There us a vast amount of research business pending, and I have only mentionedo the group that has lived through all three stages.

How was the experience, and what were the general perceptions, of colleagues entering the profession during the phase of the so-called crisis, and what has the process of adjustment been like in the stage of differentiation? Unlike the first group, these people had to compete fiercely to get their first jobs, because there were few positions, and those interested in getting them had multiplied, knowing how hard it was to find employment at the time, and later on. And what do we know about the teachers who began their careers in the nineties? Certainly job requirements have increased and the expectations of job security are not the way they used to be–going to an institution and applying for work, being hired, and continuing in the position, under increasingly competitive conditions. What do we know about the relations, for example, between the established academics, with tenure7 and access to additional income, and the young teachers coming into the institution?

As you can see, the questions go on and on. What has happened to the academics who work in private institutions during these years? How do things differ if we take into account regional, institutional and disciplinary diversity? And furthermore, the convergence of broad retirement processes for older personnel with the recruitment of those who will take their place in the years to come, how is this convergence being designed–if it is being designed-taking into account a very probable escalation in the requirement for upper–level studies?

I have tried to show, using a very simple exercise of distribution of seniorities and work conditions, the complexity of the problem and the difficulty of responding in a generalized way to the original questions: actors, subjects, spectators or hostages in the nineties? And up to this point, we have only thought about the general conditions for academic work, for job development. Now, let us take a very brief look at other aspects of the change in university life in the end-of-century decade

I have the impression that, in principle, there have opened two polarically opposed lines of response to the set of questions noted here. Both are impressionistic, in the sense that they do not rest upon sufficient research to five solid support, but are very much present in our work and conversation spaces.

The first, of pessimistic cut, would opt for carrying the hypothesis toward an intense weakening of the academics’ action, or if you will, to the reduction of their respositioning in the sphere of the individual, tending to view them as mere spectators of the institutional transformation, or in the end, as at the mercy of the institutional forces that subjugate them. In that case, the activity that is presumed general from this approach has been reactive, direct adjustment in simple response to the changes in general conditions, throwing out of kilter previously-established spaces of academic, policy, labor or human relations. In this view, the process is conceived primarily as destructive and negative. It has broken, they insist, with the deep sense of university labor.

At the other pole, the abrupt changes are seen as perhaps susceptible to improvement, but necessary and on track. From this point of view, what are diluted are academically sterile academistic corporate agreements, and with the new attitude there are generated better conditions for academic work, coordinated, they argue, by the academics themselves. They form the evaluatory commissions, often by processes of election, and these bodies of pairs have the final voice in the final assignment of stimuli, scholarships and scores, as well as resources for academic work, and therefore, its orientation. Isn’t this how things ought to work?

At the extreme of simplification, I have come to hear, as a supposed key to understanding the dilemma of Mexican higher education, the following disagreement without any reflexive mediation at all; on one side, the university with its worries and social responsibility, and on the other, the university academic. That’s the way things are, my dear. Which to choose? Neither, of course, because it’s a false dichotomy.

Without arriving at the extreme of this last simplification, I find reasonable the diversity of approaches; the two general trends outlined contain important elements for analysis: one is very apprehensive, and should be, over the fact that the transition looked upon with disdain, the tradition of previous development, is valuable; and the other, perhaps very on edge and rigid, aims to solve, also with good reason, the obvious problems of the previous model.

I confirm an old idea, or as the classicist would say, “I think, therefore I insist”. It is not possible to exhaust the discussion with two impossibilities. It makes no sense to propose restoration of the past as if the change were not a fait acompli, and we not a product of that same change. It is at the same time, a road impassable?the founding of a new model without bearing history and its achievements in mind, since they also comprise us.

What is indispensable is to think about things, to investigate in depth, to share our points of view and affiliate ourselves at once to the recognition of diversity in evolutions and the senses with which is conceived, in an intelligent fashion, the the past and the achievable future.

With what we know, and taking in account the extent of our ignorance, always a matter of necessity, let us ask how some lines of work and analytical underpinning be could put in order so as to move forward in comprehensive response to the phenomena I have tried to present in these pages. Based on my own research work, and paying careful attention to that developed by my colleagues in the field, I am going to ask three questions that to me seem relevant:

1. As I understand it, we need the gradual development of a research agenda in the field of Mexican academics, for it has overtones revealing it as a designated area of issues and research problems that can be treated with different approaches and theoretical approximations. Jesus Francisco Galaz-Fontes (1999), regarding this subject has recently made a comprehensive proposal, in which he highlights the five guidelines he suggests: we need the historical studies to clear up our so-frequent pre-conceived notions of the past; we need national censuses and surveys that would allow a better description of the academics in the various establishments where they work, and periodic repetitions of these so as to be conscious of the changes and the constants over time; it is necessary to increase the number of studies on academic work and its dynamics, taking into account different axes of variation (regional, institutional, intra-institutional, disciplinary and functional) as well as those related to such factors as age and gender. Another necessary line is that regarding the academic degree program and its peculiarities in intimate relationship with studies on the academic market. These broad lines, which Galaz-Fontes proposes and develops with more detail, are rooted in a perception which I consider correct: the Mexican system of higher education has been transformed in the last forty years, and this has changed the conditions of academic labor. It is necessary, then, to study these impacts on the diversity of situations which the level presents in our day.

