Working conditions and the meaning of the academic profession in Colombian university professors

Résumé 0

"The aim of this research was to analyze the shaping of the meaning of the academic profession in 160 scholars, from public and private universities in four Colombian cities. The instrument QPW-5 (Questionnaire on Quality of Work life in Human Service Organizations) was applied. It was composed of 173 items distributed in five scales: Working Conditions, Perceived Workload, General Working Well-being, Maslach Burnout Inventory and Engagement, and five key words that define the work experience. This study was carried out following a quantitative approach, a non - experimental design with a cross-sectional descriptive correlation. A correlational analysis and Principal Component Analysis were performed to establish the pattern of the dimensions evaluated. The teachers surveyed showed general tendencies to shape their meaning of the academic profession in an ambivalent manner in a positive and negative pole, where the presence of fragmented working conditions that denote exhaustion, cynicism and collateral effects, as well as a new configuration of academic professionalism are highlighted. It is pointed out that the temporality of the contractual relationship is naturalized as a condition of precarious working conditions, placing a focus on the psychosocial risks of university teachers."