Higher Education in Latin America and the Challenges of the 21st Century

162 Pages·2.47 MB·English

by  Simon Schwartzman

Simon Schwartzman Editor
Higher Education
in Latin America
and the Challenges
of the 21st Century
Higher Education in Latin America
and the Challenges of the 21st Century
Simon Schwartzman
Editor
Higher Education in Latin
America and the Challenges
of the 21st Century
123
Editor
Simon Schwartzman
Instituto deEstudosdePolítica Econômica
RiodeJaneiro, Brazil
ISBN978-3-030-44262-0 ISBN978-3-030-44263-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44263-7
TranslatedfromthePortugueselanguageedition:AeducaçãosuperiornaAméricaLatinaeosdesafios
doséculoXXI,bySimonSchwartzman(Ed.).©EditoradaUnicamp,2014.Allrightsreserved.
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Preface
In the first semester of 2013 I had the privilege of teaching the course on Higher
Education in Latin America and the Challenges of the 21st Century at the
UNESCOChairoftheMemorialofLatinAmericainSãoPaulo,whichallowedme
to invite several of the main scholars of higher education in the region to present
and discuss their ideas and knowledge with an exceptional group of students from
different institutions in Brazil and abroad. The first version of this book
(Schwartzman, 2014), was a product of that course. I thank Prof. Adolpho José
Melfi,thendirectoroftheBrazilianCenterforLatinAmericanStudiesatMemorial,
forinvitingmetoteachthecourseandforencouragingmetopreparethisbook;and
theUniversityofCampinasPublishingHouseformakingthesetextsaccessibletoa
wider audience. The chapters were extensively updated and expanded for this
English edition.
The initial chapter, on “Higher Education in Latin America and the Challenges
of the 21st Century”, deals with two related themes that form the backdrop to the
remainderofthebook.ThefirstistheoriginofuniversitiesinRenaissanceEurope
and their evolution since then, together with the motivations and values that pre-
sided over their emergence and that still persist: The appreciation of knowledge,
freedom of study and scholarship, and institutional autonomy and collegiality
placed at the service of the education of new generations. This is also the story
of the sometimes harmonious, sometimes conflicting relationships between uni-
versitiesandthepowersofChurchandstate,andincreasingly,theeconomy,which
cannotbetoldindetailhere.Theuniversitiesoftodayareverydifferentfromthose
of the past and are merely part of a much broader higher education sector, which
increasingly involves more people and mobilizes more resources. And yet, the
original values and motivations, related to the place of knowledge, its production,
preservation and transmission, and its importance for people and society, persist.
This chapter also deals with the peculiar history of universities in Latin America,
whichwereinspiredbyEuropeanmodelsanddevelopedmainlyasachannelforthe
social mobility and political affirmation of new generations (in this sense no dif-
ferent from those of other countries) without, however, incorporating in the same
way the values and functions of knowledge, study and research. Higher education
v
vi Preface
institutionsinLatinAmericaarestillmarkedbythestudentmovementofthe1918
UniversityReformofCórdoba,whichhasnotyetcompleteditscycleinmostofthe
continent.Afurtherthemedealswithuniversitiesasinstitutionswhosefunctioning
depends in part on the values and orientations of those who live within them—
teachers,students,administrators—and,toalargeextent,onthereciprocaldemands
and relationships they establish with the external environment, which includes
governments and the market.
Jamil Salmi,inchapter “NewChallenges for Tertiary EducationintheTwenty-
First Century”, starting from the standpoint of the future, talks about the techno-
logical changes that are revolutionizing the modes of production and transmission
of knowledge, and the needs for professional, scientific and technological training
requiredbythenewknowledgesociety.Allovertheworld,thereisaracetoensure
that higher education systems are able to respond to these demands and thus par-
ticipateinthenewcycleofproductionandgenerationofwealththatistakingplace.
To what extent can these new technological resources be used to improve the
quality,relevanceandefficiencyofhighereducationinstitutions,andthusbringtoit
theresourcesthey needtoplay theirnew roles well? What are themost successful
countries in this race, such as South Korea, doing and what should and can
countries like Brazil do?
