University Extension in Dispute: Neoliberal Counterreform and Alternatives in Latin American Universities

Abstract

The neoliberal university project contains a program aimed at terminating the critical traditions of Latin American university extension. The program combines two models introduced as the legitimate and dominant orientations of the current university-society relationship: linkage and university social responsibility. At the same time, alternatives of great academic and political power for university extension on the continent include integration of critical education into the curriculum, partnerships with social movements, popular cooperative enterprises, holistic programs, and repoliticization of the polis.

El proyecto universitario neoliberal contiene un programa destinado a poner fin a las tradiciones críticas de la extensión universitaria latinoamericana. El programa combina dos modelos que se presentan como las orientaciones legítimas y dominantes de la actual relación entre el espacio universitario y la sociedad: vinculación y responsabilidad social universitaria. Al mismo tiempo, las alternativas de gran poder académico y político para la extensión universitaria en el continente incluyen la integración de la educación crítica en el currículo, asociaciones con movimientos sociales, empresas cooperativas populares, programas holísticos y una repoliticización de la polis.

Keywords

University extension University reform Neoliberalism Pedagogical alternatives Latin America

University extension, as understood in Latin America, is a distinctive feature of the public universities that succeeded the reformist movement of the first half of the twentieth century. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of it, and universities perceive and carry out this function in various ways. Picos (2014) is correct in stating that extension is more a precursor than a product of the Córdoba reformist movement. In fact, the originality with which ideas about university extension that arose at the University of Cambridge in 1872 and shortly thereafter in the French and Spanish popular universities (Palacios, 1908; Torres Aguilar, 2009) flourished on our continent can only be explained by the early activity of the Latin American student movement. Inspired by the reform movement and its diverse links to the continent’s political and social processes, on the one hand, and the new pedagogical trends, on the other, various traditions of reformist-oriented university extension began to take shape.¹ Prominent among them was a tendency basically concerned with students’ critical and humanist education, linking its formation with the saddest realities of its social context while supplementing subject-area training with general cultural content and political education. Another was a tradition connected to transmitting culture (literature and the arts) among social sectors excluded from their enjoyment, and yet another was aimed at focusing university knowledge on “major national problems” through research and socio-educational and literacy campaigns. Extensionist perspectives designed to collaborate with processes of transformation and social emancipation were also of great importance, linking the university and student movements with popular-sector struggles through initiatives such as the popular universities that were so significant in many countries around the continent (Biagini, 2006; Bralich, 2007; Cano, 2015; Torres Aguilar, 2009).

These different traditions, with their rationales, meanings, and particular emphases (and their intersections and linkages), nurtured what could be called a twentieth-century Latin American extensionist tradition. As part of this tradition, a critical-extension focus opposed to U.S. models of technology transfer, geared to a politico-pedagogical praxis of social transformation that was “liberating” and “emancipating” in terms of various concepts of anticapitalist social change, generically aimed at creating a society “with neither exploited nor exploiters” (Freire, 1998; Picos, 2014; Tommasino and Cano, 2016). This does not mean that all Latin American extensionism has been critical and all U.S. extensionism positivist or that the two traditions do not overlap or that under the label “critical extension” authoritarian or extractive experiments have not been developed. The point is to identify ideal types that enable analysis of the meanings and the politico-pedagogical foci of various extensionist traditions. In this manner, one can observe that it is this critical tradition that finds itself radically questioned today by the neoliberal modernization of the university.

As the Uruguayan philosopher José Luis Rebellato (1995) has argued, “It is not possible to think ethically without considering the North-South conflict” (taking into account, of course, local expressions of reproduction of and resistance to the colonial conflict). The principle becomes particularly relevant when analyzing the historical modes of production of university-society relations connected to the trends in university reform in the framework of the geopolitics of knowledge typical of “cognitive capitalism” (Falero, 2012) and “academic capitalism” (Slaughter and Leslie, 1999). As Austin (2006: 67) has pointed out, “Cultural globalization, the contemporary expression of ‘Americanization,’ has broadly resonated in educational systems as apparently impossible to resist, since it is conditioned—according to the dominant ideology—by market forces, portrayed as virtually ‘natural.’” Along the same line, Ordorika and Lloyd (2014: 130) have observed that in the current context of capitalist globalization, institutions of higher education fulfill “a double role: creating knowledge and providing technical capacity for the global market. However, decisions about the types and uses of knowledge, as well as the ideal worker profile, are largely made abroad and later internalized through national and institutional policies.” The university reforms pursued on the continent in the late twentieth century must be included in this framework (Rodríguez and Casanova, 1998).

