Perspective Chapter: Higher Education Challenges

Abstract

One of the main challenges that current higher education faces is aspiring to a coherent educational formation in a society that is in permanent change. This has direct implications for how a proposal consistent with the demands and needs of the world of work is built and how it innovates as it progresses. Flexibility and contextualization are two fundamental axes when facing the challenge of current higher education. This allows students to present themselves in a dynamic world that is in permanent change. This means that, in turn, the academic offer must, necessarily, diversify, attentive to the rapid changes in the environment. Therefore, offering a wide variety of options gives students a more realistic and achievable possibility of connecting with the world of work. In this sense, it is important to promote the empowerment of students in the face of their professional development within their university educational path.

1. Introduction

This chapter is the result of a critical reflection regarding the observed phenomena associated with current circumstances, regarding the tension between higher education, professional training and globalization. This tension is happening in various fields and at different levels within a multifactorial framework, with respect to the ways in which the training of subjects is developed in the university and how this tries to sustain an integral formation of the subject, relevant to the territory and consistent with the training needs of society. For this, topics such as the curriculum, the relationship education and context, innovation and education and subject are developed.

The purpose of this chapter is to reveal the challenges faced by higher education in a context dominated by the information society, by the world of employability and by the internationalization of the economy through large transnational conglomerates. This insight shows the powerful influence that these factors condition, in an ostensible and sustained way, higher education in different countries. These conditions hinder the processes of change in higher education, as well as the opportunity to consider the perspective of the actors themselves of the educational task.

One of the problems raised in the field of tertiary education—which is of great relevance—is not having considered in their approaches the multidimensional nature of the training of university students by focusing on certain edges without examining the entire prism. There exist many factors that affect a successful, quality education. In this sense, the decisions made in curricular planning might be filtered by good intentions, but, nevertheless, they do not delve into contextual aspects that, when it comes to materializing in a project, its one-dimensional nature becomes evident. In the same line, the problem of complex, multidimensional reality is also crossed, in which the subject-student is immersed, who permanently interacts with the social environment and in a certain historical moment.

Additionally, we find ourselves in a struggle of forces between professional training and disciplinary training as one tries to gain ground over the other. Disciplinary training is a desire of the institution, whereas a profession is a demand of our society. The question is: where are the needs of the students themselves? Are the needs of society and the particular needs of students both equivalent?

The needs of civil society versus the individual needs of each subject—understood as a student—can be contradictory, in the sense that the needs of civil society are aimed at resolving problems or conflicts that concern them with immediacy, meaning the demanded knowledge makes sense to the extent that it is useful for something. Instead, there is the assumption that the needs of the students go beyond the utilitarian character that is assigned to knowledge from the perspective of modernity. This will translate into a confrontation between the external and forced need imposed by society versus the internal need of the subject.

Accordingly, the needs of the students could be satisfied to the extent that their expectations can be specified, in an educational project coherent with what the students require, not from the perspective of the desire of the institution, but from the very needs of the students, what one is lacking and what is not there yet, but is being pursued. Following the same idea, it would be necessary to assume that it is about a need for knowledge beyond the utilitarian and that it corresponds to something that they do not necessarily know what it is, but that it is needed. To precisely meet these expectations, the university should pay attention and attend to these needs and sow fertile ground to cultivate them. What does this mean? That said ground should be a space for the discovery, by the students, of that something needed that must be discovered by themselves.

The needs of the subjects. It seems that the needs of the students that have been previously raised go into the idea of a thirst for knowledge and the appreciation of knowledge for the sake of it. Given the insecurity or indeterminacy of what the student is looking for and is not yet aware of, it is necessary to implement a broad training, with a holistic perspective, which allows students to develop fully and that promotes autonomy along the lines of Kant. Following this idea, it is not a transferral but rather a process that extracts what they bring from the base, simply because of their human condition. For this, it is essential to have an educational project that serves as a catalyst, in the sense that it favours the learning process of the students and, consequently, favours the emergence of their potentialities. Said, in other words, that it gives space for intuition development, expectations and, in general terms, those particular needs.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the university institution, there is an itch to impart, in an academic zeal, certain things moved by desire, as opposed to the needs of those who are educated, regardless of whether or not these needs are equivalent to civil society needs. Another issue is that these needs arise at a fixed historical moment, while the university system, for the most part, has gradually become stagnant in already obsolete patterns. But not only the patterns are obsolete, but also the knowledge has rapid obsolescence, which implies a challenge on different levels.

