Between excellence and demand: Impact of academic capitalism on Latin American universities

The development of this study focused on analyzing how academic capitalism has transformed the demands of scientific productivity in Latin American universities, for which a research with a mixed approach was carried out, taking into account the quantitative measured through surveys of 50 professors from Latin American universities such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, in addition to interviewing a group of 12 key informants, in reference to the scientific productivity required in the affiliated university institutions. The results indicate that, in these universities, there are requirements in terms of producing and publishing in journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus (Q1 and Q2) preferably, in addition to the fact that they must participate in local, national and international events where they represent the university, aspects that serve for their recognition and evaluation. It is concluded that these requirements are based on the fact that to the extent that academics manage to increase their metrics and indices, which measure the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and impact of projects and activities, this helps to keep the university where they are affiliated at the competitive vanguard, hence the process referred to academic capitalism, aimed at achieving excellence in Latin American universities.