The academic process and its administration in higher education

Summary

The approach to academic management as an economic process, which has "inputs" of material and human inputs, a process of transformation and production of knowledge, as well as the generation of an academic service - either that of teaching or that of the solution of a complex scientific or technical problem, be it the extension of the scientific culture - which is also literally a production of services and has outputs that are new knowledge, publications, technological applications, elaborated methodologies, comprehensive technology packages, patents, productions of various editions in different types of media, event service, conventions, specialized training, classes, updating conferences,The organization of the academic process and many other products make academic activity a tacit field of application for Business Administration.

For this study, the organization of academic activity at the level of the basic cell of the organizational system is taken as reference: that of the teaching department. In practice, it is oriented to the foundation of academic management, such as business administration, taking as a reference and analysis the case of the Department of Economic Studies of the University of Cienfuegos, where the authors of this work work.

The work reflects one of the fundamental results of the author's master's thesis entitled "The administration of academic work as a business activity in the teaching department" where a description of the fundamental processes of academic activity and its administration in higher education.

Introduction

The scope of the academic activity

The administration of academic management in Higher Education increasingly shows its complexity by the multilateral nature of its relations and by the interrelations it reaches with a long list of aspects, both internal to the education system itself, and external, that belong to the environment. in which they operate.

The complexity that, for the reasons indicated, distinguishes the academic process of higher education, and therefore its administration, makes it necessary to confront it with a different system. It is that this complexity, less and less, accepts improvisation based on good intentions and desires, on noble purposes or ideals. This process is currently demanding previous studies, scientifically supported forecasting, systematized management, an orientation towards service to society, with rigor in the projection, orientation, control, evaluation, adjustments and corrections of the system, which integrate continuous quality improvement processes to guarantee excellence.

Academic management is a complex process that involves the entry of diverse resources (tangible and intangible), a processing of the highest complexity that may exist (since it has to deal with the development of intellectual and emotional capacities, which involves aptitude and attitudinal), and generates outputs in the form of highly complex products (such as: new knowledge, professionalism, cognitive, investigative skills, solution capabilities in the discovery, formulation, approach and resolution of professional problems, seeking to minimize errors and successes are maximized in order to guarantee the continued progress of human society in balanced harmony with the nature to which it belongs).

The academic management process carried out by teaching departments usually present different complexity depending on the tasks that correspond to it. One of the most significant distinctions is associated with the fact that they have responsibility for a career or specialty or that they do not have work in this direction as content. The case studied here is precisely that of a structure known as a career department. This brings additional complexities to academic work, both in its conduct and in its forecasting, orientation, control, measurement and evaluation of results.

In the order of academic management, the first need that is evident is that of an integrative approach to the diversity and complexity of this type of activity, which requires a management system that adapts to this objective requirement of the process that will be conducted.. The direction of the teaching department in higher education, as the administration of academic activity, requires that it be considered in all its complex multilaterality. She is not present in the traditional hierarchical structure with which the administration of academic activity has been approached, and the system of regulations that govern this work does not currently contemplate it in this way.

The advances that appear with the introduction of the strategic approach to management in Higher Education have started a way of doing that contains within itself a new and interesting alternative to traditional management procedures, causing the germination of a style of Administration, bearing the formal possibility of solving the problem that today hinders management, and whose approach is oriented to this work with a foundation eminently from the economic substratum of the organization, while it conditions many of the other aspects of social activity.

Faced with this problem, in which the academic management of the teaching departments in the ESCs is developed, it has been proposed for this research, as a scientific problem: to check the viability of the approach of business administration to the work of the teaching department in higher education, taking as a reference and analysis base the case of the Department of Economic Studies of the University of Cienfuegos, where the author of the present thesis works in option to the degree of the Master in Business Administration.

The general objective of the research is: to offer, from the business administration perspective, a rational and viable alternative for the integrated administration of academic work in the teaching department of higher education, starting from considering the substantive tasks of this structural component., the complexity of the environment in which it operates, the increased demand of society towards these institutions, the demands to be met from the environment, the precision of the various processes that are intertwined in academic activity, the characteristics that must be guaranteed in the components (material and human resources) involved in it, the ways of controlling, registering, measuring, evaluating, normalizing, accrediting and certifying processes to guarantee their quality of excellence,strengthen efficiency, optimize the use of available resources, ensure sustained and sustainable growth and development of academic groups in the environment and direction that is socio-economically determined.