The institution in its guarantor role—as it sees itself, and with an effort to try to control all variables, promotes and projects a graduation profile where they converge all those elements that enable or ensure success in terms of the demands of civil society, but which, however, in the course of the implementation of the said profile, establish a tension with the students who follow this formative path. Indeed, the desire on the part of the institution to train in the sciences, arts or humanities with a basic disciplinary mastery and investigative adequacy does not allow us to glimpse what is behind the needs of the students in terms of their expectations. These are coupled with a certain historical moment, different from the times with which the university is familiarized. This means that when an educational project is proposed, at the moment of its implementation, there is a gap in terms of that historical moment, a product of the abrupt and inexorable passage of time. In this sense, innovation should be attentive to permanent changes and a dynamic environment. However, even so, there is another point to consider, referring to the motivations that students bring: the cultural capital that is brought along themselves. Many times, the needs are postponed due to the fulfilment of the desire of the institution, which frustrates the formative assessment. And this, produced by a curricular decontextualization does not consider aspects of the culture of the students nor the dynamic character that it has, is a problem relative to space and time.

The question is whether or not there is awareness of the tension that has historically occurred between desire and need, understood as a true need, without pre-existing, along the lines of Ortega and Gasset, valuing knowledge, without questioning whether it is useful or not.

2. The curricular issue

Going to the specifically curricular field, one of the main obstacles that appear in the formative itinerary of students in current higher education is the rigid curriculum, focused on content, which poses a strong tension facing a society that is in permanent change, which forces them to study subjects that do not contribute much to further development according to their interests. This implies a sustained drop in motivation. This can be seen reflected in the low attendance at certain subjects in the classrooms and, consequently, a decline in academic performance. This phenomenon can be understood by a hyper-specialization of knowledge, which makes knowledge decrease and the holistic perspective of phenomena, things and the object of study in question lost. It comes down to a one-dimensional perspective. Indeed, fragmented knowledge does not allow for a complete understanding of the whole and, therefore, makes each of the components on which the study focuses lose its meaning by not having in view the globality of a fact, an object or a certain phenomenon. According to this, the students get lost in an endless maze, trying to make sense so as not to get lost in a sea of split, disjointed, disintegrated information. With all of the above, the students suffer a loss of sense of things, which demotivates them and forces them to select only what is useful. Certainly, the obstacle produced by a rigid curricular structure as a formative proposal against the impulse that the subject brings is not to be taken lightly, nor is the friction of spontaneity against social coercion. For this same reason, the subjects as students fall into a kind of apparent utilitarianism, moved by exogenous factors, not finding meaning and having to navigate through the mist to try to rescue some meaning.

The challenge, from the curricular point of view, has to do with territorial knowledge, of context, in which a certain perspective or curricular theory makes sense to the extent that it is capable of reading that particular reality and, accordingly, generating a specific educational intervention for that context. In such a way that ‘it is impossible to interpret the curriculum and understand the curricular theories outside the context from which they come’ [1].

However, whatever the vision or curricular perspective that supports a certain educational model loses its irradiation in the praxis if the teachers are not aligned with the theoretical concept that underlies the model since they are in charge of operationalizing the curriculum in the classroom. In the same way, if the actors that participate in the learning-teaching process have not been summoned to a kind of ‘social construction’ of the educational model, it does not represent something significant for themselves either. This has a direct impact on the curricular implementation stage, in terms of little or no symbolic appropriation of the model by the teaching staff.

The critical paradigm, circumscribed in a historical moment in which apparently, modernism has not yet settled, proposes the curriculum as a deliberative construct committed to the emancipation of the subject. In this sense, the intersubjective relationship of the individual with others and with the environment in which it is possible to intervene from reflective ideological criticism stands out. Indeed, ‘critical theory implies dialectical reasoning, has emancipatory interest and applies ideological criticism’ [1]. In this regard, [1] points out that ‘the critical vision of the curriculum must insist on analysing the relationships of each subject with himself and with his world, generating new knowledge by deepening these interrelationships’.

Following this idea and from phenomenology, the reality is understood as a mental construction, so it is necessary to reveal the thought of the other, but on their terms, from the subjective. For this reason, the critical paradigm needs the interaction of the actors who move and promote the construction of the curriculum, that is, teachers, students, authorities, administrative staff and teaching support; In short, it requires the participation of the entire educational community.

