In this interview Cristina Carballo, from the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, explains her vision of the university in Argentina and how the challenges of sustainability and cultural diversity have been addressed.
1. What is your vision of the university in Argentina and what are its principal challenges, if we compare it to those in the rest of the world.
It’s a very complex question. The Argentine university is marked by three very important historical facts. It’s the first in all of Latin America that set out to have free university at the beginning of the 20th century, and in this sense it always gave the impression of being a pioneer in Latin America. From the view of modern society, of equal rights this is something that marked Argentina early on.
Second, unfortunately there were, in the sixties and seventies, the different military dictatorships that impacted the intellectual production as well as the national frameworks, as much in the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba as in the rest of the universities, losing valuable intellectuals who had to go abroad and also interrupted historical production within the national universities. And the last is the return to democracy and reconstruction of what, in those times, were universities at a global level, with respected academics, and recognized academic production, a return to setting up its complex world, which was the 80s. I believe the advances have been very positive. Today you see results in changing of these historical structures. Like any university that has been around for a long time, it has an internal structure that are which at times asphyxiate or create resistance to determined lines of innovation. Read more...

In this interview, Daniel Mato presents the Project “Cultural Diversity, Interculturality and Higher Education" of the International Institute of UNESCO for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), which analyzes the current demands and access conditions of Indigenous and Afro-Descendant students within the different types of Latin American Higher Education Institutions, and assesses their impact, responsibilities and challenges in regards to intercultural education, amongst other issues.
What is the “Project on Cultural Diversity, Interculturality, and Higher Education" about?
The Project “Cultural Diversity and Interculturality in Higher Education in Latin America” of the Instituto Internacional de la UNESCO para la Educación Superior en América Latina y el Caribe (IESALC) was created to identify, document and analyze experiences of higher education that are committed to meeting the needs, demands and proposals for higher education among indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in Latin America. The Project thereby seeks to lay the necessary groundwork to inform policy recommendations, generate criteria for the production of statistics and indicators on the field’s development, identify topics of interest for new research projects, and contribute to the development of sustainable collaboration mechanisms between the institutions studied and others with similar interests.
The project is not only about limiting the field of work to the experiences of higher education specifically directed to indigenous and Afro-Descendant communities, but to extend the need of intercultural education to all levels and to all population in Latin America, as many of these experiences point out. The idea of intercultural education for all was explicitly endorsed by the Higher Education Regional Conference (CRES 2008), celebrated in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) in July 2008. There, 4,500 experts met to create a platform to enhance the development of higher education in Latin America. This was significant because societies in Latin America are pluricultural, for which higher education must incorporate wisdom and knowledge from indigenous and Afro-Descendant communities. It would be “silly” not to do so.
It is also “silly” the fact that conflict resolution modalities of indigenous and Afro-Descendant peoples in the Americas are being studied but not taught. They are only taught in anthropology schools, but not in Law schools. There is a lot of knowledge of indigenous peoples that is of national interest. It is not only about including wisdom and knowledge of these peoples as a sort of favor to them, but also as a favor to all of us. There are two main reasons to include this wisdom and knowledge: mere intelligence (let’s not waste this knowledge), and the fact that we are not ensuring that the established rights by law in constitutions are upheld. Read more...

The Autonomous University of Yucatán designed a program for social responsibility aiming to connect knowledge with local and global needs.
The Autonomous University of Yucatán (UADY) is a public and autonomous higher educational institution in Mérida established in 1938 under the name Universidad de Yucatán. The mission of the university is to promote a comprehensive and humanist education, in a professional and scientific way, open to all knowledge fields and all sectors of the society. Read more...

The study investigates the institutional capacity of African universities and higher education institutions to develop and strengthen linkages with industry and the productive sector.
This study was conducted by the Association of African Universities (AAU) in partnership with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC). The aim of the study was to determine what interface structures, policies, positions, incentives and funds are currently in place, as well as the services and interventions African institutions judge most important in order to strengthen their efforts in building linkages with the productive sector. The survey forms part of the AAU-AUCC project entitled Strengthening Higher Education Stakeholder Relations in Africa (SHESRA), and was carried with financial help from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).This study and the SHESRA project represent one of the many steps the AAU is taking to support its members and the higher education community across Africa to strengthen linkages with industry and the productive sector. For more information, follow this link.