The Future of Education

The academic career in Mexican public higher education institutions has been associated with individual evaluation programs that determine payments in addition to wages, a very peculiar practice which has drawn criticism. The said policy seeks to institutionalize meritocratic procedures by linking ideal "profiles" with productivity-based points systems which are used to establish differential monetary rewards. Parameters and indicators are used to measure the performance of an academic's main activities (research, teaching and dissemination). But its effect is not limited to a greater pay differentiation or the establishment of a productivity-based compensation system. Given that social actors are involved, it determines deeper changes, with repercussions on professional self-perception, which is affected by two aspects:  the behaviorist orientation of such a policy, and the presumed internalization of values. Behavioristic philosophy implies that conduct is guided by the stimulus-response relationship; the internalization of values derives from the results that routine evaluations would produce in academic life. This kind of evaluation linked to academic professionalization not only represents a rethinking of the strategies used for the determination, assignment and use of financial resources, but is also a way of planning higher education that aspires to a level of rationalization greater than in years prior to its implementation. It responds to a tendency to seek better governance of universities, management capacity, academic and administrative reorganization, planning and evaluation. This has many facets, but the most obvious is the institutionalization of a routine of accountability. There is an ambiguous performance at this point, because the balance is different if the emphasis is put on official statements and written agreements, than if it is done in observance of bonding experiences actually running, or in the achievement of a productive and virtuous linking between the said main activities of public higher education.