ABSTRACT
Academic contests constitute the only strategy in most of the Argentine universities to create teaching and research posts with the category of regular. This chapter is concerned with the impact of academic contests on the quality of university teaching. In general terms, contests are considered to have had a positive effect on the quality of teaching and research. In the last ten years, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) has been the leader of the university system and has exerted great pressure in the negotiations both within and beyond the university system. UBA plays a unique and important role in Argentinian higher education. The rules for contests at UBA grant considerable liberties to the juries regarding assessment criteria. In the absence of a traditional tenure system in Argentina, one might expect the recruitment and promotion of faculty to look less like the publication-driven scenarios described so often by faculty in Western industrialized countries.
