History, disputes and policies in the organization of admission to national universities in Argentina

Abstract

The question of university admission has remained on the agenda for higher level politics for several decades now. Currently, in Argentina, the construction of admission policies for the higher level faces the tension between its eminently selective tradition and the claims of the Right to Higher Education. Particularly for the Argentine case, the postulation of the Right to Higher Education is recent and it was reached after a history full of exclusions, limitations, and redefinitions on the role of the University. For this reason, the objective of this article is to present a historical tour of the configuration of the public university in Argentina with a special focus on the policies and regulations established for university admission. The work of recovery of bibliographic information is in a historiographic perspective. The use of regulations referring to the university system in general and university admission was resorted to. Previous studies by authors who addressed this topic were also used. The analysis of these sources sought to observe how the requirements and regulations for admission to public universities in Argentina changed. The conclusions of the work carried out account for the opening and closing moments with respect to university admission, as well as the historical development of the educational policy linked to the level, which allowed going from a university for a few to mass universities.