Governing Public Universities: A Political-Administrative Problem

Abstract

This article reflects on how higher education is managed in Colombia, using as a case study the National University of Colombia, which is considered to be the most important public university in the country. It shows the political-administrative problems involved in governing schools with uniform and unidirectional criteria, as well as the constant and growing loss of legitimacy on the part of administrative bodies, the constraints on student’s autonomy, and the absence of a participatory democracy in the way universities are governed. The article also includes part of the history of the National University of Colombia, and looks at how it is managed currently and some of the facts and events that differentiate and characterize its academia, so as to propose possible and desirable ways of governing higher education in Colombia.