Autonomy is a principle deeply rooted in the history of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Latin America and the Caribbean, in part due to their role of resistance to the different authoritarian regimes of the 20th century and their persistence as public spaces for the promotion of citizen, critical and transformative values. For these reasons, autonomy is firmly established as a value to be defended and preserved, as well as expanded and enhanced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years, the higher education community in the region perceives the growth of threats to autonomy, stemming, for example, from the privatization and commodification of education, neoliberal management models that limit the budget allocated to universities, a situation worsened by the economic crisis that accompanied the COVID-19 health crisis. Attempts have also been made to undermine autonomy from the political point of view, with the intervention in the elections of the administrative bodies of public universities and the constant attacks on the legitimacy of scientific knowledge, which promotes, as a consequence, a relativization of the importance of HEIs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n