University reforms: one name, many different experiences

Abstract

One hundred years after the 1918 reform in Córdoba and fifty years after the 1968 student mobilization in Mexico, this text reviews the different significance contents that the notion of reform acquired throughout the history of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The text also reflects upon how current the debate about university reform is today, beyond the fact that the date necessarily prompts us to think about the university from that vantage point. In this study I registered that localized differences in the concept of reform are strongly linked to the degree of conformation of the university population as a particular social group; it is proposed that the experiences of university reform are expressions of the social divide - which is structured cyclically - between established and young generations in the institution, in each reproductive cycle. The inflection point in each cycle is a large-scale student mobilization (1933/1968/1986/1999) or a labor mobilization (1972/1977).