Rituals and Ceremonies of Quality of Higher Education. New Academic Tribes and Challenges in Social Recognition

Abstract

Quality has been the most relevance public policy on higher education worldwide in about three decades. Quality is, primarily,
a product of a linear equation of an overall expansion and massification of higher education since the 1970s, and the lack of resources to
ensure a long-term educational support. Therefore, it is evident the design and implementation of a public policy without a critical debate
about the implications for the entire educational systems. Secondly, it implies a qualitative change in the process of evaluation from a
pedagogical process based on significant curricular experiences, to the construction of a positivist system of evidence for each potential
or de facto act of learning, producing an institutional evaluation based on productivity, competitiveness, achievement and treasure of
economical, social and cultural capitals. It is about a substantial change in the concepts and practices of educational administration from
an academic/knowledge regime to academic/knowledge capitalism regime, corporatizing educational institutions and promoting social
fragmentation. Testimonies from scholars in facing this academic regime show a relevant erosion of the academic work and an epistemic
reduction of educational disciplines, making the policy of quality of education, more than a well-intentioned educational improvement, a
source of deinstitutionalization, discrimination and practices of social control and lack of social recognition.This work analyzes social
configurations from scholars’ experiences in Higher Education in Mexico facing the rhetoric and procedures of quality of education.
Through ethnography and phenomenological hermeneutics analysis this research shows imaginaries that deform scholars’ educational
practices and a consequent ideological social recognition.