Modernizing Transformations of the Latin American University

Abstract

This essay offers a critical reflection on the modernizing transformations that have shaped Latin American universities from the 19th century to the present.  Through a historical and cultural approach, it examines the relationship between the social, cultural, and intellectual modernization processes in Latin America and their impact on the institutional, epistemological, and functional configuration of higher education.  The argument is that the university cannot be analyzed solely from a synchronic or technical perspective but must be understood as a dynamic process embedded in the region’s development tensions, including the rise of positivism, the influence of the Church, the expansion of the professional training model, and the recent emergence of the knowledge society.  The author proposes that the university has been transformed into a key agent for the dissemination of knowledge in contexts marked by global, technological, and political changes, and that its role must be reassessed from a more complex, integrative, and critical perspective.