Expansion and diversification in higher education Argentina of the twentieth century: the university system as a mosaic

Abstract

Argentina´s University system has been shaped in a particular way. In fact, between the seventeenth century, moment in which the first higher education institution was created, and the institutional expansion period that took place in the last decade, there were multiple attempts of reforms that adopted, or attempted to adopt, structures belonging to foreign higher education systems. This ended up resembling a patchwork. The foreign systems, however, were shaped as responses to social contexts that differ markedly from each other. Therefore, in this paper we aim to analyze the transformations that the higher education system went through in Argentina in the mid-twentieth century, as well as to highlight some of the limits that emerged from the attempts at reform