The universityization of technical tertiary education as an axis for the expansion of higher education in Uruguay

Abstract

The currect reform of the Higher Education levels in Uruguay has been analyzed as a process of institutional
differentiation which has changed from a University-system into a system of Higher Education. The present article analyzes the reform in progress as a process of universitarization of the tertiary formation, as an elevation of the formation that goes from the tertiary level to the university level.
This process is analyzed in diverse technical, labor and knowledge fields, as a result of changes in
the social and economic demands, which begin to need higher competences and skills and start being
covered by university institutions. This is a social dynamic of new demands of the educational actors
who seek to improve their paths and their competitive capacities by upgrading their certifications and
whose impulse are being expressed in the dynamics of universitarization of the offers in all the fields of
formal education. The present article analyzes the institutional dynamics of the technical, health, artistic and physical education and of the private sector. This upgrading of the level of the tertiary formation is
constituted in the base of the differentiation and of the institutional isomorphism of Higher Education in Uruguay.
This article analyzes their differentiated ways and dynamics, their political component and the tensions
and conflicts between the differentiation and the institutional concentration