In researching the effects of neoliberal reforms on Latin American universities, Marcela Mollis (2003) concluded that, rather than being reformed, they have been “altered” in their foundational ideological and philosophical components. In the same vein, López Segrera (2008) has called the neoliberal reform a “university counterreform.” Some of its principal features are the segmented diversification of institutions of higher education,² “strategic alliances between international agencies and government authorities,” an increase in private offerings and the emergence of new providers, the classification of professors in terms of incentives defined by productivity indicators, curricular reforms aimed at shortening degree programs, creating intermediate levels, and weakening syllabi, and the importing of pedagogical models based on the aptitude model (López Segrera, 2008: 272–273). In so doing, the counterreformist program seeks, on the one hand, to benefit the growth of private institutions, creating a highly deregulated educational market, and equate private and public institutions, placing them in competition. On the other hand, it seeks to introduce business logic into public universities. Because of the need for resources and various public policy initiatives, these institutions are led to adopt administrative and operational reforms aimed at this competition for resources. Thus, privatization of education is formulated in various ways: as increase in the private supply, as privatization of more and more parts of the task of public institutions, and as the incorporation of procedures, rationales, and positions of private enterprise by public universities.

Despite the strength of the neoliberal counterreform, we must highlight the politico-academic dispute under way in the context of multiple tensions, coordinations, and conflicts (Casanova, 2012). The meaning and direction of university transformation are matters of open debate—a dispute that also permeates university extension. It is often thought that the neoliberal university project rejects the role of extension and instead seeks its elimination, considering it politicized and anachronistic in addition to unproductive. This may be so if we limit ourselves to the traditions of critical extension, but this line of reasoning prevents us from seeing an irrefutable fact: that the neoconservative program of university counterreform does have an extensionist project, understood as a concept and model of university-society relations as a crosscutting feature of research and education. In this article I intend to shed light on this project, pinpointing its principal ontological, academic, and political foundations and its primary programmatic strategies. I will also address the alternative experiences that exist in various universities on the continent, identifying five conduits of great academic and political potential for relaunching a critical twenty-first-century extension program in Latin American universities. I begin with the “alternative pedagogical experiences” (Gómez and Corenstein, 2014), understanding extension to be a politico-academic process that is built on a nexus of relations and mediations with the overarching social, cultural, and political whole. Extension is shaped as a “problematic field” (Puiggrós, 1994) in which what is important is the relationships it establishes with other fields, its relative autonomy, and the subjects and ethico-political projects built, summoned, or antagonized in these relationships. To account for this, I will attempt to explain the discursive constructions (which as such are political constructions [Buenfil, 1994]) created in the current politico-academic dispute around extension.

The “Alteration” of Extension by the Neoliberal Modernization of the University

The effects on extension of the neoliberal modernization of the university have not been sufficiently studied. Paraphrasing Mollis (2003), I maintain that these effects are a type of “alteration”—a transformation that transcends the organizational and procedural aspects of Latin American extensionism and involves its foundational principles. I contend that in the course of the counterreform process the significance of some previous extensionist traditions has been subverted, some types of activities have been abandoned or marginalized, new priorities have been established, and new meanings for extension policies have been imposed. The neoliberal alteration of extension has taken place basically through the impetus of two models that, although they have different emphases, converge with regard to the necessary or desirable relations between university and society. These models are those of linkage and university social responsibility.

Neoliberal Relegitimation of Extension: The University-Business Linkage

The process of university subsumption to capital in the sense of “academic capitalism” (Slaughter and Leslie, 1999) has spanned both the purposes and tasks of universities and their means of funding and administration, school formats, curricular content, and pedagogical models. It has also entailed a steady replacement of the reformist traditions of extension by policies of linkage. Analyzing the case of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Campos and Sánchez (2005) indicate that while there is no single definition of “the linkage role in universities,” definitions have fluctuated between an “economistic” view (which considers linkage a means of financing institutions of higher education) and a “productivist” one (which conceives of it in relation to the productive sector). At the same time, there seems to be a convergence of the two: “The collaboration between industry and institutions of higher education can generate mutual benefits. On the one hand, companies have the opportunity to improve the technology of their products or their processes and, on the other, academic institutions can obtain additional funds to sustain their activities” (Sánchez and Caballero, 2003: 17).

Based on Schumpeterian theory,³ linkage as a model of the university-society relationship is one sphere of the “triple-helix” model formulated by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff in the late 1990s. In this model, the university is one of the “helices” that, along with industry and government, must boost the process of technological innovation aimed at production and economic growth.⁴ Linkage is the feature through which universities respond to the demands for knowledge and innovation of the productive sector. With variations according to the country, university linkage includes technology transfer (through the sale of products, advice, or services), job banks (to place advanced students and graduates in companies), training and support for entrepreneurs, and business incubation programs.

As for the social interlocutors of this linkage, although the tendency is to identify them with “society” or with the “productive sector,” in fact they are primarily the companies and chambers of commerce or industry and governmental agents engaged in stimulating growth in those sectors. One example of this “relation of equivalence” (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 63) between the “society” signifier and the meaning of “businesses” is provided by the following quote from Sánchez and Caballero (2003: 11):

It has been stated that productivity and competition have begun to be a concern of the private and public sectors. Accordingly, institutions of higher education, respecting their autonomy but with a firm commitment to the society, need to develop a broad policy linkage with those sectors, given that one of their missions is to furnish the highly specialized professional cadres as well as the technological and scientific knowledge that the society demands.

And while “the society” is businesses, the latter are almost never their workers. Linkage with companies is almost always a link with their stockholders and management. This can be seen, for example, in the “advisory” bodies that the universities create to listen to the demands of the productive sector (González, 2010).

