Sustentabilidad y Universidad: retos, ritos y posibles rutas*

The article reports the challenges facing the sustainability addition process in Ibero-American universities. We recover the conceptual discussion about region sustainability and the arising challenges from the society and state demands, and global market pressures. The focus is placed on how often these higher education institutions pronouncements are being held. The main difficulties are characterized by a set of declarations and plans that remain in a purely formal level. We apply the glass ceiling metaphor –adopted for genre studies– to represent the barrier towards substantive and structural changes. We emphasize that universities do not seem to be able to address many challenges, especially inserting sustainability into its structure, operation and substantive functions.