Management, as a discipline for applying scientific advances in various fields, has advanced rapidly in recent decades, exposing many aspects that are decisive in management management. An essential element of our times is the consideration of the determining role of the environment in the management of any organization. At the same time, the fact that this environment, in view of the expansion of the interdependence bonds that appear in contemporary society, driven by the internationalization of all the processes of social life, becomes increasingly universal, which has a high significance when it comes to the development of organizations and, in the case of academic activity, the importance of this reaches superlative degrees,insofar as it is directly conditioned by the advances of the sciences, and the development of these is not exclusive to a particular nation or group, but is the result of an extensive system of exchange, debate, cooperation and competition based on international framework.

The central hypothesis that has supported the development of the research is that the management of administration of an academic group under current conditions presents such a degree of complexity that the procedures traditionally accepted for it in Cuban higher education are not adequate given the purpose to ensure that management achieves degrees of efficiency and effectiveness that ensure the sustained elevation of quality aimed at academic excellence, which makes it necessary to resort to the experience accumulated in other areas of management, such as that which is housed within the scope of business management disciplines, with an economic focus.

This problem, which is present in the higher education system not only at the local or national level, but at the international level, is specified, manifested and, consequently, can be solved in the teaching department, since it is where the resource works human who gives or not the solution of the same. In the department it is where the substantive processes of the system are carried out: research, teaching and extension, it is where the highly qualified professional who owns the system is able or not to create, to produce, it is where the fertilization or extinction of the system is extinguished. Motivation for the development of the system is where the professionals' training process is assured, is where the investment is actually made and whether or not its effectiveness and efficiency are assured.In accordance with this, the Teaching Department in Higher Education becomes the basic cell of academic management, so that its management assumes a leading and decisive role in driving the academic process towards the sustainable quality that society demands of higher education.

Hence, what is related to the academic work environment ranges from the departmental collective framework, considering the individualities of its members, to the limits that encompass the trends, characteristics, requirements and components of the higher education system and the development of the sciences. internationally.

Development

Administration of the academic business in the Department of Economic Studies

The administrative management of academic work in the teaching department, as well as the planning activity, evaluation of internal and external environments, analysis and performance in the midst of competition and the management of material, financial and human resources with foresight and strategic projection, it raises a level of complexity to the activity at this structural level, which makes it necessary to start from a precision of the processes that comprise it in order to be clear on what type of business the administration activity should be deployed.

Until recently, the production systems of goods or services were focused on functional structures, where the stratification of the process, segmented into parts, took the form of functions, and the structural divisions were in charge of fulfilling those established functions. The expected result was the product (good or service) conceived, as a result of a flow through a chain. Such a gear, similar to the industrial chain link system for serial productions, was valid and represented a serious advance in the scientific organization of work in industry.

Although it was not due to the successes in one medium that their equal accomplishment in another was predictable, these methods were transplanted to other processes. However, the development itself and the experience of the development of the competition, were in charge of demonstrating, both the limitations of effectiveness in the industry when the technology was developed, and its lack of capacity to ensure the management of work in other conditions.

In particular, the most serious limitation that this system has is that of being unable to ensure an adequate organization of the process in the conditions when the creative role of the individual in making decisions to execute the production of the good or service, faces the impossibility of solutions given the restrictions that the functional model of the different segments that the process has fragmented prints on it.

In this way, the organization of the academic process, due to its content and nature of work that in practice is totally creative, requires its focus as a process, as opposed to the functional approach of the system, in which the tasks, responsibilities are segmented, The results are divorced, it is required by the resulting indicators, and no attention is paid to the management throughout a process, in order to achieve the planned results in a sustained manner and oriented towards the quality assurance of the final product.

In order to face these limitations of the system that works today, it is proposed how to organize the administration of academic activity in the department.

The processes of academic activity in the Department of Economic Studies.

The process of academic activity in the Department of Economic Studies has three components, which must be integrated. In essence they are, by necessity of the processes, integrable and manifest an internal coherence; they make up an indestructible trilogy. But when they are approached in isolation, each one is a heavy burden to carry out, each one opposes the other, and the priority activity of the three suffers the consequences of the lack of integration, manifested in the absence of quality, the difficulty of reaching relevance, the incompleteness that can be seen in various internal components of the process, be it investigative, teaching or extension.