The advancement of linkage as an extensionist model is evident in many universities. In a comparative study of the extension policies of five Latin American public universities (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Universidad de São Paulo), Gómez and Figueroa (2011: 138) assert that, along with the changes in institutions of higher education,

the concept of extension has also changed, and it has done so at the same speed as the posing of challenges to adapt to the institutions. . . . Currently, the narratives reflect concepts of profitability, competitiveness, efficiency, and impact imposed by commercial and financial contexts. It would seem that we are witnessing a change in worldview in which the dynamics and language of the companies are adopted as a perspective with little question. In the process, narratives and relations are transformed: citizens become clients, even in the context of education.

Conservative Depoliticization of Extension: University Social Responsibility

One of the central moments of the continent’s extensionist history was the Second Latin American Conference of Cultural Dissemination and University Extension organized by the Unión de Universidades de América Latina in Mexico in 1972. At the conference, reflection on extension was part of a broader reflection on the continent’s social, political, and economic situation. Among its resolutions the conference (UDUAL, 1972: 478–483) stipulated that

university extension is the interaction between the university and other components of the social body through which it assumes and fulfills its commitment to participate in the process of creating culture and of liberation and radical transformation of the national community. [Its goals are] 1) To contribute to the creation of critical consciousness in all social sectors, in order to foster a truly liberating change in society. 2) To contribute to all sectors achieving a holistic and dynamic vision of humanity and the world, in the framework of the historico-cultural situation and the social process of emancipation of Latin America. 3) As an integrator of teaching and research, to promote the critical review of the pillars of the university and the conscientization of all its institutions, in order to carry out a unique and constant process of cultural creation and social transformation. 4) To contribute to the dissemination and creation of the modern scientific and technical concepts that are indispensable to achieving effective social transformation, while at the same time creating awareness of the dangers of scientific, cultural, and technological transfer when it runs counter to the national interests and human values.

Obviously, it is impossible to analyze the contents of the conference without dealing with the particular moment in which it occurred, marked by a radicalization of the cycle of struggle throughout Latin America and peripheral countries and an increase in the political and organizational strength of workers’ and campesino organizations and social movements in general in a global framework shaped by the Cold War. In this context, in addition to a powerful politicization of the university-society link, the conference reflected the principal elements that had characterized Latin American extensionism: its commitment to the popular sectors and its pedagogical vision of itself as part of the education process. It is precisely these two meanings that have been removed by the neoliberal alteration of extension through the modernization that began during the same decade as the conference.⁵

The conservative depoliticization of extension has gone through several stages and tentative formulations. It escalated with the change in the continent’s social and political situation after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR, coupled with a growing cultural hegemony of neoliberalism and capitalist post-neoliberalism (Stolowicz, 2014). Along with it came an enshrinement of the “cultural construction” of the “myth of political and ideological neutrality of institutions of higher education” (Ordorika, 2001: 93). Stolowicz (2014: 18–19) has documented the various processes of political control through assistentialism, pointing out the importance of neoliberalism’s “social vocation” and of “post-neoliberalism” as a “lubricating” activity for the “conservative transformation of society.” In this project, the need for help from the “social action” of universities made it essential to dismantle the critical and politicizing components of the Latin American extensionist tradition, replacing them with a different paradigm attuned to the neoconservative program. To do so, as in other aspects of university counterreform business models were sought. Corporate social responsibility provided the conceptual bases for a new paradigm of university social responsibility, depoliticized and voluntary, designed to co-opt, contain, and redefine the desire for participation of university students (for example, to strip notions such as multiculturalism or ecology of their opposing political content) and redirect it toward “volunteer” action.

Alcántara (2015: 20) reveals the business origin of the idea of university social responsibility, placing it at the beginning of the 1990s. Olarte and Ríos (2015) agree on its origin and indicate that “in the educational realm, this concept has its referent in the social function attributed to institutions of higher education, in light of their social commitment as a pillar of development and transformation of the economic and social order of the communities that interact in the business-society-state domain. It also entails dealing with their ethical dimension, enriching students’ capacities as responsible citizens.” In the same vein, Vallaeys (2007) defines “social responsibility” as a strategy of “ethical and intelligent management” of the effects an organization creates, promoting “dialogue” and social “participation” toward goals of “sustainable human development.” University social responsibility implies a view of the whole of the university that transcends the function of extension (Alcántara, 2015; Vallaeys, 2007). But, as Olarte and Ríos (2015: 29) point out, among the components of university social responsibiity we find “the social function of the university, conceptualized in university extension, the missional centerpiece by which it interacts with the environment in order to respond to the social and cultural demands that give meaning to its obligation: to shape individuals and the community holistically through projects of knowledge transfer and ethical values that the individual learns and develops through service.”

In analyzing the discourse of university social responsibility, its radical ideological depoliticization becomes evident: the world no longer has relations of domination and exploitation, imperialism, colonialism, internal colonialism, or class societies. In their place, what university social responsibility has been designed to run (enshrine) is a soft world without contradictions or conflicts (merely “development excesses” that should be corrected) in which what is needed is “participation” and relationships of “responsible consumption” to improve the “interrelation” of “communities” with businesses and the care of the environment (the latter, of course, up to the communities).

