Transformations in Education, Thesis Paper Sample

Introduction and Literature Review

A current problem in university classrooms is the conception of what we have believed is right in education for decades. Teachers are assumed as administrators of a finished knowledge, which is fragmented into areas of knowledge, to give to the students in small costs, during all, this scheme no longer works, because we are currently facing two paradoxes. On the one hand, the existence of a superabundance of information in the sources and an extreme scarcity of relevant information; and on the other, that the human being has progressed in the management of knowledge. This in turn requires the search and the discovery of new knowledge. The problem of this thesis is contextualized in the radical transformation that tertiary and higher education has experienced since the second half of the 20th century (Aguila, 2005). Transformation that, by the way, continues in course without decanting even in a fixed form. The quantitative growth of higher education, with the consequent inclusion in it of increasingly broad social strata, not only transforms it into one of the archetypal experiences of life in this historical stage, marked by new "middle sectors", but rather , if we believe in the liberal proclamations, in the theory of human capital and in neo-Marxism (all different currents but which coincide in this), it is projected as one of the fundamental economic activities of today, distributing in subjects the legitimate social use of its own productive force (Altbach, Gumport, & Berdahl, 2011). Knowledge is experienced as the gold of our time, and higher education, in addition, as its quarry.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

During the twentieth century, the pact between State and University, symbolized by the Humboldtian model, set the boundaries between the process of modern bureaucratization and the legacy of this millenary institution. Today those borders are no longer valid. The old University explodes. Its practices are secularized and spread throughout society, while the production and distribution of knowledge is identified less and less with the old university form (Altbach & Knight, 2006). From this clash emerges an unprecedented panorama, that of contemporary higher education, which forces the sociologist to look at him with interest, since there are fundamental processes of constitution of the key social actors of today; and the educational expert to consider, much more than yesterday, how much education is crossed by the social trends that shelter and transcend it. It is a true academic revolution (Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2009). The challenge he proposes for sociology is enormous, but pertinent, if one considers that sociology is the science of the transformations imposed by modernization.

Among all the manifestations of a change of such a deep scope, in principle infinite, highlights the tendential application of quality semantics to higher education, its internal processes, its management, and its relationship with society and the State (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). The concern for the quality of higher education, which is imported from the modern management of large corporations, is installed at the same rate of growth and expansion, whether driven by the State or the market (Archer, 2010). Although privatization has perhaps been the central topic of discussion in recent years, because of market entry into the production and distribution of knowledge, this topic is limited in its explanatory potential of its new features. Public higher education continues to be a fundamental axis of development in most Western countries (Arum & Roksa, 2011). In several countries, it is a majority in enrollment and in academic production. The category of privatization fails to comprehensively address the changes it is undergoing. The implementation of quality, on the other hand, goes through its recent modernization

Such transversality is, largely, what explains its solidity. Today, virtually all countries have institutions that accredit, certify and ensure quality. These instances are even projected to supra-national levels. The rankings of institutions and programs proliferate more every day (Ball, 2007). The use of semantic quality extends to almost anything that has to do with tertiary education. Unlike privatization, quality has defenders of center, left and right; appears, increasingly, as a technical and necessary breakthrough of any change you want to undertake in the field of education (Ball, S, & Youdell, 2007). The rationalization that all this causes in the processes and products of higher education is also a constituent of the academic life of today; The same occurs with an increasingly instrumental and strategic relationship of subjects with higher education, mediated by objective quality indicators.

Quality covers the agenda of tertiary education; it is the north of governments, entrepreneurs, institutions and people. However, at the same time that it is searched hard, it is difficult to give a common and accepted definition about it. Experts call, in fact, to waste no time trying (C. J. E. Ball, 1985, Harvey & Green, 1993, Vroeijenstijn, 1995). The unambiguous centrality of this concept, associated with the promise of modernization of higher education, concurs in unison with the difficulty of its definition and rational understanding, and therefore, properly modern (Barrera-Osorio, 2006). The more we talk about quality as a promise of objectification, the more liquid it becomes

