Social Imaginaries and University Self-assessment

Abstract

The article refers to university self-assessment with an eye towards institutional accreditation founded on a framework of guidelines involving what can be considered as quality in higher education. It is based on the results of two studies that were used in the process to accredit the University of Caldas. The first sought to become familiar with the everyday life at the university, through the imaginaries of professors and students. The second constructed a system of self-assessment for the university, with a view towards institutional accreditation, based on an analysis of the imaginaries of its communities. The article proposes a form of self-assessment that rescues the voice of communities, inasmuch as quality is a social construction. The studies in question adopted an approach that is based on ethnographic complementarity. Accordingly, the ethnographic method was used, with life histories, in-depth interviews and group discussions taken as a reference. The archeological method was employed as well. The system of relevance and opacity was used as a means of interpretation, in addition to a survey, with the statistical basis needed to secure the quantitative information required to expand the qualitative foundation that was obtained. In summary, the article shows how the circumstances of university life do not depend on the criteria established beforehand in rules and regulations, projects and plans, but are deconstructed constantly in everyday life, generating other categories of quality not foreseen in those criteria, or affording value to others that are barely visible within the logic of the institution.