The university, like all the institutions that produce, process, store, analyze or distribute that intangible asset that is knowledge, does not remain oblivious to a phenomenon that poses quantitatively and qualitatively different challenges: the transition from an elite higher education to one of masses, the redefinition of training needs, increasing competition and emphasis on the need to ensure the quality of teaching, the impact of ICT and the emergence, as a corollary of all of the above, of new university models that, as it happens with the virtual university, they blur the classic space-time restrictions.