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RECRUITING TEACHERS

The quality of research carried out at a university essentially depends on the researchers who work there and the institutional environment conducive to scientific research. Therefore, one of the central issues is the way in which the university hires its teachers. In the coming years, with the growing number of retirements and the expected and desired expansion in the number of undergraduate students, there will be a need to make new hires in significant numbers. There are risks and opportunities in this process of faculty renewal.

The most important strategic question for a hiring policy has to do with the question: “what kind of university would we like to have in a decade or two?” Or, even, “what kind of university can we build to give the greatest return to society, taking into account available resources and cyclical limitations?”

The problem goes beyond the simple question of systematically replacing teachers or depending on the needs of the teaching load. It includes:

1) the identification of topics of scientific-technological relevance that are not being developed appropriately in the institution;

2) prospecting topics relevant to the social and cultural development of the region and the country that are not being addressed in the institution;

3) the development of a policy to correct these deficiencies.

Today we know how to hire young doctors who will carry out their research in the different groups or laboratories existing in the units and institutes with a reasonable degree of effectiveness. In other words, we know how to fill tables at the beginning of our careers. These hires generally result from requests from already consolidated work groups. They often refer to the incorporation of elements from the proposing team itself.

However, the Brazilian University has not, as a rule, been able to hire professors with a significant number of years of experience in topics that are of interest to the university and society. In other words, we don't know how to attract potential academic leaders to start new research groups. We can only offer a salary, which is generally not attractive enough. This characteristic of the hiring system, as well as the considerations that follow, are not only a heritage of Unicamp, but of all Brazilian public universities.

As a result of this policy (or lack of policy), there is a serious risk of some teaching and research units being frozen thematically. In the last two decades, despite the emergence of numerous new areas of research, the creation of new research groups at Unicamp was often due to internal divisions of existing groups. It is obvious that we cannot aspire to have all specialties in a University, but the choice of which among them will be developed should not be the result of chance, but rather strategic planning. To have a dynamic institution, capable of keeping pace with international technical-scientific and artistic development and better serving the society that supports it, it is essential to improve the process of attracting and retaining new researchers at the University.

One of the possible ways to attract researchers with great potential would be to offer a “layette”, institutionally negotiated. Such a trousseau would include resources to fund research for a few years, including funds for equipment, consumables, travel, grants and, why not, even a supplementary salary benefit, along the lines of the CNPq productivity grant. It is instructive to note that competition between institutions to attract the best researchers, a healthy practice that is common in one way or another in more developed countries, is practically non-existent in our country. A legacy of a still recent era, when the number of good institutions was very small, the immobility that characterizes the researcher's career in the country requires new mechanisms capable of promoting greater fluidity in the system.

Temporary hiring for a period of a few years ending in a public competition for permanent employment is an appropriate mechanism as long as, here again, the panels, both for initial selection and competition, have strong external participation and are defined by purely academic criteria. This system avoids early stability, a true straitjacket for the university's creative capacity.

In any case, the essential thing is to keep the objective of hiring the best researchers alive, taking into account institutional objectives, which requires an intense and permanent task of raising awareness. Hiring should not be done just to replace those who retire or resign, nor just to cover teaching needs. The definition of departments or units that are entitled to a vacancy must be based on well-founded proposals covering research and teaching aspects. Such proposals must be analyzed by committees with strong participation of members external to the university, whose nomination must be based exclusively on merit and competence.


 
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