Promoting a Common Platform for Academic Exchange: Key Conclusion of Ibero-American Rectors’ Meeting

Promote the creation of a common platformwhere all the resources, calls and possibilities of academic exchange between Ibero-American universities are available is one of the main conclusions of the meeting of rectors held over two days in Spain.

The event brought together yesterday and today more than 25 rectors of Ibero-American academic institutions in the town of La Rábida (south) under the title ’80 years generating Ibero-American knowledge space’.

The meeting was attended by, among others, the rector of the International University of Andalusia (UNIA) and president of the Group of Ibero-American Universities La Rábida (GUILR), José Ignacio García; the rector of the National University of Colombia, Dolly Montoyaand the rector of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and vice president of GUILR, Carlos Garatea, who took stock of the conference at a press conference.

José Ignacio García highlighted the dialogue on how to value everything that is already being done in the Ibero-American space of knowledge to mobilize students, teachers and researchers and maintained that “a lot is being done”, hence the commitment to a common platform.

He also pointed out that the meeting served for universities on both sides of the Atlantic to share experiences and initiatives, “so that we see that, in some cases, we are not so different, but in others we need to deepen the joint work to get to know each other.”

García stressed the need to generate quality research networks and underlined the “high quality” of the researchers from these universities, of world reference.

“But we don’t know each other sufficiently. At the university we are not used to developing what comes after a discovery or a scientific advance, and we have to make those advances useful,” he said.

For his part, Dolly Montoya, denounced that governments “wave the flag of education, but do not militate with the cause” and that the “political class still needs to understand what education is because the management of knowledge in science, technology and innovation is what makes possible a developed society”.

Carlos Garatea highlighted that “in Latin America and Europe there is a consensus that universities and education are agents of social change, but, nevertheless, many times these statements remain on paper and are not translated into practice,” he lamented. .

EFE

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