Debates y perspectivas sobre la autonomía universitaria

this paper is a theoretical discussion of the university. the principle of autonomy serves as a guideline for examining the political role of the university, divided as it is between service to the state, to society, to the professional marketplace and to science that is created as a value in itself. in it the principle of autonomy is reconstructed, beginning with an instrumentalist view of the relationship between university and state and continuing with a study of the transformation processes in the university, which would be unintelligible without taking into account the intervention of political variables such as pressure from state interests, student activism and academia. it acknowledges a stage in the building of the educational project in which there is an acceptance of specifically political statements. finally it attempts to develop a comprehensive conception of the university that explicitly admits the coalescence of the political with the social whole.