The university in Argentina

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...