UNIVERSIDAD DEL VALLE

ESCUELA DE CIENCIAS DEL LENGUAJE

LICENCIATURA EN LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS

PROFESORA: SOL COLMENARES

ESTUDIANTES: GUSTAVO QUINTERO Y GINA MARCELA VILLAFAÑE

THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY

(A STUDENTS PERPECTIVE FROM BREAKING THE SILENCE TEXT)

The text gives us a critic view of university’s’ relations installed in the modern concepts of academia, considering the previous conceptualization about the influence of the social and political development through history in work relationships, it also underlines the vertiginous theoretical swiftness, as a result of net-world society which allows fast communication but befuddling the mental process of conceptualization.

The author also considers there are another facts that should be analyzed, like personal concerns, when choosing a work, related with payment; insecurity and anxiety, and how the institutional bureaucratic and political practices influence the professional and Academics’ personal life, all this as the result of a structural transformation, corporatization, privatization of the university, where education is being instrumentalised in service of industry.

A reconfiguration of academic relationships in market terms have produces the degradation of payment and work conditions, even this, academics have assumed a non-critical and passive attitude, the subsequent effects, in our context, are the bureaucratic corruption in the management of public sources and an administration of power in Academic relations, commonly seen as the favoritism of those who belong to the closest circle of those who “Administrates”, this favoritism is commonly evident, as the text says, in the PhD supervision, the discussion about workload or promotion.

Our immediate academic context, the University of Valle, seen through the text glasses and its considerations about neoliberalism and its market dynamics, where everything could be seen as countable and standardized, make us think about, how deeply the actual academic work relationships are involved with the concept of “Compulsory Individuality” where academics and their daily development it’s been supervised  and audited, quality process for accreditation are the evidence about how the neo-liberal concept of academia it’s being developed in our academic vicinity. What is considered in the text about the economic rationality in terms of productivity, the epistemological field and the results of its interaction between those who practice its discipline, all this conceived as “rendered knowable and calculable in terms of quantifiable outputs” it’s an actual reality, non a theoretical fact, and indeed not just an English VII task.

Besides, the author present a bitter view toward the extra workload born out in the neo-liberal  University; he complains about both, silence and marks reflected inside of an academic world due to a punishing intensification of work has become in an academic feature, according to the author.

In one hand are acceptable his comments because types of neoliberal jobs try to do more things in less time, in addition they are able to exploit a person and cope all his free time, rather than understand people can’t cover all tasks an academic field demands.

On the other hand I think a pedagogical world requires a committed and devotional labor at the point of a person includes own time to attend all kind of requirements this field demands. Moreover the professor should organize the time to deal with the needs.

In conclusion a neoliberal academic life involves self-monitoring, flexibility, creativity and internalization of new forms of reviewing to instigate the hard work and achieve resistance in individual practices.