Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article analyses the acts of violence and disturbances committed at Oxford University by scholars from Wales. Violence in medieval universities was far to be uncommon, especially among the young scholars. However, the Welsh had a poor reputation. If they were part of the kingdom of England, those students were not English and therefore were treated as foreigners in England and also in their native country. It appears that in reality, they were not worse than their fellow English students. What is revealing in their case is that their participation in disturbances sometimes strengthened their sense of national identity and belonging, but paradoxically, somehow reinforced their integration in the university community.

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The aim of this paper is to examine how the financing system of the Spanish public universities works in order to show to what extent it may have contributed to foster some of the deficiencies to be obser­ved when studying the productivity of our ins­titutions of higher education. Additionally, the paper attempts to provide a set of proposals related to university funding, being convinced that the implementation of at least some of these proposals could give a boost to the chan­ges that both the university system and the Spanish society require.

La llegada a España de las directrices del programa  Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, lo que cotidianamente hemos incorporado a nuestro léxico comoPlan Bolonia, ha supuesto seguramente uno de los cambios más profundos en el sistema universitario español.

Para complementar las aproximaciones al tema abordado en esta edición de Cuadernos, entendimos conveniente incorporar una conversación que habilitara la interacción de miradas —distintas pero convergentes— sobre el proceso de la ciudad de Montevideo y la vida de sus habitantes. Invitamos a la historiadora Ana Ribeiro, al experto en cuestiones inmobiliarias Julio Villamide y al sociólogo Marcos Baudean. En la sede central del CLAEH, tuvieron dos horas de activo intercambio sobre la ciudad, sobre la significación del espacio público y sobre los modos —hoy problemáticos— de convivencia ciudadana. En definitiva, sobre la cultura de la ciudad, sus cambios, sus perspectivas. Editado el coloquio, Cuadernos del CLAEH invitó al arquitecto Carlos Altezor a leerlo y comentarlo.

Characteristic features of the students’ activities of the only university in the inter-war Lithuania – Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas – dealt with in the article were the expression of student protests and discontent as a result of the twists and turns in the domestic and foreign politics of the country and the internal problems of the University. The forms and substance of the collective behaviour of the active and eager academic youth pointed to the presence of unresolved urgent matters both inside and outside the University. The students’ political demonstrations of 1926 and 1938 were the direct response of young people to the political tensions in the country. It is noteworthy that the political opposition was also engaged in fuelling youth resistance by making use of student organisations, shielded by the autonomy of the University, as tools in their fight against the ruling majority. The political landscape was diverse with Catholic, nationalist and socialist segments there, thus the animosity ranging from usual routine friction between groups to serious conflicts crossing the University boundaries. The patriotically-minded students were particularly sensitive to the insinuations by Poland and Germany, the countries hostile to Lithuania, and considered them as insults to the national dignity and peaceful stance of Lithuania. Lithuania being a young national state reborn in 1918, the vices of its society (outbreaks of nationalism) engulfed the young generation, including students; the notorious case of “Jewish corpses” at the University represented the tendency described above. Several amended versions of the University Statute provoked students into expressing their discontent with the internal matters of the University, into protection of freedoms and active selfdefence. The protests under consideration ranged from accidental to consistent, while substance-wise they ranged from political to internal-institutional.

The part that security authorities played in the process of university enrolment was an example of how the social policy of the Party authorities got implemented. UB employees had been executing tasks connected with the negative selection of university candidates since the first decree of the Ministry of Education that regulated that issue came out (1947). Student profiles, prepared by the Policy Secret (UB), were one of the major factors deciding whether a given Young person would be allowed to matriculate. In this case the aim was to “protect university communities,” which in fact meant that persons deemed by the authorities undesirable would be prevented from studying (preventive actions) and those with “proper class origins” (peasants’ and workers’ children) would have their academic future secured. Ministry of Public Securuty (MBP) officers, cooperated with the various actors: the party structures of different levels (from central to local ones), political and social organisations. Employees of the security apparatus rejected a large percent of candidates. In 1953 about 47 percent of students they vetted were put on the proscription lists. Therefore one could risk a statement that the UB played crucial part in establishing the social origin of student communities in 1947-1956.

The uniformity and rigidity of the syllabuses of the different Spanish universities, initially imposed by the regime, gave way with the passage of the years, at best, to some slight variations in the university syllabus in some colleges. In other cases, change requests, accompanied by interesting proposals, were disregarded. However, teachers and students continuously showed signs of their desire to change syllabuses that did not respond to the real demands of a society different from post-war society. This paper analyzes the structure of curricula of the different sections of the Faculty of Arts of Salamanca, and a tour is conducted by major changes or modernization attempts occurred during the 50s and 60s, with the primary objective of discovering the true evolution, or the attempts of transformation experienced by the curricular framework of the institution (content, methodology, evaluation procedures, etc.).

University life is not limited to the activities of teaching and research. As an urban reality, it forms part of a larger system of relationships and dependencies such as the accommodation, work, leisure and mobility spaces which promote the exchange of information and the most common ways of relating with each other in our culture. This paper raises some issues linking residence and university, understanding this pairing as inseparable and over which to move on in terms of forecasts and its future systematization. Localization patterns and spatial relationships between accommodation, different campuses and the city are proposed as factors to be considered, as well as the levels of supply and demand in selected cases. An approach to the topic that tries to provide some clues for the improvement and the adaptation of university accommodation today.

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