Liquid Times? Democracy, University and Development in Mexico

Abstract

The relationship between university, democracy and development has returned to the political scene and intellectual debate in Latin America in recent years. In the context of a vague unrest with the democracies of the region, combined with the persistence of age-old problems of inequality, poverty, low economic growth and weakening of the sources of social cohesion; Latin American universities are at the center of a more or less intense discussion about their roles, their orientation and academic structures, governance and institutional management. Paradoxically, this debate takes place in the framework of an unprecedented expansion and diversification of higher education in the region. From the Mexican case study, testing a general understanding of what happened during the last years in this context, placing in the center of analysis to national public universities. The central idea is to explore what happened in Mexico is the expression of the transition between the two major currencies suggesting Zygmunt Bauman: the transition from a "solid modernity" to "liquid modernity"