HIGHER EDUCATION AND SOLIDARITY: an institutional turn against the society of merit

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of higher education, especially with regard to its new guidelines on extension and student access mechanisms, to build a more supportive and less competitive society. Working with ideal types, from a genealogical perspective, we show the origins and contemporary influence of the “University Mode 2” model, proposed by sociologist Michael Gibbons, emphasizing its adherence to an individual anthropology and an appreciation of meritocracy. The article presents a critique of this paradigm whilst redeeming a solidary anthropology, with the aim of thinking about a higher education project capable of reducing the perverse effects of a competitive society. Based on the reconstruction of social processes methodology and the resignification of the thesis by historian Burton J. Bledstein, it draws on the hypothesis that higher education can be the main institution to transform the dynamics of this social reality.