This worldview and these objectives require strategies and related methodological devices, and university social responsibility has them. Olarte and Ríos (2015: 31–33) identify four approaches: “humanist,” “pedagogical,” “ethical,” and “socio-curricular.” In the humanist approach they highlight “contribution to humanitarian causes (philanthropy, volunteerism)” connecting students to “co-curricular practices, community work,” and striving “to spur rewards processes for teachers.” The pedagogical approach recommends “education in philanthropy” and “training students in compensation to the society and the institution (charity philanthropy, donations).” In the ethical approach importance is placed, among other aspects, on “the holistic ethical approach for sustainable human development (leadership and self-governance).” And lastly, in the socio-curricular approach the recommendation is “curricular reform including issues of a social nature; industrial ecology” and “transformation of the curricula for the development of expertise related to diversity, global vision, entrepreneurship, civics, sustainability” (along with other suggestions such as “promote the use of bicycles”).

The extension policy of the Universidad de las Américas (UA), a private, transnational institution located in Puebla, Mexico, is one of the most complete expressions of this concept. In the introduction to a book in which the university’s regional development center is described, Lazcano and Barrientos (2006: 11) summarize:

The strategic action lines are social development, continual training, the promotion of health, urban development, and the preservation of the ecological environment, seeking business models, access to information, and technology transfer. . . . In terms of the new academic debate on extension projects and university linkages, what we propose is to strengthen self-managed groups that promote solidarity “partnership networks” that truly weave together the social fabric of sustainable development with the fight against poverty. As understood here, self-management includes the development of new forms of public-private relationships, involving connection and university extension focused on a microsocial realm that entails a responsibility for social action and economic impact.

This is a mix of commendable objectives with business ideology, but on close examination the objectives prove only ornamental. In fact, Lazcano and Barrientos (2006: 12–13) waste no time relativizing the objectives of the regional development center with remorseless sincerity:

It is often thought that globalization is a process of steady mechanical crushing of weak peripheries by strong centralities. The activity being carried out by the [regional development center] does not intend to transform the communities into part of the centrality, to become part of the “First World.” What we seek is to soften the effects of globalization when it exerts pressure on groups or communities found in areas of interest to the hegemonic groups. . . . It is a matter, then, of finding loopholes in the globalizing forces in order to generate a countercurrent allowing the traditional capacities of the social agents in those conditions to find market niches that can provide them with a decent subsistence and a less traumatic and perhaps even “successful” integration into a world that otherwise could be ruthlessly hostile.

Here the ideological content that Stolowicz (2014) analyzed appears with total clarity as the assistentialist path of the neoconservative transformation of society: the university’s purpose to “soften” and make “less traumatic” the effects of economic globalization. Furthermore, it is important to take into account that the UA is located in an area (Cholula) whose inhabitants are actively struggling to resist the advance of mega-projects and capitalist enclaves that are expropriating arable lands and destroying heritage zones—nothing less than the forces of the world being “ruthlessly hostile.”

Admittedly, what is happening in institutions like the UA cannot be extrapolated to all public universities. I cite this example simply to examine the university social responsibility ideology in its natural context and its most pristine expression. In a study of the extensionist policies of private Mexican universities, Bianca Garduño (2011) concluded that they developed a “third function” primarily as a result of processes of “organizational isomorphism” (imitating the publicly successful institutions of higher education) and as a means of achieving social legitimation. Nevertheless, from the literature on university social responsibility and linkage it seems clear that these models (or some of them) have become producers of models that later spread to the public universities. At any rate, the example sheds light on a historical trend: the techno-scientific rationalization of government and power mechanisms and its implications for university extension. As Pablo González Casanova (2001: 12) contends:

Privatization of the universities and the reduction of students to ignorant objects of history, of politics, and of the sciences linked to humanism not only adheres to the project of converting private and commercial companies into the principal actors of production, services, and life. It also bows to a world in which the corporate “military-industrial complex” and its associates and subordinates will regulate the repression and negotiation for a governability in which the subject peoples show that they are “responsible” and “reasonable” or have “rational options” that lead them to accept the objectives of “those in charge” as their own.

University social responsibility has had enormous momentum, especially since the early twenty-first century, and has gradually penetrated the continent’s university social discourse. Gómez and Figueroa (2011: 139), in the above-mentioned study, observed that

the question of university social responsibility has gained strength in the universities studied. In Mexico, for example, it was included as one of the main concerns of the universities in the Asociación Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Educación Superior over the past 20 years. In Chile, with the Red Universidad Construye País, of which the Universidad de Chile is a member, they mainly seek to “expand” university social responsibility, understood as the “university’s capacity to disseminate and put into practice a set of principles and values through four key processes: management, teaching, research, and extension.”

They indicate that the redefinition of extension in terms of the university social responsibility paradigm makes “the narrative accompanying the practices and university dynamics much more pragmatic today. In this context, policies are formulated and tasks are promoted that are guided by strategies of businesses or the market, without criticism by the universities” (Gómez and Figueroa, 2011: 138–139).

