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Faculty Promotion Policy and the Academic Capitalist Regime: Professors’ Actions in Two Colombian Academic Departments

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Abstract

Empirical research has explored the relationship between professors and the academic capitalist regime. Nevertheless, this literature has mainly focused on fields heavily engaged with industry at top-ranked research universities in English-speaking countries. In this paper, we analyze the link between faculty promotion policy and professors as agents who introduce (or resist) the academic capitalist regime in the Colombian context. In order to cover heterogeneity among professors and higher education institutions, we consider two dissimilar academic departments at one public university. This multicase study examines how Colombian professors translate faculty promotion policy into actions on both intra- and inter-department levels. The findings indicate that the unique context of each academic department fostered or hindered professors in moving toward “the ideal professor,” as promoted by the analyzed policy. In terms of academic capitalism, regardless of the academic department, professors did not internalize the inclusion of profit motive as part of their research activities. However, some professors were guided by prestige behavior through (but not limited to) the academic journal publishing market. This article concludes by highlighting the need to incorporate prestige behavior as part of the theory of academic capitalism.

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Acknowledgements

We want to give special thanks to the research participants for generously sharing their ideas and experiences with us. We also appreciate the reviewers’ comments and suggestion which were very useful in developing this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Área de Organización, Dirección y Estrategia, Universidad EAFIT, Medellín, Colombia

    Isabel C. Montes

  2. Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia

    Danny Garcia-Callejas

  3. Área Gestión de la Información y Riesgos, Universidad EAFIT, Medellín, Colombia

    Carmen Ocampo-Salazar

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  1. Isabel C. Montes
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Correspondence to Isabel C. Montes.

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Montes, I.C., Garcia-Callejas, D. & Ocampo-Salazar, C. Faculty Promotion Policy and the Academic Capitalist Regime: Professors’ Actions in Two Colombian Academic Departments. High Educ Policy 36, 804–825 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-022-00289-7

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