José Joaquín Brunner and Julio Labraña, in chapter “The Transformation of
Higher Education in Latin America: From Elite Access to Massification and
Universalisation”, look at higher education in Latin America as a whole, and note
that it has not only become massified, with millions of people seeking a level of
trainingthatwaspreviouslyreservedforafewthousand,butisbecominguniversal,
that is, becoming an aspiration of all people. In this process, the traditional uni-
versities, which functioned as relatively isolated islands, have been profoundly
transformed and have been overtaken by a great variety of new public and private
institutionsthathavelittleincommon,apparently,withtheidealsoftheinstitutions
thatusedtobetheirmodels.Whatisleft,inthisnewscenario,oftheseoldmodels
and the values they embodied? Brunner shows us that, while intellectuals and
educators such as Cardinal Newman in Ireland, Abraham Flexner in the United
States,HumboldtinGermanyandOrtega yGasset inSpain praised andadvocated
maintainingandstrengtheningelitetrainingandhigh-levelresearchuniversities,in
otherpartsoftheworld,startingwiththeUnitedStates,highereducationgrewand
differentiated,withuniversitiesbecomingmultivariate,incorporatingnewfunctions
and sources of funding, including those arising from a growing demand for edu-
cational services in the market. In today’s world, the old metaphor of the classical
university,symbolizedbytheUniversityofHumboldtinGermany,aproductofthe
emergenceofthemoderneraandtheformationofthenationstatesattheendofthe
nineteenth century, must be replaced by a new metaphor, that of the post-modern
higher education institution, whose main characteristic is no longer adherence to a
central core of values, but a multiplicity of demands, expectations and ways of
functioning that transcend all attempts to fit it into a single coherent model.
Preface vii
Traditionaluniversitydiplomassufficedtoensuretheprofessionalandtechnical
qualityoftheirgraduates,andtheprestigeandreputationoftheirteacherstoensure
thequalityoftheirintellectualworkandresearch.Inmassandpost-modernhigher
education,thisisnolongerenough,andallcountriesinsomewayseektoestablish
systems of evaluation and certification of higher education, which is the theme of
chapter “The Diffusion of Policies for Quality Assurance in Latin America:
International Trends and Domestic Conditions” by Elizabeth Balbachevsky. She
showsusthatthemainLatinAmericancountrieshave,inonewayoranother,tried
toadoptqualityevaluationandcertificationsystemsdevelopedinotherpartsofthe
world,requiringthattheinstitutionsgothroughmoreorlesscomplexprocessesof
certification that, however, have their limitations and end up serving different
purposes. A very common difficulty is the resistance of traditional universities,
which feel, not always wrongly, that external assessments are a threat to their
autonomy;anotheristhedifficultythatgovernmentagencieshavetocreatequality
assurance systems capable of effectively evaluating, and with credibility, the hun-
dredsandthousandsofhighereducationinstitutionsthatexistindifferentcountries.
There are questions concerning the criteria and standards of evaluation—can fac-
ulties focused on teaching be evaluated according to the same criteria as research
universities?—and also those interested in their results—governments, which fund
the institutions? Professional corporations, interested in preserving their labor
markets? Future students? Business sectors?
Jorge Balán, in chapter “Expanding Access and Improving Equity in Higher
Education: The National Systems Perspective”, deals with a central question in all
mass higher education systems, which is the inclusion of people and social cate-
gories that, historically, had no access to higher education in their countries. As
highereducationsystemsgrowinsize,sodoestheaccessofpeoplewhopreviously
could not benefit from it. However, this access remains limited by selection
mechanismsandevaluationsystemswhoseresultsarestronglyrelatedtothesocial
and cultural status of candidates—students from poorer families who have not had
access to quality basic education, or those from linguistic and cultural minorities,
entertheseselectionprocessesatadisadvantageandendupbeingexcluded.Balán
presentstheexperiencesofinclusionofdifferentcountriesinLatinAmerica,calling
attention to the different ways it takes place: differentiating institutions to serve
differentaudiences,theexpansionofpublichighereducationsystems,thefinancing
ofprivatehighereducation,andaffirmativeactionpoliciesbasedoncriteriaofrace,
ethnicity and social class, showing, in each case, the benefits achieved and the
problems that arise.
In chapter “Privatization of Higher Education in Brazil: Old and New Issues”,
Helena Sampaio examines in depth the growth of private higher education and,
more especially, for-profit higher education, which has proliferated in Brazil in
recent years, with the private sector reaching 75% of enrollments, half in
profit-orientedinstitutions.ThisexpansionispartlyexplainedbythefactthatBrazil
adopted,withtheuniversityreformof1968,amodelofuniversityorganizationthat
triedtocopyAmericanresearchuniversities,withemphasisongraduateeducation,
research and departmentalorganization, with full-time hired professors. This made
viii Preface
public universities in in Brazil extremely expensive by Latin American standards,
and unable toabsorb theexplosion of demand for higher educationthat began just
atthattime.Thealternativewastoallowfortheexpansionoftheprivatesector,in
the illusory expectation that it would eventually converge to the model of public
universities. If in the beginning religious and community institutions prevailed in
the private sector, the space was increasingly occupied by profit-oriented institu-
tions, which became legal by legislation enacted in 1997. Today, there are com-
paniesinBrazilworking inhighereducationwithmillionsofstudents,withshares
in the stock market acquired by investment funds and acting mainly in the area of
low-cost, large-scale education in the social professions. In the past, the rule was
that private institutions should not receive public resources; in recent years, how-
ever, the federal government, as part of its policy of social inclusion, has begun to
subsidizetheprivateinstitutions,whetherphilanthropicornot,withavarietyoftax
exemption mechanisms in exchange for free places for low-income students (the
Prouni Program) and a very broad student loan program fully guaranteed by the
government.
