University’s Autonomy as Self-Government: a Crisis of Representativeness in the Universidad de Buenos Aires?

Abstract

The Argentinean Constitution of 1994 recognizes the autonomy of national universities. Nevertheless, it leaves an open discussion concerning its determinants and scope, especially regarding its self-government capacity and its relationship with the State. In this article, we expect to contribute to this discussion by analyzing the scope and impact of university’s autonomy in the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) concerning that double dimension. In order to do so, and considering that how autonomy is defined is part of the ongoing debate, we start by stu dying the meaning of university’s autonomy through University’s history focusing on its self-government capacity and its relationship with external political authorities. In the Medieval University this double dimension of university’s autonomy was developed as its corporative autonomy and it remained valid in the Enlightenment University. This historical recapitulation is completed by referring to a local experience: the 1918 University’s Reform which inaugurates university’s co-government, a governance structure that aims to assure university’s autonomy as its selfgovernance. We then revisit who the recent history of Argentina’s university contributes to define the characteristics and scope of its autonomy in this double dimension. All these historical references are used to evaluate the UBA’s current governance structure and its relationship with the National State. The article ends with some considerations about the crisis of representativeness that the UBA is facing and about the tension concerning its relationship with the State which allows us to challenge the scope of its autonomy.