2. It is necessary to delve deeper into the analytically-founded description of the nature of the changes that have occurred in the Mexican higher education system. It is not a trivial thing to clear up whether we are dealing with passing fads of adjustment, or with profound modifications consonant with a change of model(s) or development of the level.

If the idea of a change of model is sustained, then it is necessary to begin precise studies on the periods, their characteristics and the impact they had on the generation or transformation of the ethos that gives identity to the various groups of academics.

In these pastures, we can drink from the classic streams of the discipline of Sociology, thereby to know the contradictory and complex landscape of forms of communitary relations with others, of an associative nature which, truly, are pure only at the level of the typical construction of the concepts.

On the other hand and in consequence of the hypothesis of the profound change, we must reorient the universities. For this, I find it interesting to consider a process of “secularization” of almost all of the university’s previous functions. It was the space for the democratic construction of the society, for the struggle for progress, the one channel–so it seemed–of social mobility, the exclusinve supplier of criticism of domination, the preferred breeding ground of the elite, and another series of important tasks that included, sometimes in a secondary position, the in-depth cultivation of knowledge. If one subscribes to the hypothesis of change as a basis for the social model, this implies recognizing the growth of alternative social spaces in which are disputed power and the projects of the nation–the political parties, the Congress–new channels of social mobility and very diverse sources of social criticism. In other words, the society has grown in modernization, has become diversified, and this is notable in our case. Perhaps because of it, the universities–the university students–long for a past heavy with functions shared today with other institutions. But at the same time, they find themselves in better conditions, because of the removal of exclusive tasks, and an increased ability to concentrate on in-depth knowledge, whose social effects are fundamental.

3. A key theme to face is that of the constitution of the academic, of the academics, as a social actor and institutional specific. Down through the years, we find propositions of orientation and identification of academic personnel from outside their own systems of relations, complex and variable. From the perspective of the administrative authorities they have been viewed as a bank of classroom hours or a workforce. They have been considered–and with this we agree–as a workforce from the perspective of abstractly human work, an issue that led us to seek identity in labor unions.

Although not in any sense a minor issue, this experience does not seem to contend adequately with the peculiarities of a job having a sharply-defined ethos. On the other hand, the academics have been seen as human resources to convert from general projects, with scarcely any attention paid to the history of their constitution and its structural variations.

How did they see themselves, what modalities of relation did they construct in different stages of the system’s evolution, and how were their references changing, in part, along with changes in the environments, and moreover, with their own experiences and developments within of the institutions and in relation with inter-institutional interchange networks?

Susana Garcia-Salord considers this to be a central theme when she affirms that it has to do with an old problem, that is, of a matter which has remained constant, as a dilemma, throughout the last decades:

[...] the historical inability of the academics to generate a strategy of reproduction, as an occupational group, which would contemplate and take charge not only of the functional diversity of the group, but also of its heterogeneity, that is, of the fact that in its constitution is stated the inequality and the difference in material, social, cultural and symbolic resources, as well as the discrepancy in scientific concepts, policies and ideologies (Garcia-Salord, S., 1999).

On the subject of research it is necessary to reconstruct with precision the various strategies designed and carried out by academics for the reproduction of their jobs, perhaps marked by diversity, fragmented and often truncated, and immersed in processes of transit between communitarian and associative concepts. It is a basic theme, and can be phrased thus: What have been the processes of construction of academic identity explored over the years, their methods and their outcomes? Would it be possible to reconstruct analytically, or imagine prospectively, a gradual process of general compilation of interests, accompanied by a variety of disciplinary and institutional subcultures that would relate with each other in an extremely complex fashion? Whether as a question for research, or as a strategy for increasing the reflective and organic ability of the academics, this issue seems fundamental.

The three questions I have proposed are necessary for progress, to my mind, for being able to give a well-founded answer to the initial questions. It will be necessary, of course, to distinguish clearly the levels of observation in the studies; we need generalized reconstructions along with detailed analyses of individual cases, possibly in the institutional environment, for disciplinary communities or generations.

