Abstract:

Immersed in a local and global contextualized higher education expansion process, the Mexican academic profession has undergone a profound reconfiguration during the last decades. Its socio-demographic, training, work, attitudes and career have all change in a significant way, particularly amongst full-time academics. During this period, policies directed at public higher education have centered on a performance-based funding scheme that has generated a strong stratification amongst institutions, students and faculty. Created in 1984, the National Researchers System (SNI), the first such policy, was directed at full-time faculty involved in research and served as a seed for future policies. This paper discusses the role of SNI as a key element not only in the reconfiguration of the academic profession, but also in the emergence of an academic meritocracy that sits on top of a pyramid in terms of resources and prestige within the academic profession, many of whose members are excluded from adequate working conditions and recognition. Considering this situation as unsustainable, the proposal is made to move the SNI merit-based logic that now applies to all faculty working at a public higher education institution, into each institution individually, where its mission would play a central rol in determining faculty work, career and rewards. By making academic work and careers root in each of the institutions in which faculty work, the proposal aims at building an inclusive meritocracy much in need at this stage of Mexican higher education.

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