In fact, a set of very diverse actions is being conducted under the heading of university social responsibility, many of which are of undeniable academic and social interest. What is being analyzed here is the origin, ideology, and policies of the paradigm, which transcends and includes university extension and constitutes the socio-philanthropical complement of the university-business link. Beyond that, it is important to note that the processes mentioned here are not unambiguous or uniform. On the contrary, the neoconservative counterreform is being resisted by many experiences of struggle driven and sustained by students and academics in many public universities on the continent.

Alternatives and New Developments in Critical Extension in the Latin American University

The picture would not be complete if we did not take into account the important alternative experiences and the significant academic developments that give new impetus to university extension in the Latin American university.⁶ Sometimes they are undertaken as part of broader programs of university transformation, and sometimes they arise as institutional escape routes but with an increasing capacity for questioning and foreshadowing other university models. As Aboites (2008: 13–14) contends, “In Latin America today the struggles in the field of education are not only of resistance. From the struggles in education and broader settings in countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, higher education experiences that are truly alternative have been created, offering a new vein of renewal of the Latin American university and of autonomy itself.” I will attempt an initial systematization of the principal academic and experiential conduits that can be found around university extension on our continent. Obviously, it is an incomplete view, but it will serve to exemplify the vitality of the alternative to conservative depoliticization and business counterreform in Latin American extensionism. I have identified five channels of critical extension on the continent with great pedagogical and political potential: critical extension integrated into the curriculum, partnership with social movements, incubation of associative and popular cooperative enterprises, a territorial approach through holistic university programs, and the repoliticization of the polis.

Critical Extension Integrated into the Curriculum

One of the most prominent features of the institutional development of university extension is that, for various reasons, it was dissociated from the curricular education of university students. This dissociation is the more evident in postgraduate programs, where the research-postgraduate pair is rarely coordinated with extension programs. However, the pedagogical dimension of extension—its humanist and holistic educational potential for university students—has been a key element in the Latin American extensionist tradition (Carlevaro, 1973; Tünnermann, 2000). Many universities currently promote extension strategies of curricular integration, perceiving it to be part of the educational process and endeavoring to coordinate it with research. One very heavily promoted policy along this line took place at the Universidad de la República de Uruguay (UDELAR) from 2006 to 2014 (Santos et al., 2013). The Cuban university system is also a reference in this regard (Hickling-Hudson, 2006), among other experiences such as those of Mexico’s Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (UACM) (Rodríguez and Rosen, 2016) and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Ejea, 2000) and Argentine universities such as the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, the Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos, the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, and the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Castro and Oyarbide, 2015; Mato, 2013). These experiences open pathways toward integrating extension into the curricula and syllabi of all knowledge areas, ensuring that the transforming potential of extension is aimed at curricular and pedagogical transformation, including educational relations, pedagogical models, constructs, evaluation methods, and accreditation of apprenticeships.

Partnership with Social Movements

Restoring the extensionist tradition of popular universities, there are currently substantive programs that associate universities with social movements.⁷ These programs have managed to resignify the frontier space inherent in extension, establishing spaces for a dialogue of wisdom and what has been called “extension in the opposite direction” (de Sousa Santos, 2006b) or “university intension” (Tatián, 2013)—in other words, including the agendas and wisdom of the movements into the universities’ own agendas and curricula. This process does not ignore the specifics of academic logic and its epistemic and institutional frameworks of articulation. It is a matter of creating programs of systematic and long-term work informed by the “ecology of wisdom” (Santos, 2006a), envisioning the movements as “politico-pedagogical subjects” and “collective intellectuals” that often have their own politico-educational projects (Falero and Pérez, 2014; Ouviña, 2015; Pinheiro, 2016).

Incubation of Associative and Popular Cooperative Enterprises

Renato Dagnino (2015) asserts that the hegemonic university model in Brazil was formed from a notion of research developed in the interest of capital and based on the rationale of the natural sciences, which “reconfigured from top to bottom” the roles of teaching and extension. He argues that an alternative project must be derived from extension and should rebuild “techno-science” on new bases in line with a wisdom dialogue with the popular sectors and in response to their needs. The two pivotal points in reformulating the university and relaunching a popular project of university transformation, he suggests, are university extension and a solidarity economy, and the best example of this union is the university’s incubation of cooperative enterprises. These types of programs enjoy significant development in Southern Cone universities, as demonstrated by Cortegoso, Sarachu, and Pereyra (2012), who have systematized experiences of this nature in Uruguay (UDELAR), Argentina (Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata), Brazil (Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Universidade Federal do Paraná, and Universidade Federal de Río Grande do Sul), and Paraguay (Universidad Nacional de Asunción).

A Territorial Approach Through Holistic Programs

Along with venues for work with social organizations, holistic programs have been powerful forces in the development of a transformative extensionism (Carlevaro, 1998), as have “open-classroom” university programs based on the “correlation between training, research, and community cooperation” (Rodríguez and Rosen, 2016). These are programs located in popular communities in urban or rural settings that, through interdisciplinary composition and conception develop extension, research, and teaching around the concerns of residents, with the participation of those residents (Acosta and Bianchi, 2010; Carlevaro, 1998). Such programs can be found at the UDELAR,⁸ at Chile’s Universidad de Playa Ancha,⁹ and at the UACM¹⁰ and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).¹¹ In Argentina, as Rinesi (2015: 108) notes, the development of public universities in various parts of the country has produced a sense of greater rapport between them and their social settings. Rinesi suggests that these new institutions face the challenge, on the one hand, of achieving complete fulfillment as universitas in accordance with a logic of the universal and at the same time supporting the rationale of “situated universities” and dialogue with the surrounding organizations and communities.

