The National University of La Plata and its origins

Abstract

The National University of La Plata, founded in 1905 on the preexisting provincial university of the same name, was the third university established in Argentina, after those of Córdoba and Buenos Aires. Conceived as a modern, scientific center for higher education and most closely patterned on the Anglo-Saxon model, it adopted an academic approach distinct from what had existed up to that time.
In the present work we shall investigate the original conception and the repertoire of ideas that led to formation of this innovative university. We shall also consider the context of the university’s beginnings as a provincial institution and its later nationalization, which was set in motion and developed by Joaquín V. González, who guided its destiny from 1905 to 1918.
Attending to the complaints and conflicts that welled up in the bosom of Argentine academia in 1903 and 1904, and inspired by the educational systems of Europe – and especially of the of the Anglo-Saxons, González created a new university that sought to change the professionalist orientation to higher education, typical of the universities at that time