During the 1980s, in Europe as well as North America, evaluation of the quality of higher education took on added relevance due to the lack of relevance of university education with respect to the context and because of reforms made to educational systems. Thus, that lack of relevance showed the need for big and rapid changes that would require immediate adjustments at the universities in terms of flexibility, efficacy and efficiency.

Against this background, the challenge is to modernize educational systems so that they will increasingly and better respond to the needs of the societies of which they are a part. To respond with a diversified offering of high-quality flexible and adaptable interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs implies exercising great responsibility on the part of the universities in applying their autonomy to generate the social changes that their countries require. Certain experts in this field affirm that universities in countries that wish to foster social and cultural changes that in the future would lead regions and (why not?) the world, must go beyond educating their countries’ elites to create a massive, and even universal, system for higher education. However, the changes and necessary adaptations to improve the provision of educational services at the universities must start with analysis and profound reflection on the characteristics of the system or of the problems that have been generated and that could be generated in the future regarding the following seven fundamental aspects, among others: 1) the social objective of the educational system of a particular country, 2) the role of university autonomy in attaining that objective, 3) the university’s focus in terms of research that would benefit society, 4) sources of sufficient financing, 5) diversification of the services that the university provides, 6) efficiency in the production of certified professionals with adequate levels of quality, and 7) efficiency in administrative management.

These reflections must establish the social objective and, based on it, help to achieve it through university education and the use of autonomy. Is the goal to become a leading society and generate knowledge or to serve as a technical society that follows the parameters of the leading countries? There must be clarity in this regard and the entire system must be in agreement in order to achieve the cultural change to support that determination. On the other hand, the role of autonomy has not been properly determined, because, although its philosophy is clear, its scope is not, nor the role of self responsibility or the tools to support it. There are still many points of dependence both in organizational as well as budgetary terms (not only in financing but regarding limitation on the use of resources). There is also insufficient financing, which varies from country to country.

Regarding the research focus, universities must first of all decide on the research model they wish to apply, always making sure they do not abandon the social objective that they have set. They must determine whether their focus is to be on basic and/or applied research, and how that research will contribute to filling social needs. The question is how and why progress in research is made and what forces in each society promote it.

With respect to the services provided by the universities, it is clear that they have focused their efforts on training and research, but this merely addresses the needs of some of the universities’ stakeholders. This clearly shows that the university offers few services to its users, because even those provided to its students are focused on education and training. Follow-up on the training process is deficient and the treatment in the programs throughout the process does not improve very much. This in turn means that the connection between the students and their universities is relatively weak, depending on the incentives provided by each university, which can impede the establishment of subsequent relationships through alumni associations.

Relationships with businesses and companies, efficiency in the use of resources, attention to students to determine their reasons for dropping out or falling behind in their studies, follow-up on the educational process to determine its quality, follow-up on such basic aspects as the capacity for reading comprehension, writing, critical thought, resolution of real problems, the preponderance of theoretical and academic knowledge etc., are problems that tend to be given short shrift and which later become a heavy burden during the professional lives of the alumni.

For the universities, it is of fundamental importance to reflect on their management mechanisms in order to address their duties and responsibilities, because the regulators and administrators of the system have placed little importance on the lack of management mechanisms to foster optimization of resources, rationalization of administrative personnel at the middle level and the problem stemming from the fact that academics who hold administrative posts do not always boast good administrative management capacity.

In general, the regulatory bodies need to review these aspects, which stand in the way of improving university management to enable it to deal with the challenges stemming from social changes in the countries and in the world, thereby making university autonomy a fallacy.

Edison Jair Duque Oliva

Editor in chief

Fulltime professor Universidad Nacional de Colombia