Repoliticization of the Polis

University institutions have historically played an important role as constituents (both product and producers) of what Ángel Rama (1998) called “the learned city”—the organic whole produced by the “spatial dialectics” (Remedi, 1996) of the wisdom(learned)-power relations that constituted the Latin American civilizing process. The role of intellectuals (and of universities) cannot be understood apart from this organic whole. Thus, university extension can be considered a device for the deterritorialization of spatial boundaries (in the senses previously mentioned), the democratization of knowledge-power relations, and the exercise of critical discourse on issues of the polis. It is a question of the university’s contributing to the density and scope of the debates that occur (or should occur) in the public space conceived as political space—exercising, in the Kantian sense, the “public use of reason.” Articulated in this extensionist perspective are the century-old Latin American tradition of “cultural dissemination” (centered in the humanities) and the tradition of “dissemination of science” (likewise cultural), both of which contribute to the intellectual and cultural nourishment of thought and public debate. Some of the programs of the UNAM¹² and the UDELAR,¹³ among many others, can be located in this extensionist channel. They enable us to resituate the intellectual role of the university, contravening the dominant tendency in contemporary academia, producer of a “homo academicus whose vector of action directs it toward the operational fulfillment of a spectrum of evaluation” (Gandarilla, 2014: 126).

Conclusions

Contrary to what is usually asserted, the neoliberal counterreform of the university does not lack an extensionist project. It consists of a combination of the university-business linkage and university social responsibility. Both models tend to be financially prioritized and legitimized academically, unseating the critical traditions of Latin American university extension. In this process extensionist traditions of great pedagogical richness and democratizing potential are marginalized or lost. While for a century popular universities geared toward urban workers and socio-pedagogical missions in rural areas were important foundational dimensions of university extension, today the organic university-business connection replaces these foundational directions with the interests, concepts, and grammars specific to capital. Whereas Latin American university extension democratized (politicized) scientific knowledge and culture, extending them to social sectors that had no access to them, its replacement by the linkage model involves an inverted process: greater concentration of knowledge through the corporatization of the university in the service of the market.

At the same time, the vastness and richness of the alternative extensionist experiences in the continent’s universities goes far beyond the examples profiled in this article, which simply illustrate the creative vitality of many universities and of a set of academic and experiential conduits that, rooted in the rich legacy of Latin American extensionism, are endeavoring to reinstall the principles of critical extension in the twenty-first century. A hundred years after the student rebellion in Córdoba, university extension is once again at the center of the dispute for the vision of the Latin American university. If, as Dardo Cúneo (1988) suggests, apart from its concrete achievements the university reform movement proposed an “advance order” for the problems of its time, forging a vision and projecting a program for refounding the university and its missions in popular and democratic terms, the current challenge could be posed in similar terms. In times in which knowledge and technology have attained unprecedented importance in global relations and in local mechanisms of exploitation, domination, and resistance and the neoliberal counterreform threatens to relegate the universities to the demands of the market, neutralizing teachers’ organizations with economic stimuli and dispersing student movements with the segmentation of educational offerings, a new “advance order” and a new reformist program in which university extension occupies a principal place are indispensable.

Footnotes

Notes

José Agustín Cano Menoni is an associate professor in the Programa Integral Metropolitano and the Instituto de Educación of the Universidad de la República de Uruguay and a member of the national system of researchers at the Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación. He is also a research associate in the higher-education seminar of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Victoria Furio is a translator and conference interpreter located in Yonkers, NY.

References

Aboites

Hugo

2008 “Presentación,” in Tünnermann

Carlos

(ed.), Noventa años de la reforma universitaria de Cordoba 1918–2008. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. 9–15.

Acosta

Blanca

Bianchi

Delia

2010 “Programas integrales: instrumentos para la transformación universitaria,” in Zibechi

Raúl

(ed.), Universidad en movimiento: Debates y memorias del X Congreso Iberoamericano de Extensión Universitaria. Montevideo: Extensión Universitaria/Nordan/El Colectivo. 125–138.

Alcántara

Armando

2015 “Responsabilidad y compromiso social de la educación superior: el papel de la ANUIES,” in Álvarez

Germán

(ed.), La ANUIES y la construcción de las políticas de educación superior. 1950–2015. Mexico City: ANUIES. 7–23.

Altbach

Philip

2001 Educació superior comparada: El conocimiento, la universidad y el desarrollo. Buenos Aires: UNESCO/Universidad de Palermo.

Austin

Robert

2006 “El buen vecino global: intervención estadounidense en culturas nacionales, 1945–2000,” pp. 65–103 in Austin

Robert

(ed.), Imperialismo cultural en América Latina: Historiografía y praxis. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones CECATP.

