El proceso de institucionalización del Sistema Nacional de Educación Superior Ecuatoriano

Since 2008, the National System of Higher Education (SNES) has undergone a noticeable transitional process. This transition is the result of the implementation of some government policies which seek to achieve an enhancement in university teaching and research practice and their consistency with community involvement. Nevertheless, the outcomes obtained by the end of the 21st century, after an extensive process of institutionalization, forced the government to make the radical decision of applying certain processes of deinstitutionalization and re-institutionalization at the same time. Those processes resulted on a renewed institutional, cognitive, and social reality which finds some resistance in some academic areas as there are both practices and procedures that have been established over time by the inertia of the traditional system. We will explore and analyze some of the most relevant processes of institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, and re-institutionalization within the National System of Higher Education as well as how those processes create a reality which is built upon the expectations of stakeholders and the resignification that the actors involved in Ecuadorian universities give to this reality.