The three substantive activities of higher education are, in fact, the processes that, integrated, make up the academic macroprocess. That is to say, scientific research, teaching and extension. Each in itself constitutes a process; but all interconnected have in the first one -the research- its essential conditioner, this process is the one that nurtures and unites the others, providing the base and means for teaching work and the foundations for extension, at the same time as in Its execution, either in the preparation, in the realization or in the dissemination of the results, develops the other two component processes of the academic work. However, both for the purposes of the organization of the academic process and its control, evaluation and projection of quality improvement, in order to normalize it,accredit and certify you as an activity of academic excellence, it is necessary to appreciate each one in their independence and also in their interrelationships.

The unfolding study of the referred processes has led us to clarify him regarding the essential components that make him up and the interconnections that this process presents within himself and his relations with other components of the environment.

Due to the complexity of the referred processes, this question is never sufficient and repeatedly referred, it turns out that the following presentation of them will never be complete and exhaustive; But it does allow us to have a more precise appreciation of these processes towards their interiors, in addition to constituting the indispensable starting point for us to propose their sequential and interdependent structuring in the work of the department, which allows us to foresee the normalization of procedures with the purpose of projecting the necessary processes to improve the quality of the processes to gain accreditation, standardization according to ISO-9004 of 2000 and to seek quality certification.

The description of the investigation process is conceived as follows:

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As can be seen in the scheme that represents the research process, the other two processes are already explicitly reflected from the research results (in the third stage) where the applications to teaching the research results are and the publications, patents, copyrights, software and reports, which are forms of dissemination or extension of the results.

However, the presence of the other two processes is not only reduced to the moments when they are explicit about the destination of the results. They are also implicit in the previous two stages. From the moment the detection of problems begins, contacts with potential clients, the collection of factual, theoretical, secondary and primary information, the teaching and extension processes are present.

The teaching of professionals in training within the undergraduate or active professionals who update, develop their training or enroll in the training process for obtaining scientific degrees, has been present since the beginning of the process. Professionals who are preparing for undergraduate studies are being incorporated into the process of detecting problems of the economic reality of the environment from the moment that, linked to the economic entities of the territory, they begin to fulfill the tasks of the investigative work component of the Plan of Studies. But the teaching process with a problem approach, based on the methodology of scientific research,From the first year of the degree program, work with and on problems in the real economy field begins with a scientific approach to its approach.

On the other hand, undergraduate and graduate students are the collaborators of teachers in the research process. Not only is it possible to achieve the advancement of scientific work, with a convenient organization of the collaborative process of all available resources, but it is the way to ensure coherence in technical scientific work in higher education. The principle here is: to learn to do by doing, to investigate and to solve with scientific procedure the problems of professional practice, investigating. Only by satisfying such organization of academic work within the teaching process is it possible to prepare professionals capable of independently developing their professional management once they graduate.

The process of extending economic culture in particular and university culture in general to the environment is, at the same time, an integral part of management within the process of scientific research. Starting the research process means taking to the analysis of the environment, in interaction with potential clients, the culture of facing the solution of economic problems of reality with scientific focus and rigor, an important moment of extension of university action in the medium in which the academy performs.

Parallel to the process of planning execution, carrying out planned tasks, evaluating partial results, obtaining, formulating and introducing the results, a systematic process of analysis of the results is developed in scientific sessions, in the work sessions of the Scientific groups that gather around the project, its stages, tasks, etc. This process has a double meaning: on the one hand it is a process of training researchers, of developing the scientist's own skills in the field of economic sciences, and while these teams will include professors, graduate and undergraduate students, It is a task, also of extension for the realization of workshops, seminars, debates, accountability,partial evaluations and other forms that scientific investigative work takes.

As can be seen, such an approach to the problem introduces a substantial modification to the conception of the academic process, seen in general. The role of the teacher is not limited to the process of transmitting information about what is already known, but incorporates the approach of the scientific problem, in whose solution and through it, it forms the necessary professional skills for the student. Likewise, the student joins a knowledge production process, a creative process that demands accelerated learning of knowledge accumulated in the profession, but at the same time raises questions about the incompleteness of the information to face its elaboration, developing the awareness of the imperfection of human knowledge and the development of the necessary skills for its completion,forming results presentation skills, and other important professional habits and values.