Biagini

Hugo

2006 “Redes estudiantiles en el Cono Sur (1900–1925),” in Marsiske

Renate

(ed.), Movimientos estudiantiles en la historia de América Latina. Vol. 3. Mexico City: UNAM. 81–104.

Bralich

Jorge

2007 La extensión universitaria en el Uruguay: Antecedentes y desarrollo en la Universidad de la República desde sus inicios hasta 1996. Montevideo: UDELAR.

Buenfil

Rosa Nidia

1994 Cardenismo: Argumentación y antagonismo en educación. Mexico City: DIE/CINVESTAV/IPN.

Campos

Guillermo

Sánchez

Germán

2005 “La vinculación universitaria: ese oscuro objeto del deseo.” Revista Electrónica de Investigación Educativa 7 (2).3–15

10.

Cano

Agustín

2015 “La extensión universitaria en la transformación de la universidad latinoamericana del siglo XXI: disputas y desafíos,” pp. 287–380 in Los desafíos de la universidad pública en América Latina y El Caribe. Buenos Aires: CLACSO/Universidad de Buenos Aires.

11.

Cano

Agustín

2017 “La extensión universitaria y la universidad latinoamericana: hacia un nuevo ‘orden de anticipación’ a 100 años de la revuelta estudiantil de Córdoba.” Revista +E, no. 7, 6–23.

12.

Carlevaro

Pablo

1973 “La extensión universitaria: postulados del Doctor Pablo Carlevaro en la discusión del Consejo de Facultad de Medicina,” in La extensión universitaria. Montevideo: UDELAR. 5–9.

13.

Carlevaro

Pablo

1998 Resumen informativo con perspectiva evaluativa sobre el Programa APEX-Cerro. Montevideo: UDELAR.

14.

Casanova

Hugo

2012 El gobierno de la universidad en España. La Coruña: Netbiblos.

15.

Castro

Jorge

Oyarbide

Fabricio

2015 Los caminos de la extensión en la universidad argentina. Santa Rosa: Universidad Nacional de La Pampa.

16.

Cortegoso

Ana

Sarachu

Gerardo

Pereyra

Kelly

2012 Universidad y trabajo asociado: Prácticas académicas integrales en el Cono Sur. Montevideo: Extensión Universitaria.

17.

Cúneo

Dardo

1988 La reforma universitaria 1918–1930. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.

18.

Dagnino

Renato

2015 “Como é a universidade de que o Brasil precisa?” Avaliação 20: 293–333.

19.

Ejea

Tomás

2000 “La difusión y extensión de la cultura,” in Una historia de la UAM: Sus primeros 25 años. Vol. 1. Mexico City: UAM.

20.

Falero

Alfredo

2012 Los enclaves informacionales de la periferia capitalista: El caso de Zonamérica de Uruguay, un enfoque desde la sociología. Montevideo: UDELAR/CSIC.

21.

Falero

Alfredo

Pérez

Marcelo

2014 “Visibilizando un encuentro de saberes en el tema mapuche: aportes a partir de una de sus voces.” Encuentro de Saberes: Luchas Populares, Resistencias y Educación 2 (4): 95–103.

22.

Freire

Paulo

1998 ¿Extensión o comunicación? La concientización en el medio rural. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.

23.

Gandarilla

José

2014 Universidad, conocimiento y complejidad: Aproximaciones desde un pensar crítico. La Paz: CIDES/UMSA.

24.

Garduño

Bianca

2011 “La tercera función sustantiva en las instituciones de educación superior privadas en México: relación con la sociedad, institucionalidad y reconocimiento social.” Master’s thesis in sociology, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana–Aztapotzalco.

25.

Gómez

Marcela

Corenstein

Martha

2014 Reconfiguración de lo educativo en América Latina: Experiencias pedagógicas alternativas. Mexico City: UNAM.

26.

Gómez

Luz

Figueroa

Sandra

2011 “Trayectos y trayectorias de la extensión universitaria: aproximación a una tipología de cinco universidades públicas latinoamericanas.” Ciencia Política 12: 109–146.

27.

González

Miguel Alejandro

2010 “Neoliberalismo y educación superior en México.” Master’s thesis in Latin American studies, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

28.

González Casanova

Pablo

2001 La universidad necesaria en el siglo XXI. Mexico City: Era.

29.

Hickling-Hudson

Anne

2006 “La universidad y el intercambio educacional: la contribución cubana al desarrollo post-colonial,” pp. 25–64 in Austin

Robert

(ed.), Imperialismo cultural en América Latina: Historiografía y praxis. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones CECATP.

30.

Laclau

Ernesto

Mouffe

Chantal

2001 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

31.

Lazcano

Olga

Barrientos

Gustavo

2006 Desarrollo de una metodología para la promoción de proyectos de extensión y vinculación universitaria con impacto económico y social. Puebla: Universidad de las Américas.

32.

López Segrera

Francisco

2008 “Tendencias de la educación superior en el mundo y en América Latina y El Caribe.” Avaliação 13: 267–291.

33.

Marginson

Simon

Ordorika

Imanol

2010 Hegemonía en la era del conocimiento: Competencia global en la educación superior y la investigación científica. Mexico City: UNAM.

