Challenges of a public, popular and democratic university
Studying at the university is a public and social good, and a fundamental right of all human beings, where students assume the role of protagonists, as learning subjects to become professionals at the service of our society. A right which has been built on the foundations of social struggles and historical transformations that traced our path, managing to currently convert the basis of a public, popular and democratic education. It is in this feeling;And in turn, citing a famous phrase of the limit manifesto of the university reform of 1918: "The pains that we have left are the freedoms that we lack", which I will seek to generate an analysis and reflection on those challenges facing the public university currently. To achieve a successful introduction to the subject, it is necessary to enter the significant actors that make up the close relationship between the university and society as such.
Ernesto Villanueva, rector of the National University Arturo Jauretche (UNAJ), told Télam that ‘gratuity has given almost everything to himself, and now we have to add other ingredients”
To which we can affirm that;The political reality of a country in which a university is inserted in the daily life of this. Still low expenditure rates, student dropout, restrictive income, superpopulation in classrooms, small investment budget, the need for territorial expansion of universities, the search for alternatives and inclusion mechanisms that expand the possibilities of access to the most unprotected sectors,among others;These are some of the problems that afflict the public university today.
To this we must add those clientelistic and prebingles practices arbitrarily at different institutional and academic levels, consistent of those financial corporations with weight in the educational market that seek to capture the demand for education, but not with a sense of social belonging, damaging the basessame of its existence and snatching any critical initiative, both teachers and students, in the different instances.
But the university does not arise only as a recipient of what happens in society, but also as an agent of change, reproductive of a set of principles and values, not simply acting as an intellect and knowledge trainer center, but at the same time, as an institutionLong live in dialectics with society.
It is from this point that it is underlined in the need to reactivate mechanisms for participation and commitment of the central protagonists of this educational equation. Emerging as one of the main challenges to cope current, disseminate and investigate, maintaining the opening and tolerance climate, oblivious to political pressures and necessary for the fruitful exercise of academic functions. Building structural pillars to democratization and autonomy of education at the university. Transcending the limits of the teaching, learning process or professional specialties, so that it meets social needs and problems.
In turn, we must not forget another important point when it comes to investigating university democratization and the challenges it faces: the social inequality of the student and general population of society. It is here, as a starting point, that the need to propose strategies that promote equity in access to knowledge urges. When we talk about equity we are advancing a step more than the concept of equality. And it is the function of this upper level to generate "bridges" that allow equity in access to knowledge.
To conclude, the right to education integrates a global battlefield where university democratization plays a fundamental role as a promoter of this change and is in its capacity to incorporate into the educational process those tools that encourage inclusion, quality and strengthening of the strengthening ofthe society. Defending a free, independent, secular, free and inclusive university. A university for all, all and all, solidifying in a fundamental feeling of freedom and social commitment, that of a university forming professionals to be at the service of the people and make possible "the utopia of tomorrow" in every step of today.
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