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The purpose of this paper is to answer the research question: how can public universities in Costa Rica generate public value that contributes to equitable and sustainable territorial development? This is a way to improve the contribution to human development of the different substantive roles of public universities (extension or social action, research, teaching and student life), where the new forms of conception of science in the framework of Open Science and the long Latin American tradition of university extension require a clear orientation towards the generation of public value, an approach to which public universities are developing policies aimed at increasing social impact and territorial linkage.
The concept of public value has been taken from an approach of the capacity of the State, in this case public universities, to direct their work, through the provision of their educational services, towards the preferences and needs of citizens in order to improve their quality of life. In the same way, it is related to the satisfaction of current and future human needs related to life through the efforts of people in an organised way, thus guaranteeing the right to access opportunities.
The public value generated by universities unfolds in an environment of social, interinstitutional and intersectoral networks of actors, as well as territorial elements such as power relations, multiplicity of interests and local dynamics to meet national and territorial development needs, which allow linking higher education and science with public policies and decision-making at different territorial scales to promote the notion of local development.
Finally, the paper presents the conceptualisation and experiences of the Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) and the Universidad Nacional (UNA) of Costa Rica, through documentary and bibliographic analysis, and the systematisation of the experiences of the academic practice of two territorial linkage strategies.
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