The expansion of postgraduate programs in Argentina. From macrostructural indicators to biographies narrated by university professors.

Abstract

Postgraduate education and its material and symbolic links to the beginning, development, and consolidation of the university academic profession are central to research in the field of higher education. The reasons for this centrality lie in its constant dynamism and ongoing thematic and methodological expansion. The work presented here proposes, first, a statistical and documentary exploration of the postgraduate expansion processes in Argentina based on the analysis of the 2023 and 2025 reports of the National Evaluation and Accreditation Commission (CONEAU) and the latest Statistical Yearbooks of the current Undersecretariat of University Policies. Second, macrostructural indicators are complemented by biographies narrated by academics from the National University of Mar del Plata. The combination of approaches between structural issues at the level and the narrated biographies of those who build it daily enters the concert of productions to qualify conclusions and project new lines of inquiry into the subject. The findings we present are the result of a larger study conducted within the framework of CONICET-Argentina, which seeks to understand the expansion of postgraduate training and its impact on the national academic profession.