The Corporization of a Public University with Free Undergraduate Education: Endangering Autonomy at the University of Buenos Aires
Abstract
In this article we will argue that, despite offering free undergraduate education, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) has become a market university. As all the other public universities in Argentina, the UBA offers free undergraduate education in all its faculties. Maybe this is why this university has not called the attention of the economic literature when analysing the development of what has been called the academic enterprise (Larsen, 2011), the academic capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), the market-university (Berman, 2011) or the entrepreneurial university (Etzkowitz, 2008; Etzkowitz et al., 1998). This transformation not only affected its autonomy, orienting teaching and research, but it has also reduced the UBA’s researchers time to perform new or creative research encouraging faculty to sell technical assistances and other routine activities…