Argentina´s University system has been shaped in a particular way. In fact, between the seventeenth century, moment in which the first higher education institution was created, and the institutional expansion period that took place in the last decade, there were multiple attempts of reforms that adopted, or attempted to adopt, structures belonging to foreign higher education systems. This ended up resembling a patchwork. The foreign systems, however, were shaped as responses to social contexts that differ markedly from each other. Therefore, in this paper we aim to analyze the transformations that the higher education system went through in Argentina in the mid-twentieth century, as well as to highlight some of the limits that emerged from the attempts at reform.    El sistema universitario argentino se ha conformado de una manera particular. En efecto, entre el siglo XVII, cuando se creó la primera casa de altos estudios en el territorio que regiría el actual Estado nacional, y las últimas universidades erigidas entre 2007 y 2015, se produjeron sucesivos intentos de reforma que adoptaron, o intentaron adoptar, estructuras propias de sistemas extranjeros, que acabaron asemejándolo a un patchwork. Estos, sin embargo, se conformaron como respuestas a contextos sociales que divergen notoriamente entre sí. Es nuestra intención, en este trabajo, analizar las trasformaciones que atravesó el sistema de educación superior universitario en el territorio nacional a mediados del siglo XX, así como poner de manifiesto algunas de las limitaciones que emergieron de los intentos de reformas.