A review to the necessary debunking of Venezuelan university myths

Abstract

The Venezuelan university has the obligation of debunking myths and anachronic thoughts about its conception and function. University has been a critic and lucid institution when it has studied society, but conservative and blind to look at itself. In this article, I recapitulate questions about the Venezuelan university’s own notion, for instance: to dogmatize the concept of autonomy; to continue using the medieval concept of trilogy of campus, teaching and cloisters; to believe that the university task is “to search the truth”; to think that university is the monopolistic institution of creation of knowledge; to maintain the formulation of teaching, researching and extension as its basic functions (I oppose the formulation of teaching-learning, researching-managing); to preserve a management model of the academic life which is deaf and blind to the contribution that Montesquieu made to the modernity; to persist in a disincentive labor model; to be guided by the romantic idea that every university student must be a researcher, although the reality is far from that fantasy.