University and Community: A Necessary Relationship for Latin American Social Development

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the existing links between the university and the community, taking into account the wear and tear that has occurred in recent times to this relationship. It is conceived that the university and the community maintain a reciprocal process of collaboration, which has to promote the production of knowledge, technologies, access to knowledge, while leading to face social emergencies, violence, deterioration economy, the environmental crisis, illiteracy and other problems that affect the community. However, achieving this end implies the academic organization outside the university campuses, working in favor of the community and breaking with the obsolete structures of education. Under these premises, the research is oriented towards promoting higher education as an act of social transformation, a permanent search for sustainability, a meeting with communities and the advancement of Latin American society.