In chapter “Return Scientific Mobility and the Internationalization of Research
Capacities in Latin America”, Sylvie Didou Aupetit addresses another central
dimension of contemporary higher education, that of internationalization. In a
certainsense,itisnotanewtheme:fordecades,thethemeofthe“braindrain”from
developing to richer countries has been the object of concern, with the United
States, above all, attracting hundreds of thousands of professionals often trained
with public resources in their own countries, which no longer benefit from the
investments made in their education. Several countries, including Mexico and
Brazil,havedevelopedprogramstostimulatethereturnoftheseprofessionals,with
differentdegreesofsuccess.Butinternationalizationalsohasotheraspects,manyof
whicharepositive,suchasthearrivalofteachersandresearchersfromEuropeand
theUnitedStates,theskillsbroughtbythosewhoreturntotheircountriesoforigin
andbenefittheirinstitutions,andthecreationofinternationalcooperationnetworks
thatcrossbordersbetweencountriesandregions.Todaythereismuchtalkof“brain
circulation,” rather than brain drain, signaling the positive aspects of internation-
alization,but,astheauthor warns, itisnotenoughtoexchange oneexpressionfor
another; it is necessary to understand more deeply the real problems and possible
benefits of this process of internationalization and globalization that is, ultimately,
inevitable.
Inchapter “Technological Innovation andthe “Third Mission”of Universities”,
finally, Renato Pedrosa deals with the theme of university research from the per-
spectiveofits“thirdmission,”whichisthatoftechnologicalinnovation.Although
university research is concentrated worldwide in a small number of institutions
(contrary to the axiom attributed to Humboldt University of the “inseparability of
teaching,researchandextension”),ittendstobeorganizedinaverytraditionalway
in these institutions, in departments arranged according to the classic areas of
knowledge(biology,physics,mathematics,sociology,languages),withmuchofthe
work being done individually by teachers and, to a large extent, by graduate stu-
dentsintheirdoctoraltheses.Themainobjectiveofthisresearchisthepublication
Preface ix
ofresultsinspecializedliterature,andthesepublicationsareinturnusedtoevaluate
and reward the work of teachers and researchers and their departments. Alongside
this form of work, called “mode 1,” there is, however, another way to develop
researchinsideandoutsideuniversities,called“mode2,”the“thirdmission”orthe
“Pasteur’s Quadrant”: more interdisciplinary, with more teamwork, focused on
practical results, establishing partnerships with business and government sectors
interestedintheirresults,generatingbothinnovationandbasicknowledgewithno
clear divide between them. In his contribution, Pedrosa shows how Brazilian sci-
encehasdevelopedovertheyears,aswellasitscurrentcharacteristics—ontheone
hand,abroadsystemofacademicresearchandpost-graduation,themostdeveloped
inLatinAmerica,but,ontheotherhand,agreatdifficultyremainsmoreadequately
performing its third mission.
InLatinAmerica,issuesrelatedtohighereducationtendtobeseenverylocally,
lackinganawarenessthat,althougheachexperienceisunique,weareactuallypart
of a much broader reality that we need to understand and know better, so that we
can even learn from the mistakes and successes of other parties. We hope that this
book will serve as a window to this wider world.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Simon Schwartzman
Reference
Schwartzman,S.(2014).AEducaçãoSuperiornaAméricaLatina.Campinas:EditoradaUnicamp.
Contents
Higher Education and the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century:
An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Simon Schwartzman
New Challenges for Tertiary Education in the Twenty-First
Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Jamil Salmi
The Transformation of Higher Education in Latin America:
From Elite Access to Massification and Universalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
José Joaquín Brunner and Julio Labraña
The Diffusion of Policies for Quality Assurance in Latin America:
International Trends and Domestic Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Elizabeth Balbachevsky
Expanding Access and Improving Equity in Higher Education:
The National Systems Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Jorge Balán
Privatization of Higher Education in Brazil: Old and New Issues . . . . . 77
Helena Sampaio
Return Scientific Mobility and the Internationalization of Research
Capacities in Latin America. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Sylvie Didou Aupetit
Technological Innovation and the “Third Mission” of Universities . . . . 109
Renato H. L. Pedrosa
xi