Since UANL was founded, three have been its tasks regarding knowledge: producing, reproducing, and disseminating it, which has been expressed in its substantive academic functions: teaching, research, and dissemination.
In this sense, the periods of the rectors Alfredo Piñeyro López (1979-1985) and Gregorio Farías Longoria (1985-1991), were characterized by promoting these functions, including: linking research with higher studies, master's degrees and doctorates * the decentralization of research centers, in the sense of locating them in the faculties; the self-diagnostic study of the furion to investigate; the creation of the Linares Unit; agreements with foreign universities; foreign advisers; the creation of the doctorate; the hiring of teachers under the concept of exclusive time and the creation of the research award.
Priority to the research function began with the rector of Alfredo Piñeyro, who started from the idea that the Spanish-American public universities and, therefore, the Mexican ones were guided by the central objective of training professionals, which turned them into institutions Higher education "professionalizing" that is, they were mainly engaged in teaching, transmitting knowledge and not creating it; The president's proposal was to introduce a change in the order of the basic functions of the UANL, giving priority to research, promoting creative thinking capable of formulating and solving problems.
