The paranoia of promotors and the guilt of victims in the praxis of excel-lence in universities: towards a renewal of the desire to teach

Abstract

The University of Valencia was the only university in Spain which had not approved the Docentia programme until 2015. This program appeared in 2006, on the stage of the integration of the Spanish Higher Education System within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain (ANECA) proposed/imposed a new program sought to control and manage, in business terms, teaching (Dardot & Laval; 2013) to the whole of the Spanish public universities, in entrepreneurial terms the teaching activity. This work situates the program in the process of commodification of the Spanish public university where coexist on par excellence carrot and stick of precarious work and teaching, the paranoia of the excellence and the guilt of their victims. The example of the University of Valencia is used to show Union alternatives and educational responses. Then it is argued that the recovery of the public University, understood as a ’common good’, as well as teaching desire (Hill, 2015) passes through reactivates University ideological response and resistance movements.