This article takes the creation and implementation of USP-Leste as a case study to analyze the current process of reproduction and change in the academic profession as an expression of the struggles over teaching and research control that are shaped by the emergence of new areas of knowledge. It gives continuity to an earlier work about the recent changes to the university and theirs impacts on academic professors’ labor. The data from semi-structured interviews with various participants of the project and the reconstruction of the trajectories of two coordinators involved in the implementation of the new university unit support the following argument: that the growing legitimizing of new specialized knowledge on the conception, organization and control of higher education and scientific research is the origin of new professional hierarchies. During the last decades, said hierarchies been pressuring the traditional model of the academic profession and institution. The analysis intends to contribute to the understanding of the social dynamics that underlie the current debates on knowledge production and reproduction by focusing on the impact of new specialized knowledge on organization of teaching and research and the role of the disputes over the autonomy principle of academic work.
University; Academic profession; Professional trajectories; Specialized knowledge; Work control; USP-Leste; EACH