34.

Mato

Daniel

2013 “Contribución de experiencias de vinculación social de las universidades al mejoramiento de la calidad académica y factores que limitan su desarrollo y valoración institucional.” Avaliação 18 (1): 151–180.

35.

Mollis

Marcela

2003 Las universidades en América Latina, ¿reformadas o slteradas?: La cosmética del poder financiero. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

36.

Olarte

Diana

Ríos

Leonardo

2015 “Enfoques y estrategias de responsabilidad social implementadas en instituciones de educación superior: una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica de los últimos 10 años.” Revista de la Educación Superior 44 (3): 19–40.

37.

Ordorika

Imanol

2001 “Aproximaciones teóricas para un análisis del conflicto y el poder en la educación superior.” Perfiles Educativos 23 (9): 77–96.

38.

Ordorika

Imanol

Lloyd

Marion

2014 “Teorías críticas del estado y la disputa por la educación superior en la era de la globalización.” Perfiles Educativos 36: 122–139.

39.

Ouviña

Hernán

2015 “Los movimientos populares como intelectuales colectivos.” Revista Contrapunto, no. 6, 79–102.

40.

Palacios

Leopoldo

1908 Las universidades populares. Valencia: Sempre y Compañia Editores.

41.

Picos

Gabriel

2014 Extensión rural: Genealogía y construcción de referencias filosóficas hacia nuevas prácticas en el Uruguay. Montevideo: Extensión Universitaria.

42.

Pinheiro

Lia

2016 Educación, resistencia y movimientos sociales: La praxis educativo política de los sin tierra y de los Zapatistas. Mexico City: UNAM.

43.

Puiggrós

Adriana

1994 Sujetos, disciplinas y currículum en los orígenes del sistema educativo argentino. Buenos Aires: Galerna.

44.

Rama

Ángel

1998 La ciudad letrada. Montevideo: Arca.

45.

Rebellato

José Luis

1995 La encrucijada de la ética: Neoliberalismo, conflicto Norte-Sur, liberación. Montevideo: Nordan.

46.

Remedi

Gustavo

1996 “Ciudad letrada: Ángel Rama y la espacialización del análisis cultural,” in Moraña

Mabel

(ed.), Ángel Rama: Estudios críticos. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. http://www.henciclopedia.org.uy/autores/Remedi/ciudadletrada.htm.

47.

Rinesi

Eduardo

2015 Filosofía (y) política de la universidad. Buenos Aires: UNGS.

48.

Rodríguez

María

Rosen

Ana

2016 Abrir las aulas: Universidad y vinculación comunitaria. Mexico City: UACM.

49.

Rodríguez

Roberto

Casanova

Hugo

1998 Universidad contemporánea: Racionalidad política y vinculación social. 2 vols. Mexico City: UNAM/Miguel Ángel Porrua.

50.

Sánchez

Alfredo

Caballero

José

2003 La vinculación en las instituciones de educación superior y en las universidades: Autonomía y sociedad. Mexico City: UNAM/IPN.

51.

Santos

Boaventura de Sousa

2006a La universidad popular del siglo XXI. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales/UNMSM.

52.

Santos

Boaventura de Sousa

2006b Renovar la teoría crítica y reinventar la emancipación social (encuentros en Buenos Aires). Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

53.

Santos

Carlos

Grabino

Valeria

Barrero

Gabriel

Cardozo

Dulcinea

2013 “La promoción de la extensión y la integralidad en la universidad de la República: balance y perspectivas de las políticas fesarrolladas entre 2007 y 2013,” in Memorias del I Congreso de Extensión Universitaria de la Asociación de Universidades del Grupo Montevideo, Montevideo. AUGM. 2–12.

54.

Slaughter

Shelia

Leslie

Larry

1999 Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

55.

Stolowicz

Beatriz

2014 “El ‘posneoliberalismo’ y la reconfiguración del capitalismo en América Latina (2011).” Revista de Ensayos Prohibido Pensar, no. 2. 5–32.

56.

Tatián

Diego

2013 “La invención y la herencia: notas liminares para una universidad abierta,” in II Colóquio Internacional NUPSI-USP. San Pablo. 1–11.

57.

Tommasino

Humberto

Cano

Agustín

2016 “Modelos de extensión universitaria en las universidades latinoamericanas en el siglo XXI: tendencias y controversias.” Universidades 66: 7–24.

58.

Torres Aguilar

Morelos

2009 Cultura y revolución: La universidad popular mexicana (Ciudad de México, 1912–1920). Mexico City: UNAM.

59.

Tünnermann

Carlos

2000 “El nuevo concepto de extensión universitaria y difusión cultural y su relación con las políticas de desarrollo cultural en América Latina.” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 4: 93–126.

60.

UDUAL (Unión de Universidades de América Latina) 1972 La difusión cultural y la extensión universitaria en el cambio social en América Latina: Memorias de la II Conferencia Latinoamericana de Difusión Cultural y Extensión de Universitaria de la UDUAL. Mexico City: UNAM/UDUAL.

61.

Vallaeys

François

2007 Responsabilidad social universitaria: Propuesta para una definición madura y eficiente. Mexico City: Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey.