New trends in community engagement and university extension in Latin American universities: Chile, México, Uruguay, and regional networks.

Abstract

Higher education's new processes and demands have impacted the field of community engagement, stressing the extensionist ethos in Latin America. In this context, community engagement today becomes a relevant topic for the field of university studies, as well as a way to better understand the processes of social construction and legitimization of the contemporary university. This article explores the main guidelines for community engagement in the cases of Uruguay, Chile and Mexico. The empirical framework is given by what is defined as its community engagement policy or equivalent. Through the analysis of documentation, university legislation, and academic literature, we identify the main ideas and institutional frameworks that shape the engagement policy guidelines in different cases, as well as in regional university networks. As results, the persistence of polysemy of conceptualizations is identified, ranging from critical extension, linkage with the context, and third substantive mission, in a range of lax and less lax definitions. Likewise, the cases present a diversity of institutionalization processes that vary according to the autonomy granted to universities and the standardization of community engagement sought by state organisms, in which quality assurance processes stand out. It concludes with the challenge of deepening the study of university extension and connecting with science and technology studies to better account for other ongoing trends in the field of university-society relations.