This volume contains writings about university autonomy in Mexico and the relationships it has had with the State throughout its existence in different entities and at different historical moments.

For the authors of these essays, the autonomy of universities is one of the most important phenomena in the recent history of higher education and its study raises multiple aspects, many of them discussed in the texts that make up this book.

This autonomy not only translates into the power to govern itself according to its own rules or the right to elect or dismiss its authorities, but also implies the responsibility to educate, research and disseminate culture.

The essays gathered here aim to point out some of the characteristics that have accompanied university autonomy since its formal establishment in our country in the first decades of the 20th century. To this end, among other topics, autonomy is addressed as an essential part of the history of universities since their medieval origins in both Europe and Mexico, as well as the stages of the conquest of university autonomy in our country, since the establishment. of the Autonomous University of Michoacán in 1917 and the granting of autonomy to the National University in 1929, until the constitutionalization of university autonomy in 1980, and shows how, in several states of the republic, the concept of autonomy in education Higher education has been related to the power to organize and manage centers responsible for vocational training without the intervention of state governments or the Catholic Church.