Having a clear reading of the complex reality in which we live implies going from the manifested or evident to the subjacent, as if to give a structure, in the line of Levi-Strauss, to the prevailing socio-symbolic chaos. Therefore, this issue is not alien to the epistemological assumptions with which a curricular proposal is built, specifically regarding the critical paradigm.

Likewise, it is important to point out that, from this critical perspective, the individual is considered a historically conditioned subject and, as a historical subject, is capable of transforming reality. In other words, the emancipatory character that this paradigm promotes is nothing more than the possibility of transforming reality to unlock those relations of power and domination and, with this, reveal the naturalized to denature it; to make visible what has been hidden.

Within this framework, the role of the teacher is essential because it ceases to be an executor of prescriptive grounds; ‘The teacher is self-critical with curricular theories and practices’ [1]. In the same way, the teacher-student relationship replaces the stagnant nature of the vertical relationship with a horizontal relationship, allowing participation and collaboration in pedagogical practice, among the main actors in the educational process, towards, in a teleological sense, a possible transformation of reality.

On the other hand, Lyotard [2] warns that the university has lost its legitimacy vis-à-vis society since knowledge no longer has an end in itself, which is why it has taken on a rather functional character, a characteristic feature of the postmodern condition for these institutions. There is a growing concern about education for employability based on job instability. Given this scenario, the challenge under these conditions seems to be even greater, and along these lines, the production of knowledge is preferable over its transmission. The bet is on interdisciplinarity, teamwork and data management, that is, information, establishing networks for the production of new knowledge. Naturally, these issues should be at the forefront of current curricular planning.

On another note, the issue of curricular flexibility is in line with the autonomy of the students in the sense that they can select their route with structural conditions that allow it. Therefore, it is important ‘…as well the need to foster flexibility in the curricular structure of training programs with the purpose to foster and promote opportunities for student mobility, and transfers between programs and institutions, and to offer training routes for students according to their interests, expectations, and academic needs’ [3].

Along the same lines, the structure of training cycles, the system of transferable credits and a modular learning system which organizes knowledge are used. ‘The structure of the studies must allow students (…) to develop their curricular itinerary, which allows them to make certain changes in studies, the passage from some phases to others of the same or from certain sections to others within the same phase, all within the framework of a precise and reduced number of conditions. The development of these possibilities requires the conversion of the studies to the credit scheme, as a procedure that measures the teachings received and that facilitates mobility between them’ (Bricall, 2000, Chapter III, quoted at the bottom of the page in Giraldo & Campo [3]).

In summary, curricular flexibility is understood as the opportunities that students have to take courses or carry out curricular activities that allow them to specialize, update or deepen the line they need to develop. Consequently, the curricular itineraries must be contextualized and diversified in terms of their structure, to the extent that they are capable of responding to the expectations and intentions of the applicants, that is, the interest groups. Regardless of the foregoing, certain activities that allow linking with the environment should be built into a curriculum, such as the so-called ‘Practicum’. Without going into further detail, it can be said that the ‘Practicum’ is understood as a curricular component that is carried out outside the institution (‘out-door’) and that it constitutes an implement that blends academic learning with experience in workplaces (Zabalza [4]). That is a learning device that is linked to the work environment, which allows students to face the world of work in advance and the possibility of mobilizing a series of cognitive, procedural and attitudinal resources to carry out their work in context. The integration of theoretical and practical knowledge that students must resort to and, above all, the ‘in situ’ experience is highlighted, an aspect that cannot be developed within the institution. Regardless of the above, there is a very important component from the student’s perspective: the emotion of the experience, which, without a doubt, substantially favours learning.

3. Education and context

In the first place, it should be noted that higher education is in a complex scenario as it struggles in a globalized world. This phenomenon has brought with it three key conditions that have revolutionized the way of approaching teaching in universities. The information society, employability and the internationalization of the economy. This has also had an impact on higher education, in terms of the concept of internationalization, given that ‘The increasing tendency to internationalize training in higher education is a reflection of the impacts of globalization in the educational field, whose actions are the product of forces beyond the educational institutions themselves, those that intend to operate under common codes that allow an equivalent certification and that, in turn, allow dialogue with standardized forms of knowledge appropriation’ [5].

The challenge is how to appease the design of an educational proposal around a model that contains the vision and mission of a particular higher education institution, with a complex multidimensional reality. In effect, a certain educational model will always be permeated by the institutional seal and that imprint is led by the biases that the same institution poses. These biases affect curricular decisions, which can be of spatial contextual order, in the sense of territory, political, cultural, economic, technological, dogmatic, religious, philosophical, etc. Continuing with this idea, the educational model is stressed with the contextual demands that society imposes on higher education and is stressed, in turn, by the subjects-students who also have their demands.

