Universidad Nacional de Asuncion

The oldest university in Paraguay

The Universidad Nacional de Asuncion, abbreviated UNA, is Paraguay's national public university and the oldest higher education institution in the country. It was founded on 24 September 1889 by an act of congress, at a time when the country was rebuilding its professional class in the decades after the War of the Triple Alliance. For some seventy years it remained the only university in Paraguay, and a large share of the physicians, lawyers, engineers and public officials who worked in the country during the twentieth century trained in its classrooms. The founding law provided for faculties of law, medicine and mathematics, disciplines the young state needed most, and the first degrees were awarded in the 1890s.

The university is autonomous under the national constitution. It writes its own statutes, elects its authorities through faculty and student representation, and administers a budget that comes mostly from the national treasury. Day to day governance rests with the university assembly, the superior council and the rectorate, and each faculty is headed by a dean elected by its own academic community.

Faculties and degree programs

Teaching is organized in twelve faculties: law and social sciences; medical sciences; engineering; economic sciences; chemical sciences; exact and natural sciences; philosophy; dentistry; agrarian sciences; veterinary sciences; architecture, design and art; and the polytechnic faculty, which concentrates programs in informatics, electronics and applied management fields. Law and medicine are the historic cores of the institution, dating from its earliest period, while several of the science and technology faculties grew out of departments split off during the twentieth century.

The catalog now runs from undergraduate degrees in the health professions, engineering specialties, natural sciences, humanities and agricultural fields to specialization, master and doctoral programs organized by the faculties. Admission is by entrance examination. Each faculty sets its own preparatory course and test calendar, and competition for places in medicine and some engineering programs is strong. The student body numbers in the tens of thousands, which places UNA among the largest universities in the country.

Campuses and locations

The San Lorenzo campus

The main campus, called the Campus de la UNA, sits at kilometer 11 of the Mariscal Estigarribia route in San Lorenzo, a city of Central department immediately east of Asuncion. The grounds hold most of the faculties, the rectorate, libraries, laboratories and sports fields, along with student services and green space that makes the site one of the larger open areas of the metropolitan region. Vehicle access is from the junction of the Mariscal Estigarribia route with Mariscal Lopez avenue. The gates open at 06:00 and close at 22:00, and a separate entrance serving the veterinary hospital zone closes at 20:00. Field plots and experimental facilities of the agrarian and veterinary faculties adjoin the built area, so the campus mixes lecture halls with working farmland.

The rectorate receives the public on weekday mornings from 07:30 to 13:30. The switchboard answers at +595 21 328 5380 and +595 21 328 5997. Not every unit moved out of the capital: the medical faculty and its hospital work from the Sajonia district of Asuncion, where they have been based for more than a century.

Branch sections in the interior

Several faculties maintain branch sections, called filiales, in cities of the interior. These bring degree programs in fields such as agronomy, business administration, nursing and education to students who would otherwise have to move to the capital area, and they tie the university to regional economies through extension work with farmers, schools and local governments. The agrarian faculty alone teaches at several sites outside Central department.

Hospitals, research and online services

The faculty of medical sciences runs the Hospital de Clinicas, the main teaching hospital of Paraguay and a public referral center that receives patients from every department of the country. Dentistry operates its own clinics, and the veterinary faculty runs a teaching hospital on the San Lorenzo campus that treats both small and large animals. These services give students supervised clinical practice and at the same time form part of the public health network.

Research takes place inside the faculties and in dedicated centers, among them a multidisciplinary center for technological research that provides laboratory and testing services to industry and the state. University staff take part in the national researcher qualification program, publish academic journals in medicine, agronomy and other fields, and cooperate with foreign universities through exchange agreements.

Online, the university runs a virtual classroom platform named Aula Pyahu, a Guarani expression meaning new classroom, which carried teaching through the pandemic years and now complements classroom courses. A transparency portal publishes budgets, salary tables and procurement records, and a separate site handles public tenders. Admission calendars, exam results and enrollment instructions are posted by each faculty ahead of the academic year, which runs from February to November. General inquiries reach the rectorate through the contact channels listed on the website during morning office hours.

---