Fordism and postfordism. Social control and education

Fordismo y postfordismo. Control social y educación

The present text forms part of a research process implemented to earn the author’s master’s degree in higher education at the Universidad Santiago de Cali, with the thesis entitled The Specific Contributions of Virtual Environments to Teaching-learning Processes in University Settings. It seeks to establish a panorama of the current context in which the university exists as an institution, and the global tendencies that involve economic models as part of educational processes. By way of documentary research, a bibliographic review of various authors who specialize in pedagogy was performed, so as to subsequently implement an analysis of the connections between these forms of work organization, changes in the pedagogical models that are predominant in society at one time or another, and the current higher education quality situation in Colombia. As a central idea, it was found that the apparent transcendence of pedagogical models, based on the Fordist-behavioral concept of education, beyond signifying an evolution in educational processes, is a way to reorganize university models to train professionals who are better-adapted to the new Postfordist-neofordist industrial systems, and who are less interested in proposing social change or reflections about fairer, more human economic-industrial models.