Higher Education Research in the Global Culture: Perspectives from Mexico

This article examines some of the issues regarding the global context in which universities are trying to meet their fundamental missions—teaching, research, and cultural diffusion. It focuses not only in the difficulties, but also in the potentials and possibilities that our globalized world offers for the development of indigenous knowledge. The article also emphasizes the Latin American context, and more particularly, the Mexican case. Reference is made to Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) which is the country’s largest institution of higher education and the one with the best infrastructure for scientific research in many fields.