Higher Education Law: The Faculty

CONTENTS. Part One: Aim and Scope of the Law and Definitions. .. e) Faculty: An institution of higher education conducting high-level education, scholarly.
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The number of enrollments in HE more than doubled, going from 1,, in to 3,, in Between and , the number once again nearly doubled, going up to 7,, The higher number of enrollments was still with the private sector. HE expansion by means of the private sector was privileged, to the detriment of the public sector. However, a significant growth in the number of enrollments in public HE was verified, especially after In order to reach the goals set by federal government and recommended by international organizations, public HE institutions were reorganized by means of time and space optimization guidelines, growth and creation of new programs, reduction and flexibilization of human and material resources.

Measures destined to incentive the growth of public HE took on a leading role. On the other hand, private HE also continued to be fostered, with a new element: All these actions strongly affected HE teaching, by creating new tasks and demand, without actually offering proper work conditions.

As a consequence, faculty and school management face work that is at once intensified and precarious. Faculty members are under the pressure of various evaluation modalities, which contribute to heavier accountability and even guilt, to the introduction of new forms of financial retribution associated to student performance goals, to the conformity to school ranking mechanisms, which are fundamental to the functioning of the market to which it intends to conform.


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According to Lima Filho , this model differs from universities, as it is directed to immediate labor market placement, instead of focusing on research and academic, scientific, ethical and political studies. Such a model took a privileged place among Brazilian education policies after ; it modeled education as linked to the needs and demands of Local Productive Arrangements LPAs , which begin in basic education, by means of technical courses integrated to secondary education.

In this scenario, Law FIs, in their new institutionality , are presented as variously advantageous, as they may answer some local problems in Brazilian society: FIs are thus more economic and flexible than universities, which is in line with international requirements. Licentiate undergraduate programs are helpful in various fronts: Technology undergraduate programs offered by the institution provide quick training, directed towards the production of specific knowledge. Engineering graduate programs contribute to the training of labor force responsible for the production of goods with high aggregate value, which favorably influence trade balance in a globalized world.

Contrary to expectations, FIs have stumbled across difficulties and contradictions, as they search to help solve the aforementioned social problems. As an example, faculty members involved HE programs offered by FIs are not required to have pedagogical training themselves. As a consequence, faculty members in various licentiate and pedagogical training courses are not, themselves, licentiates OTRANTO, In this large and complex institution fulfilling a social role, basic, technical and technological education faculty members are protagonists in one of the trends in the current wave of HE expansion.

Their actions call attention, as they take place in the midst of successive construction and reconstruction processes, which significantly alter the goals the institution has to reach. These goals encompass understanding various different aspects, alongside reaching government-imposed expansion goals in a sometimes overly short period of time. Furthermore, there is a lack of material conditions, from personnel to infrastructure. Teachers also have to answer to the expectations of the population as well as to those of the productive sectors of the region in which the FI is located — once again lacking the means and the necessary understanding of what all this implies.

Their work attributions demand growing flexibility a close dealing with students and with various work environments MELO, The work of these teachers is thus marked by the intrinsic complexity of PTE, allied with the heterogeneity of HE. Teaching for neither HE nor PTE is regulated in the form of a specific program, which strengthens concerns about the lack of qualified teachers in these areas.

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FI teachers are also required to hold a nearly organic relation to LPAs, which further lays stress on their work. Grischke believes this link implies a new institutionality , which entails a more flexible and innovative configuration in relation to the organization of teaching and schoolwork.

To this is added the tension caused by a series of government measures which came about in , in the midst of the structural rearrangement. Among these measures, we may cite the micro labor reform — sanctioned by Laws In face of these cuts, which point to public education privatization, how to keep on working and still consolidate HE expansion with quality? This is what has been concerning education workers, and has prompted a series of strikes in the past years. At the same time, a project regulating outsourcing was approved, and the Supreme Federal Court ruled in favor of hiring personnel into the public sector by means of Social Organizations.

These measures put to risk rights and guarantees of public workers, as well as the offer of free services and their quality. The discourse therein advanced counters many of the claims of faculty, student body and personnel, and furthers the business-oriented education reform, announced in and guided by accountability, meritocracy and privatization FREITAS, FI teachers are also under pressure by external evaluation processes.

Both FIs and other HE institutions are increasingly adopting a quantitative approach to faculty work. The incessant search for goals and figures has been disturbing the routine of HE institutions, and places teachers at the mercy of institutional bureaucracy, under psychological pressure, labor overload and often frustration, as the same government which sets goals does not offer the necessary means for their fulfillment, while evaluating them, holding them accountable and punishing them.

Evaluation results have, in general, been used to justify competence differentiation, and even classify and rank within the same institution, thus serving as criterion for the allotment of resources. This evaluation model has been very important in establishing and consolidating a market-oriented logic within HE institutions.

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It enabled performance control in face of the establishment of standards; the fostering of efficiency and productivity in the fulfillment of institutional tasks as instruments of economic development; the setting of utilitarian and homogenizing interests, which demand standardization of information, evaluation and accountability, with a view to reach goals; the setting of ranks allowing qualitative leveling, thus stimulating competition SERAFIM, In face of so many tensions, the first years of teaching in FIs were turbulent, as may be observed in the variously motivated and shaped struggles within the FPTEN.

Their agenda highlighted the search of better work conditions and quality public education. The passing of Law The equivalence obtained in the composition of pay between both types of career should be highlighted. This context leads to lowering the quality of teaching work in the FIs, which is visible in hiring conditions, amount of time dedicated to work and work regime.

