Higher Education
in Latin America - Prospects for the Future
Simon Schwartzman
Published in International Higher Education,
Boston, the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, 17,
Fall 1999, p. 9-10.
Is it possible to discuss the prospects for higher education in "Latin
America", when the countries in the region are so different from each
other, and their higher education systems so unequal? Enrollment rates vary
from 39% of the cohort in Argentina or 27% in Chile to about 14% in Mexico,
11% in Brazil, Honduras and Nicaragua. Private enrollments comprise 64%
of the students in Colombia, 70% in El Salvador and 58% in Brazil, against
6% in Uruguay, 20% in Argentina and 25% in Mexico. The appearance of cultural
homogeneity is also misleading. Countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay
and Mexico have huge native populations speaking their own languages, in
contrast with European societies like Argentina and Uruguay. Brazil, Cuba
and the Dominican Republic have significant populations of African decedents,
which are absent in other regions, and Haiti is a country of blacks who
speak French. Higher education institutions also differ: some of the old
Catholic universities in Spanish America were created in the 16th century,
while the first universities in Brazil are from the 1930's; in some countries,
private universities cater to the elite, while public universities are poorly
supported, and populated by students with few means and little educational
background. In others, public education is highly selective and of good
quality, and those with fewer resources have to look for places in cheap,
low quality evening schools of some sort.
What brings some consistency to all this is globalization. In the early
19th century, as the old Spanish and Portuguese empires crumbled,
their colonies had to become modern states, and universities were created
to train military officers and lawyers who could build the new nations.
The global model in those years was France, which exported to the new world
the Napoleonic model of centralized states and bureaucratically controlled
institutions, together with the conflicts between Church and State. In the
20th century, and more so after the Second World War, people
flocked from the country to the cities, mass communications spread the lures
and attractions of consumption, and governments were called to provide protection
and the services required by growing and demanding populations. For a while,
it seemed that there was progress everywhere, more rapidly and easily in
some places than in others, but all pointing in the same direction. At the
turn of the millennium, however, the picture is much somber. Only a few
- more in some places, less in others - could reach the levels of income,
education and working opportunities to enjoy the benefits of modernization.
For the majority, the aspirations are still there, more intense than ever,
since the reach of the mass media kept increasing; but the job market is
shrinking, the costs of services, including health and education, are raising
continuously, and governments have exhausted their ability to provide services
and meet the demands of their populations.
For the next century, one global trend we can expect is the movement towards
the universalization of higher education. But one common feature of higher
education in Latin American countries - and not only in Latin America -
is the inability of governments to keep responding to the demands. This
is true for Argentina and Uruguay, who have reached European-like levels
of student enrollment through public education, and for Brazil and Colombia,
who kept their public system small, and allowed the private sector to supply
most of the demand. In all cases, public higher education institutions will
come under strong pressures to produce more, in quantity and quality, for
the same amount or fewer resources, while the private system, as it moves
in to fill the gaps, will press for public subsidies, and be questioned
for the worthiness of their products and services.
The pressure for reform, therefore, will fall upon both the public and the
private sectors. First, there will be a growing demand for transparency.
Evaluations, ranking systems, accreditation boards, which are so common
in Europe and the US, have started to appear in Latin America as well, and
are likely to growth in importance. The main difficulty with the introduction
of these new yardsticks is that they threaten a long tradition of academic
self-rule in Latin American universities. What they convey, in practice,
is the notion that higher education is not something to be decided within
the academic corporations, but a matter of interest of others - those who
pay the bill, those who need the services. It seems obvious, but is not
an easy road.
If Latin American universities cherish their traditions of academic autonomy,
they have always shunned administrative self-rule - to take the responsibility
of administering resources, establishing priorities, and making means and
ends meet. The private sector has always had to do it, and now will be the
turn of public universities, if they are to become more efficient and cost
effective. The way most Latin American higher education institutions function
- no professional administrators, decisions taken by committees, strong
presence and influence of unions and political parties and movements - will
have to be replaced or combined with a completely different managerial structure
and style.
But the most difficult challenge for the next century has to do with content.
Higher education institutions in Latin America, following the French inspiration,
were established to provide education and certification in the traditional
professions of law, medicine and engineering, and grew by creating dim versions
of the traditional model - semi-professions like administration, nursery,
architecture or lower quality courses with the traditional denomination.
The consequence was increasing frustration, as persons found themselves
with worthless titles, and the traditional professions fell threatened by
a growing and unqualified competition. In the sixties and seventies, it
was thought that the introduction of American-style graduate education and
academic research would be the solution to this situation. As higher education
continued to expand, the graduate and research programs of the sixties and
seventies remained, at bests, islands of quality and competence, without
reaching much beyond their locations.
Now it is clear that institutional and content diversification is the only
possibility for the future. There will always be a place for professional
education in the traditional mode, and for graduate education and research,
but the main question is how to provide a meaningful content and working
perspective for the large majority of new entrants in such an unequal system.
Latin American countries have little or no experience in providing technical,
vocational general and continuous education to students, but it is likely
that all these modes of post-secondary education will have to be developed
as alternatives to the traditional careers.
Combined, these trends - less state, more private education, more evaluation
and external assessment, new organization and managerial culture, more technical,
vocational and general education, and more coverage - may create a completely
new environment for higher education in the region. Some countries and institutions
will respond better than others to these trends. Those who succeed will
be probably those who can make better use of another feature of globalization
of the new century, the easy access to information, communication, technical
assistance and interchange in a truly global scale.
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