Reforming Higher Education in Latin America: Policy and Practice

The Challenges of Education in Brazil . Edited by Colin Brock and Simon Schwartzman. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education. (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2004.)

Informe Sobre la Educación Superior en Chile: 1980–2003. By Andrés Bernasconi and Fernando Rojas. (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2004. Pp. 201)

Cambio Organizacional y Disciplinario en Unidades de Investigación y Posgrado en Ciencias Sociales en México: Una Visión Comparativa. Coordinated by Rollin Kent Serna. (Mexico City: Plaza & Valdes, 2003. Pp. xiii+257.)

To Export Progress: The Golden Age of University Assistance in the Americas. By Daniel C. Levy. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Pp. 407. $45.00 cloth.)

Tertiary Education in Colombia: Paving the Way for Reform. By The World Bank. (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2003. Pp. 228. $30.00 paper.)

The Decline of the Guru: The Academic Profession in the Third World. Edited by Philip G. Altbach. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. 348. $85.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.)

Estudiantes y Profesionales en la Argentina: Una Mirada Desde la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares. Edited by Anibal Y. Jozami and Eduardo Sánchez Martínez. (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 2001. Pp. 183.)

Power and Politics in University Governance: Organization and Change at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. By Imanol Ordorika. (New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 272. $85.00 cloth.)

Latin America occupies a peculiar niche in the world of higher education. Statistical indicators underline the region's relative isolation and backwardness in higher education and science. A recently compiled Atlas of Student Mobility¹ shows no Latin American country among the twenty-one major destinations in the world, while all the countries of the region combined contribute fewer students to the world flow than South Korea. In the recent ranking of five hundred "world class" universities—arguably a contentious exercise—only two Latin American institutions (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [UNAM] in Mexico and Universidade de São Paulo [USP] in Brazil) have any chance at all, way back in the second hundredth ranking.² Science indicators are even more dramatic: Dutch or Swedish scientists have more publications in the Science Citation Index than all the Latin American and Caribbean scientists together.³

This picture stands in sharp contrast with the dramatic expansion of both basic and higher education systems, rapidly growing enrollment rates at all levels, multiplication and diversification of tertiary institutions, and the increased percentage of the labor force with higher qualifications. Only five decades ago there was just a handful of public universities in each country, mostly located in the major cities and serving perhaps half a million students in the region. The institutional landscape is so diverse today that it defies easy description and in each country extends over the entire national space, attending roughly ten million students.⁴ Although other world regions have also seen comparable expansion, the jump in enrollment rates has been more dramatic in Latin America than elsewhere.

The contrast calls our attention to the variable outcomes of transformation processes that have taken place all over the world during the last few decades, both as a consequence of similar demands upon higher education and of the adoption of ideas and organizational forms. Even before globalization became the catch-all concept to subsume changes in higher education, the international transfer of experiences and models has occurred continuously and in many different ways. The Latin American university throughout the last century has been the battleground for experiments and reforms often inspired and promoted by France, Germany, Great Britain, and increasingly the United States. Both university-based and military-government inspired reformers in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the latter following in the steps of the others in 1966, 1968, and 1973 after the clamping down on student and faculty protests, looked at particular elements of the American or European models for inspiration. Beginning...