The historical analysis of the social and intellectual processes that characterise the cultural and scientific education in contemporary modernity allows for the reconstruction of cultural and educational questions, which are perceived as academic and administrative problems in our daily lives at the university. The approach adopted in this paper is situated at the intersection between intellectual history, the sociology of science and scientific institutions and the sociology of education and culture. It discusses, firstly, the wide institutional processes in the political, economic and cultural spheres that circumscribe the contemporary questions of the university and the education in social sciences; secondly, it analyses some of the central aspects of the sociological debate on the nature of the discipline and the profile of the education in social sciences; finally it looks at a few premises and basic categories of the present proposals for the reform of the university.
university; social sciences; sociology of education