Actors, subjects, spectators or hostages? Perhaps all these possible roles have been played by the academics, at different times and in relation with different problems; the issue is to reconstruct the how, and try to understand the why. This is what research is, and as you can see, we have work in abundance.

Gil, Antón, M. (October, 1999). El mercado de trabajo académico: notas sobre la evolución del espacio laboral en la universidad mexicana. Este País, 34, 34-37.

Gil Antón (Dir.) y Equipo Interinstitucional de Investigadores sobre los Académicos Mexicanos (1994). Los rasgos de la diversidad: un estudio sobre los académicos mexicanos. Mexico: UAM-Azcaptozalco.

Ibarra, E. (1999). Evaluación, productividad y conocimiento: barreras institucionales al desarrollo académico. Paper presented at Primer Congreso Nacional de Ciencias Sociales, Mexico, D. F.

Translator: Lessie Evona York-Weatherman
UABC Mexicali

1La Revista Electrónica de Investigación Educativa agradece al Consejo Mexicano de Investigación Educativa (COMIE), por permitirnos publicar esta conferencia.

2See: Ibarra, E. (1999).

3See: Garcia-Salord, S. (1999, abril).

4See: Gil Anton, et al. (1994, pp. 60-61).

5See: Gil Anton, M. (1999). In the seventies and eighties, of every ten new jobs, approximately eight were produced in public institutions.

6This distribution produces these results through the estimating of different rates of retirement from the market and recomposing the proportions with the new jobs generated from 1992 to date. It has to do with a very approximate exercise, since we do not have data to make is more precise; the deficit of information on jobs and academic personnel is a feature with which, seemingly and unfortunately, we will have to make do for some time.

7What has been translated as ‘tenure’ (‘plazo’, or ‘place’), has, in Mexico, a meaning different from tenure in the USA, for instance, where it can guarantee a stable position for all of the teacher’s working life. In contrast, the Mexican system obliges the teacher to compete for her position at comparatively short intervals; the winner of the contest gets the job, and it is possible for a teacher who has worked at a university for many years to lose her position to a recent graduate.

8This part of the conference was produced using the content of Fuentes, O. (1991). Las questiones críticas. Universidad Futura, Nos. 8 and 9. See also, for this ordering of the questions: Gil Anton, Manuel: La universidad, la estupidez y el futuro, in Etcétera, No. 343, August 26.

9On the basis of partial information, we must consider the following: 1) García Salord, Susana (1998). Estudio socioantropológico de las clases medias urbanas en México: el capital social y el capital cultural como espacios de constitución simbólica de las clases sociales. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM. 2) Landesmann, Monique. (1997). Identites academiques et generation. Le cas de enseignants de biochimie de l´Université Nationale Autonome du Mexique (UNAM). Universite de Paris X-Nanterre, Francia. 3) Stefanovich, Ana (1998). Modelo general para la evaluación del trabajo de los académicos en las instituciones de educación superior. Facultad de Educación, Universidad Anahuac.4) Izquierdo, Miguel Angel (1998). Estrategias, oposiciones y conflictos entre maestros de la Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, en su competencia por los estímulos económicos. Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. 5) Grediaga Kuri, Rocío (1999). Profesión Académica, disciplinas y organizaciones. Procesos de socialización y sus efectos en las actividades y resultados de los académicos mexicanos. Colegio de México. 6) Rodríguez Jiménez, Raúl (1999). Mercado y profesión académica en Sonora. Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación Superior con sede en la Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. 7) Medina, Patricia (1998). La construcción social de los espacios públicos: trayectorias profesionales de maestros normalistas frente a universitarios. ¿Polos opuestos o procesos y proyectos compartidos? Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM. 8) Chavoya Peña, María Luisa (1998). Institucionalización y profesionalización de la investigación en la Universidad de Guadalajara. Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación, con sede en la Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. 9) Arenas Basurto, Jorge (1999). Políticas de evaluación en la comunidad científica de México (1984-1997): el SNI y el Programa Pride en la UNAM. Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José Luis María Mora. 10) Valero Chávez, Aída (1999). El impacto de las políticas de estímulos para el personal de carrera en la organización del trabajo académico de la UNAM. (Las posturas de los científicos y de los científicos sociales). Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación con sede en la Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. 11) Romo Beltrán, Marta.(1999). Cultura académica, curriculum y práctica magisterial. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM. 12) Bartolucci, Jorge.(1997). La modernización de la ciencia en México: el caso de los astrónomos. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, UNAM. Doctoral theses in process of production: a) Galaz Fontes, Jesús Francisco. Claremont Graduate University, USA. b) Casillas, Miguel Ángel. Escuela de Altos Estudios en Ciencias Sociales, París. c) Pérez Franco, María Lilia. Colegio de México. d) Álvarez Mendiola, Germán. Departamento de Estudios Educativos-CINVESTAV.