In this chapter I make recommendations for change in the university, breaking down the disciplines and their “holding” departments – especially for organizing undergraduate education but also for research – while also opening up other university structures, from the conventional barriers between high school and college to those that prevent genuine collaboration among universities. I argue for more institutional differentiation of postgraduate institutions – a goal that is frustrated by overreliance on rankings and that could be facilitated by creating more networks linking and coordinating work across institutions, while also creating easier on and off ramps for students throughout their undergraduate educations (and beyond, to genuine “lifelong” learning). I suggest ways to break down the “guild”-like nature of the faculty described by Kerr, as well as to control some of the costs of higher education while not cutting back on research interests of faculty or for that matter on the working conditions of faculty.

This chapter describes undergraduate research (UR) in the Colombian higher education system, highlights the main characteristics of the cultural and administrative context of UR in Colombia, and presents the most important conditions for the implementation of UR and the general state of the integration of research in teaching. In order to understand the best and most relevant UR practices, the concepts associated with research are presented, including a historical overview concerning the tensions between “proper research” (“research in the strict sense”), “formative research” and “research training.” The chapter also shows governmental UR implementations such as the Networks of Research Seedbeds in Colombia. This emblematic project is among the most successful implementations of UR in the country.