Likewise, it must be considered that the demands of civil society are biased by a certain economic paradigm that seeks to increasingly connect education with the market.

From this comes the concept of utilitarianism, in which neoliberal thought promotes education to ensure that good jobs will provide the individuals with a good income. In this sense, knowledge is valid if it is useful for something, in this case, human well-being and material comfort. But it seems that well-being alone is not enough, since the concept of happiness, under this logic, would be determined by the maximization of utilities.

It is pernicious to permeate these ideas that hinder the ideal of knowledge in all its complexity: ‘The idea that society demands a rather technical training from the university is counterproductive in the sense that the generation of knowledge must promote epistemic progress and not the fragmentation of it, reducing all knowledge to knowledge-oriented towards the instrumental, based on employability’ [6].

On the other hand, it would seem that the demands of civil society would suffice to be covered by a teaching of the ‘Unterricht’ type than the one proposed from the humanist assumption by the public university, which would be more in line with the ‘Bildung’ type, a much more comprehensive training that aims to access the best of the subject [7], or better yet, that aims to make the best of it “emerge”.

Certainly, the humanist ideal from a broad perspective of the concept goes far beyond the satisfaction of the utilitarian needs of the civic world, highlighting the value of knowledge based on the transcendental dimension of the human being, in a Kantian sense.

Likewise, it seems that the demands or training needs of civil society become an idea of teaching that should have a functional nature, which can confuse and induce erratic actions to the extent that they are driven by the influence of the context. This is for trying to meet these demands.

Therefore, the implications of the demands of the context stress the ontology and epistemology of the concepts that underlie the ideas and approaches that support educational policies. In this sense, a bidirectional relationship between State and context is not noticed, but rather, it seems an incessant harassment of the environment towards education to conquer the world of work.

The point is to point out these hostilities that public education is facing, especially by state universities, whose discrepancies are observed ‘as part of a set of phenomena that stress the borders between “the being” of a university that declares itself deeply humanist and the “should be” that society poses, according to its interests, permeated by concepts such as functional and efficient’ [6].

Either education has permeated so much or maybe is the economy that has spread vastly that hybrid concepts such as ‘Knowledge Management’ arise, from which knowledge becomes a more competitive and dynamic knowledge economy, a source of wealth creation, cooperation and specialization, and in the practice of knowledge management [8] (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_en.htm); a kind of knowledge economy, influenced by the business and industrial world. This is the scenario in which individuals operate and with which they interact. This, without a doubt, distances itself from the founding principles of education for the transformation of the human being and for the transformation of the world, not in economic or production terms, but rather, in terms of the transcendence of the human being, in the idea of the rescue of the qualities inherent to the subject and in the conscience of himself and society as a whole.

4. The innovation

Faced with the complex reality, there are not many alternatives to be able to act by the institutional seals nor at the same time in the face of social demands, whose demands, in turn, are conditioned by certain paradigms that force certain ways of acting in the university scene. What is perceived as an effective action is, without a doubt, facing the current challenges, revealing what is hidden by the ideological force that seeks to put the economy above education. For this, it is necessary to give new meaning to those aspects that can contribute to the design strategies and implementation of training plans for innovation. Said process, that of innovation, should be understood as the application of the academy in social practice, given that deep knowledge of social dynamics can generate new perspectives that can better tune in with educational needs and proposals.

The innovation process is understood or should be understood, as a kind of ethnographic knowledge in which those called to formulate an innovation project must necessarily immerse themselves in the culture and society in which they intend to intervene. Rescuing the culture understood as a reference of a patrimonial identity allows a direct link with the environment and, consequently, modelling a proposal consistent with the needs of the environment. In this sense, it is imperative to have strategies and thus respond and commit to the demands and training needs of referents and interest groups, understood as those who pursue a profession.

In an innovation, various actors participate as part of an educational community. In it, teachers must be involved with special emphasis, requiring authorization to generate a relevant, viable, coherent, systematic and argued curricular proposal for professional and disciplinary training in the university space, which can be reflected, deliberated and shared. For this, common spaces for discussion and participation are required, horizontally among all those who make up the community, teachers and students, who must be willing to cultural change in the community itself. This supposes a cultural change within the educational communities. Among many aspects, in light of the results of the analysis and the findings of the immersion in the socio-cultural environment and its corresponding understanding of the territory in its complexity, a training plan that contemplates, among other things, should be discussed. The sequence of achievements, the articulation of knowledge and the progression of learning.