Nevertheless, it is not just about defining quality. In many concrete experiences, and especially in our own country, the semantics of quality arises as the symbolic shell of every solution to the reproductive effect of education, as a promise of massive and just distribution of the good that was previously exclusive to a narrow elite (Barrie, Ginns, & Prosser, 2005). In UK, quality has been the response of the regime to the succession of social conflicts that question our educational model, perhaps the most commercialized of the entire world. The educationalization of inequality and of society itself, although it is a global trend, is particularly intense in every country (Bingham & Ottewill, 2001). Without rights guaranteed by the State, and with an acute concentration of income, recent governments have presented education as the fundamental mechanism for building equal opportunities. In the absence of a democratic legitimation and a State that integrates organized actors, the effectiveness of education in this sense is an essential source of the legitimacy of Chilean capitalism (Brooks, 2005). The meritocratic promise of reproductive education and segregation in the facts has placed quality, from the point of view of the regime, as its main educational goal. In 2006 and 2011, the proliferation of quality agencies, resources and policies has continued. It would be impossible to quote here all the documents and public reports that put the hope of a more just society in quality education.

Because of the transversality of its deployment, because of the thorny nature of its substantive definition, and because of its role in the conflicts that emerge from current education, quality constitutes a relevant and relevant observable of the contemporary modernization of higher education, and therefore, of the actors that drive it and suffer it (Bellei & Orellana, 2014). It is not about understanding it in a technical or operational sense. The literature that constitutes and surrounds exhaust these objectives with sufficient rigor. Nor is it attempted to subject it to normative judgment or empirical or political criticism (Biggs, 2005). It is about understanding it in a sociological sense, as a social relation that occurs in the epicenter of recent modernization, whether its axioms and indicators are real or illusory.

From The University Of Excellence to Quality Higher Education. The New Paradigm

The application of the semantics of quality in higher education has been one of the most repeated topics in the intellectual debate on the transformations of post-secondary education. It has enthusiastic promoters as well as bitter critics and skeptics. However, this work does not seek to take sides in this debate (Bourdieu & Passeron 2009). If the application of quality semantics to higher education is something good or bad, convenient or inconvenient, it is the subject of other discussions. There is need to elaborate a set of categories that allow understanding it in a sociological sense. The first step in this path is to describe and contextualize the tendential application of quality semantics in higher education.

The Context: The Great Social Transformations

As is known, higher education at the international level has undergone profound transformations since the mid-20th century until today. From the traditional and clear figure of the modern research university, we move towards a dynamic and growing space of professional training and scientific research. This space - like any emerging phenomenon - has diffuse borders with the social, political and economic dynamics that surround it; It is also heterogeneous institutionally, massive and tending to universality, and is in a process of constitution still unfinished (Butler & Van Zanten, 2007). These changes are profound and have multiple dimensions. The exercise of describing them and tackling them one by one opens up infinite possibilities. For that reason, to understand their dynamics in a sense of totality and substantive, they can be interpreted in the context of the new modernization patterns of contemporary capitalism, in particular, the transition from an industrial societal type to a post-industrial one or the emergence of the so-called "knowledge society"; and the expansion of the market associated with the welfare crisis and the rise of neoliberal policies (Carnevale & Rose, 2003).

Regarding the first of these patterns, the transformation of higher education is at the heart of a major transformation: the emergence of post-industrial society and the growing centrality of knowledge, science and technology in the creation of value. This is the starting point of key authors in the sociology of contemporary capitalism and of the most popular theoretical approaches to interpreting higher education (Bell, 2006, B. R. Clark, 1973). It is also a central aspect of the theory of human capital, which attempts to demonstrate that investment in knowledge -especially in higher education- explains the economic advantage of advanced countries, beyond the classical factors of production (Becker, 1993).

In the emerging new societal type, skilled work is not exclusive to a small group. The expansion of knowledge workers or technicians would be the substantive structural transformation in Western societies in recent decades. This would make the middle classes the main social category of today, as well as intellectual, human or scientific capital, a valued form of wealth. In addition to calling the attention of the intellectual discussion - from perspectives as diverse as those of Touraine, Gouldner, Bell, Drucker, Becker or Friedman - this change is projected as a more widespread cultural image, and has an impact on life expectancy of the subjects. The main disseminator of management theories, author of several bestsellers on the subject, coined the concept "knowledge society" to describe the new horizon. In particular, the way in which it would affect the life projects of the people: Specialized knowledge expands with the systematic growth of education at all levels of professionals as a social layer and of occupations that demand formal academic education.

These processes stress the old university institutions as the movement of the tectonic plates transforms the geographical panorama. Subjecte...