The university as a factor in sustainable local development

Abstract

Faced with a national reality where there are areas of high marginalization and poverty, we propose to analyze the participation of the university as a manager of local development, considering that it is a generator of knowledge, capable of processing it from the global to the local and from the local to the global. In order to achieve efficient local development, it is necessary to propose strategies between local development actors and public and private institutions; among them, the university with its human and cognitive resources can be a manager of local development.

This work aims to carry out a conceptual review of the theoretical approaches of local or endogenous development, of institutional functionalism, to establish a relationship between needs, development agents and the university. In this sense, Boisier (2001) states that endogenous development, more than an analysis model, is an interpretation oriented to action in public policies, in which local actors, through their decisions and initiatives, mark the path of development.

In this framework, the university as a generator and disseminator of knowledge must define its role as a manager of local development, which would respond to the third mission that contemporary society has assigned to it (García, 1999).