The demands that are imposed on a certain innovation are stressed by the urgency with which the training needs are demanded. It is not possible to innovate if it is not subjected to a rigorous, exhaustive process of much reflection and debate, which implies a considerable investment of time. At the same time, rapid progress is being made to such an extent that the changes that were useful for one historical moment are no longer so for another. And this is because the needs and demands of civil society have an immediate value, which, probably, in two or three more years, said knowledge is no longer useful since the needs are changing. Consequently, the idea of demanded knowledge is in line with the instrumental, of what is useful immediately. By this, it seems that this idea of the utilitarianism of knowledge has been naturalized at different levels, both in what the subjects-students pursue and in the approaches to innovation and curricular redesign by higher education institutions. If the wording of the graduate profiles jealously guards the imprint of the institution, they also reveal a kind of contract that ensures that the training declared therein will ‘do’ for the students for their future professional development. The idea is how the university builds a counter-hegemonic proposal from cultural identity, understood as the collective narrative that individuals are capable of building. In this proposal, of an educational nature, cross-cutting aspects such as gender equality, diversity, inclusion and non-discrimination must be present, as well as the deontological principles of profession, social responsibility and citizenhood.

Regardless, for the effects of an innovation that exceeds the border conditions posed by instrumental rationality, it is necessary to collect relevant information from the subjects themselves who participate in the training process, in such a way as to carry out a prospective analysis that allows us to glimpse the needs that emerge from the students. It is a question of formulating a more humanistic conception regarding a certain training project: a training guideline convergent with the beliefs of the subjects, with the fields of action and with a redefinition of the learning spaces, as spaces for the development of those intuitions and expectations of the students. The coexistence and articulation of a transversal instance that allows an upright development with the basic demands of a particular discipline can enhance said development.

On the other hand, it must be considered that the concept of innovation implies a change at various levels. Not only is innovation faced with theoretical and disciplinary postulates that produce and promote reductionist and fragmented knowledge, but also, in the formulation of plans and programs, that overcome old practices. In addition, it is vital to innovate in classroom teaching practices and in evaluation practices, especially those that are related to the process. Following this idea, it is necessary to relieve learning over teaching, shifting the focus to the student. Hence, the importance of its autonomy arises. In this sense, the use of active methodologies is important, in which students become participants in their own learning. It is a personal construction, elaborating representations and attribution of meanings from previous experiences and knowledge. Getting involved with your own learning is, therefore, having a willingness to learn, according to the immanent needs of the subjects in question; giving meaning to the training process and, consequently, appropriate knowledge. But this disposition, the significance and the appropriation are not a question of rational order a priori, but rather, it has to do with the emotions that move the subject when he approaches the object of study or when he is in front of a complex phenomenon, to which one wants to access, to know. It is not reason itself that activates emotions, it is emotions that allow rational decisions to be made [9]. Then, thinking about innovation, spaces or favourable learning environments must be created so that the initial impulse of the students has room from the emotional—that is, that this allows having such a disposition on the part of the subjects, that learning is an experience with meaning and sensitivity, after all, valued from emotion, ‘as a disposition to action’ [10].

5. Education and subject

What are the ontological and epistemological reasons or assumptions that support education today? What are the educational policies that establish the guidelines for country-level education? What is the role played by the subject in higher education? What importance is attributed to the subject as an actor of his own learning? All these imposed questions point to the conditions or limitations that make it difficult for the subject to express himself. That is to say, they are conditions that hinder the needs of the subjects as students.

Faced with this problem, one should consider the issue of the subject’s historicity, in the line of Dilthey, as a historical subject or historical Being, who understands his conditioning and who is capable of facing that complexity of reality and, consequently, of acting against such impositions. It is a permanent update of the phenomena and the situated subjects and of the awareness that one has of it. In this outcome, the subject, as a student, interacts with the university space that governs certain modes of approach to knowledge, or the object of study, by imposition from the normative plane, which stresses, in turn, the subjectivities of the students. Should higher education institutions analyse this problem and the subjects become aware of it, a possibility of change, an alternative look and a position towards their formation as an individual and as a social entity could be glimpsed.

This self-awareness may be the one that can potentially guide the student in understanding their own formative assessment, with awareness of the institutional seal, the identity of the profession, the discipline and the historical moment.

