This article seeks to reflect on the challenges and paths of higher education, especially the current and future role of Latin American universities in the process of training individuals and societies. In order to do so, it mainly includes considerations debated in the panel: the challenges of university and education in Latin America today, carried out at the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana - Unaula - Colombia in 2014, as well as a link with authors and official publications on the subject. The university in the condition of social institution and destined to metabolize processes of democratic education, needs to abandon certain concepts intentionally constructed throughout the history and approach with urgency to the society. Its challenge lies in the need to break with the paradigms of structuralist knowledge, which contemporaneously homogenizes the way individuals and society are constructed, an aspect closely linked to the notion of a knowledge society, using the so-called technological innovations. Finally, the success of this confrontation depends on the links and imperatives that present and future are being created with society in general, key points for which higher education needs to respond to the needs of all sectors of society. In this sense, the university plays a fundamental role in objectifying the internationalization of higher education, insofar as it allows students to experience, in a profound and transformative way, exchanges through their international cooperation programs in levels of pre-degree, master's and doctorate, essential point for the formation of critical individuals and more prepared to the future present demands in its different scales.
Key words:
Higher education; International cooperation; University.