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Despite public HE institutions being those that hire the highest number of full and part-time teachers, there are other types of hour-based wages substitute and temporary. These supposedly more efficient and economic contracts veer towards the adoption of a new managerial model in the likeness of flexible labor market. Simultaneously, full-time contracts have not secured better conditions for full dedication to research and services within HE institutions.

The wave of teaching work overload and loss of quality in virtue of the reconfiguration movement afflicting Brazilian HE institutions is in progress. HE expansion policies lead towards an increasingly marked-oriented view characterized by: The case of IFNMG, as an institution undergoing ifetization , and, at the same time, as an agent in HE expansion, was studied with a view to know the changes imposed on institutions in the process of their conversion into FIs. The data collection instruments used were, therefore, observation, documentary research and interviews. Observations and documentary research helped in the characterization of IFNMG, in the understanding of the process of conception, implementation and offering of undergraduate programs, as well as the assessment of performance of teachers in these programs.

The interviews sought to identify the perception faculty members have of the changes in the institution and in their work. Ten teachers were interviewed, with varying profiles: The goal was to consider their different points of view on ifetization. The information gathered was divided into four categories: These were further subdivided 7 so as to present details of the process of the transformation of the institution into an FI and of the repercussion of this transformation in the work of faculty members.

Such tensions become evident in their account on the pleasure and pain in teaching, and in the acknowledgment or lack thereof of certain situations they were experiencing in the ifetization context and in the expansion of the institution and of its undergraduate programs. The speech of those teachers holding management positions displayed stronger alignment with institutional and governmental discourse; however, they acknowledged the challenges posed by the increasing workload of teachers, and by the concurring expansion processes of both the institution and its undergraduate programs.

In the account of teachers not involved in management, institutional expansion-related problems, such as lack of human and material resources, were more readily pointed and acknowledged, as they were directly affected thereby. To varying degrees, all teachers noticed the change under which IFNMG was going, and pointed to difficulties raised by the speedy expansion both the institution and its courses were going through in recent years. Two federal and independent institutions ceased to exist in order to birth a single autarchy.

This was not a simple union, and took place under an atmosphere of tension, insecurity, expectations and anxieties in face of the vertical character of this new higher education model. Eleven new schools were grouped around one head office, with a rector.

The institutional colors, their flags and coats-of-arms were extinct so a single and common identity could be adopted by all FIs spread around the country. A new configuration demands of teachers dynamism and ability to adapt themselves to a new institutionality , which makes their teaching and managing activities more complex. In the case of PROEJA, difficulties stem from the fact that teachers must face students with very specific pedagogical needs, without ever having had training to do so.

The same reason may account for the insufficient number of licentiate programs — a type of program historically marked by the under-appreciation and low social status of teachers and high dropout rates, alongside the difficulties that bachelor teachers face in training licentiates, which leads to both internal e. Regarding autonomy, Law The attempts to bring IFNMG closer to productive sectors and have it serve market interests are visible. Research developed must be applied to the advancement, innovation and development of productive sectors; service must be of a technical nature; teaching must train qualified work force, supply the APLs demands and thus favor market interests.

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Some of the teachers interviewed uncritically incorporated official discourse pertaining the link between FIs and LPAs. Others did not know or acknowledge this link. This represents a risk, in face of the mercantilization of public HE in place since the s, which has the infrastructure and personnel of HE institutions cater for private sector interests. In general, ifetization is positively viewed by the subjects, as it caused the institution to grow, gave it autonomy to propose new courses, increased personnel and gave access to more resources to be invested on infrastructure, equipment and materials.

They also approve the fact that IFNMG spreads towards the countryside and makes the offer of public higher education more democratic on the northern region of Minas Gerais. However, many subjects stated that the increment in funding, however large, was still insufficient to properly accommodate the expansion goals set for the institution. Personnel also grew significantly, but in numbers still insufficient to answer the demands posed by the consolidation process.

Complaints about lack of personnel were frequent, especially regarding management and technical services to support teaching activities. Such a gap has teachers take over managerial positions, which weakens the quality of their work, as it becomes heavier.

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The increase in HE offers is one of the most significant changes within the institution. Teachers were markedly interested in such offer, which, according to some, would cause the institution to rank higher in terms of status and social recognition. They offered other reasons for approving of this offer, related to an improvement in teacher-student relations, which would be favored by having a more mature student body. The University of Durham also has a Dean of Colleges, who is chosen from the various college principals and masters and takes a parallel role to the faculty deans in university-wide debate.

Each of the colleges of the University of Lancaster has a Dean in charge of student discipline. In a Canadian university or a college, a dean is typically the head of a faculty , which may include several academic departments. Many universities also have a Dean of Graduate Studies, responsible for work at the postgraduate level in all parts of the university.

The job description for deans at the University of Waterloo is probably typical, and reads in part, "The dean of a faculty is primarily a university officer, serving in that capacity on the senate, appropriate major committees and on other university bodies. As university officer, the dean has the dual role of making independent judgments on total university matters and representing the particular faculty's policies and points of view. The dean should oversee the particular faculty's relations with other faculties to ensure that they are harmonious and serve the total university's objectives.

The dean will report directly to the vice president, academic and provost. Some universities also have a dean of students, responsible for aspects of welfare and discipline and serving as an advocate for students within the institution. In Bulgarian universities, a dean is the head of a faculty , which may include several academic departments. Every faculty unit of university or academy. The Dean can appoint his deputies: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It is not to be confused with the Scottish legal position Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. Archived from the original on 12 June Retrieved 24 November Archived from the original on 17 October Archived from the original on 16 February Retrieved 16 March Retrieved from " https: Use dmy dates from June Views Read Edit View history.

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