The teaching process, depending on the factors noted, is also modified. Now it is about developing the science that is professed and teaching the science that is developed, but through the exercise of their own development. This perspective of teaching is the one that is enclosed in the teaching-learning process based on the method of scientific research, to which we have been summoned by the direction of our organism for more than five years.

In such a way, the academic process is integrated by three intimately interrelated processes, whose graphic expression could be presented as follows:

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The description of the teaching process is conceived, as a simplified scheme, as follows:

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As can be seen from the simplified outline of the teaching-learning process presented above, this process is multiform and varied in its content and forms of implementation. Its different constituent parts count on the support that is presented as a background in the investigation process, seeking to imply its presence in relation to each of the constituent parts.

The teaching-learning process itself, in turn, is made up of a series of sub-processes, through which it develops. In order to design its components in more detail, the description of each component subprocess would be specified, which would be valid for the purpose of formulating quality improvement procedures; but this exceeds the purpose of the present work, and rather will constitute part of continuation of the study, with the aim of specifying a quality assurance system for the entire academic process, based on guaranteeing the academic excellence of higher education.

Finally, the third process, that of extension, can be reflected in the form of an outline as follows:

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The extension process presupposes, at the same time, like the previous ones, the presence of a multiformity of sub-processes that must be organized and managed in the Department of Economic Studies in order to extend to the environment the various results of own studies or results of the knowledge of the field of economic sciences achieved by humanity.

The development of extension management in the teaching department, at the same time, has the characteristic of demanding not only resources but important coordination with a series of environmental components: publishing houses, professional associations, companies, individual professionals, work groups, centers of studies, research teams, international organizations, other partner Universities and departments, and one more group of diverse institutions that specialize in promotion and extension management.

The complexity of the processes that the Department of Economic Studies faces in its management has been considered in its strategic analysis, and from which the projection of the strategy has been derived, based on its Mission and considering the Future Vision. of the same. This general work strategy of the Department is specified through five strategic objectives, within which the purposes in relation to the three essential processes of the system are specified first.

Structural proposal of the Department of Economic Studies to ensure the administration of the academic business.

In order to face the administration of the processes that make up the academic process, the operation of the system must adopt an organizational structure that overcomes the limitation of the determinations of functional areas, that facilitates the accelerated transmission of the information necessary for the management of the processes, that ensures the flexibility of the system to continuously face the adoption of the decisions most coherent with the characteristics of creative, changing processes and in interaction with the environment in which professionals in the field of economic sciences work.

Diagram of the organization of the Department of Economic Studies and its operation.

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Conclusions

It is necessary that the organization of the work of a teaching department of higher education (DEE) is carried out on the basis of operation with a flattened structure, which corresponds to the form of network (Outline of the Department project); This implies that the work is carried out as a team, based on and based on projects, conducted based on real leadership that requires the election (formal or informal) of the leaders.

Education (instruction, teaching and formation of values) has to be structured on the basis of the methods of scientific research. This implies that the classes are of the problem teaching type; that the practice is carried out on the basis of course projects with the structure of research projects, which enables students to learn and train by researching the profiles of the disciplines of the profession.

The Higher Education process is based on research; the fundamental activity of Higher Education is the research scientist, the fundamental result is the production of knowledge.

Professionals are trained in the scientific research process (theoretical capacity, practical skills to pose problems for their solution) and the forms that the production of the service of a CES takes are: New knowledge, developments or applications of knowledge as fundamental production for the university extension (books, manuals, standards, methodologies and others as supports for the fundamental product).

recommendations

1. Design in detail the processes to face the work of implementing the ISO 9004 standards of 2000 with a view to ensuring the excellence of the academic process.

2. Carry out a market study of the demand for academic services or products that the DEE offers towards the territorial and / or business environment

Bibliography.

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The academic process and its administration in Higher Education.

Content

1. Summary

2. Introduction

3. Administration of academic business in the Department of Economic Studies

4. The processes of academic activity in the Department of Economic Studies.

5. Conclusions

6. Bibliography.

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