Consequently, the importance lies in the rescue of the subject; in the ability to think by himself, and in the power of the subjectivities that move it. By this, there is an intrinsic wealth to the subject that must be revealed to the world and that must be rescued from training, beyond discipline and profession, from their humanity. In this sense, university education would be understood as a concept that articulates knowledge and awareness, ‘as long as it can consistently empower a person to build their reality, which supposes that the individual has a sense from which and for which to build that reality’ [11].

Rescuing the subject who learns means rescuing subjectivity by generating spaces for creativity and conditions that allow them to develop their own thinking and, in the same way, allow them to interact with others and position themselves in the world as a subject with historical awareness, with the capacity to reconstruct the past for the appropriation of the future [12]. Along the same lines, developed by Zemelman, the interaction with others is expressed in a collective identity that supposes the shared elaboration of a common horizon, which points to the idea of a social transformation that can be potentially built. Indeed, this author points out that ‘the role of education is not to impose value, emancipatory or critical discourse; it is unleashing the need for freedom, the need for emancipation, the need to be builders of one’s own life’ [13].

Continuing with the idea of rescuing immanent human potentialities, Figueroa [14], regarding Kant, points out that ‘…education would be the process through which the individual is encouraged to bring out or deploy the possibilities or perfections that his being shelters and seeks… his very and complete constitution as a human being’.

Likewise, the development of the human condition has always been related, historically, to language and this is another aspect to consider: that of consciousness and language, along the lines of Chomsky. This approach distinguishes language in such a range that the subject is capable, through it, of accessing the natural world, of knowing it, of grasping it. And in this sense, language contributes to the awareness of the world that the subject builds, complementing Vygotsky’s approach, which proposes that the subject is not limited to responding to stimuli, but rather acts on them, transforms them and is influenced by the social environment. Then, the subject is capable of acting against coercive forces, moved by the will that is born from emotion.

On the one hand, the concepts of conscience and autonomy of the subject are involved. Autonomy, up against the exogenous intervention that could be translated as an imposed rigid structure. Then, the autonomy of the subject has to do with consciousness, where they must learn to face and live with unpredictability, understanding that there are no longer certainties. The relativization of concepts and worldviews has made the reality even more complex. That is why it is necessary to promote the autonomy of the subject, recovering the subjectivity of the individual, revealing their symbolic languages and valuing the epistemic qualities that underlie those languages.

On the other hand, the autonomy of the subject, as a student, will be understood, for the purposes of this chapter, as the capacity that he potentially possesses to self-regulate his own learning. And this ability to self-regulate has to do with the metacognition process, understood as the awareness that the subject has of their cognitive mechanisms, as declarative knowledge and as procedural regulation [15]. In this regard, ‘Consciousness would imply high levels of control of the activity, the understanding of the elements and how they are related, with which the subjects, through the use of consciousness, can recognize and understand both the results as the processes involved in the actions that they carry out’ [16].

However, this self-regulation of learning must be mediated by the intervention of the teacher, to the extent that it is done systematically in the processes of evaluation and feedback of learning, evidencing the achievements and making the students aware of them. Therefore, there is a shared responsibility, as a teacher-mediator and as a subject that builds new knowledge from their potentialities and subjectivities based on learning environments that consider spaces for their autonomy. In the words of Zemelman [17], ‘the construction of autonomy supposes thinking from the capacity to signify’, through the use of language. Consequently, the appropriation of concepts and the possibility of manifesting them and acting from one’s subjectivity allows the ability to be a subject in the face of history and circumstances [18].

6. Conclusion

The curricular structure of higher education should be aligned with the development of new knowledge, with the subjects conditioned by history and by the sociocultural context. These relationships converge in a kind of supply and demand that involve a struggle of forces between desire and need. In addition, the higher education institution is faced with a dynamic and complex reality in which the challenges are even greater to the extent that it must decide how to respond to the demands and training needs of a certain community in a certain territory and in a certain historical moment. Likewise, innovation must be carried out in accordance with the multidimensional nature of reality, and this will be successful providing that is capable of reading said reality and interpreting it in such a way as to be able to capture both theoretical approaches and the subjectivities of individuals, in addition of the operationalization of a certain educational project, understood as the curricular implementation. Finally, we must consider the autonomy of the subject, meaning to rescue the essential values immanent in each subject. We must guide them in their educational journey, giving them tools for a more effective—and at the same time—more autonomous learning with the awareness of it. The rescue of the subject is nothing more than revealing the subjectivities of the individual.