Homo academicus in Transition

Abstract

Modern universities, especially the ones not belonging to the small elite group from the top of the world ranking lists, but occupying the slippery terrain of the open market of the “economy of knowledge”, are forced to change the traditional, habitual modes of work, principles and values, and are considered obliged to perform as more competitive, responsible, and efficient in the eyes of the society and the world of the new era. Broadly, this is the framework of the explanation of the huge scientific-professional hyperproduction treating the university changes, both in the world context and our domestic one. Here the focus is on the Belgrade University and the modes in which the members of this institution relate to the changes in the socio-economic, political, and cultural context, that influence the development of the local academic community and its “culture”. The paper is the result of the research conducted during 2022 and 2024, based mainly on the interviews with several full professors of the Belgrade University. The aim has been to reach the most authentic insight into the experience of working at this University during the 30-year long period of transition in Serbia. According to the statements of my interviewees, the “Bologna reform” in the widest sense of this term is habitually taken to represent the reference point of the higher education “transition”, according to which we can observe the key changes in this area, directly or indirectly linked to the process of the wider social transition. The vast material was first systematized according to the chronological principle, dividing the process of transition into three decades, where my interlocutors compared the conditions and changes that accompanied and determined the university work. The material was then systematized according to the qualitative principle, singling out the most important changes that the interviewees experienced themselves or observed in their surroundings, in respect to two basic functions of university: teaching and research. The theoretical-methodological postulation of this approach is that the members of an academic community share the so-called “academic culture” and that the characteristics of this culture and the ways it changes (or remains the same) may only be approached by focusing on individuals and the modes in which they change their social actions, interpret and modulate the newly acquired culture, due to the pressures of the changing conditions.