The University of the Republic (Uruguay): a witness entity of university evolution?

Abstract

The evolution of the University of the Republic (Uruguay), presents a paradoxical contradiction, between a clear predominance of public institutional forms in the formal structure and the dormant process of privatization that increasingly affects it. This paradox is not exclusive of the Uruguayan university, but it characterizes the same country, which as a whole maintains a significant state participation in the development of the productive structures and, even, between the different cycles of education. After a contrast with the Chilean university development, the article set out to investigate the common routes through which the same privatization trend advances, through the guidelines of the university government, while comparing it with the concrete and historical evolution of the country in the perspective of globalization. As a methodology, the article developed the contrast between the traditions of Uruguayan education and the evolution of government educational policies and the university structures themselves. A relevant conclusion is related to the public field of Uruguay to which the University of the Republic belongs, which has been presented with a certain degree of attachment to the republican tradition. As soon as this affiliation is consubstantiated from modernity with the destiny of the Nation-State, its validity seems threatened by the current processes of global integration, a circumstance that le