Rescuing the relation between the State-nation and the modern university, is commented on the creation of the myth-reality of the nation in accord with the myth-reality of the institution university, which would be destined to think its nation and its time in autonomous way. After to present the crises of the university - of hegemony, of legitimacy and institutional - the article searches to relate the most serious of these crises, the institutional one, that threat to become the university institution-autonomous in operational university, with the crisis of that State-nation, in the context of the globalization of the capital. It ends presenting the main contours of the institutional crisis of the university in Brazil contemporary.
University; University autonomy; Institutional systems of superior education; State-nation; Globalization; Operational university