Work at the University and the Common Good

The Commodification of Research and Digital Governance

Abstract

We will now discuss the meaning of university work today, especially about the dominant conception of research and teaching in higher education. Our hypothesis is that the understanding of the meaning of university teaching and research occurs today within a conceptual horizon determined by the commodification of knowledge; meritocratic management (allocation of resources in exchange for productivity), and digital governance, which, contrary to expectations, ends up resulting in the qualitative degradation of the system. We will analyze the traditional conception of the university as a public, free and autonomous institution, oriented to safeguard knowledge as an indivisible and inappropriable common good and teaching work as a task developed under the models of statutory work and public service. We will discuss the concept of distributive justice, which has served as the basis for much of the contemporary discussion on the right to higher education and the public nature of the university. Finally, we will consider the transformations that took place in market society since the 1980s and how these transformations affected the university, placing it in conflict with its own tradition and with its public character.