Andrés Bernasconi

Is There a Latin American Model of the University

and general construct, a concept of the university as it exists in the minds of faculty, students, administrators, and other constituencies and is expressed in their discourse about the university. At the same time, a model is a set of instructions for action, a patterned way of doing things. In this case it refers to going about organizing, governing, and operating a university and being an administrator, a professor, or a student. For our purposes, then, a model of the university can be defined as a culturally embedded idea of the essence, role, and mode of organization of the university and of its relationship to the state and to society at large, which exerts a normative influence over those who are in a position to shape such a role, organization, and relationships. A model may exist even if no university can be found that corresponds neatly to it, as long as the effort continues to be made by “university people” to shape reality into the form defined by the idea of the university and as long as even partial success in this endeavor helps sustain the model of the university in the minds of those who can shape it. For this reason, in my effort to elucidate the existence of models and 3 As of 2003, Brazil had 3.9 million students at the tertiary level, representing a gross enrollment rate of 18.2 percent. Mexico’s figures for the same year were 2.2 million and 21.5 percent, respectively, while Argentina stood at 1.5 million and 56 percent, and Chile’s numbers were 570,000 and 37.5 percent (CESOP 2005). 4 The source is the Science and Technology Indicators of Chile’s National Scientific and Technological Council (CONICYT). 5 In this sense, a model is not a Weberian ideal type (Weber 1949). An ideal type is purely heuristic, rests on a priori assumptions (as economic models, for instance, usually posit conditions of perfect competition and rational behavior), and carries no normative weight. It is never a “model for.” An ideal type does have a superficial similarity with the notion of “model of,” inasmuch as they both emerge as mental constructs synthesized from many varied individual experiences. However, the key difference is that the ideal type is a mental construct in the mind of the researcher, not in her subject’s, whereas a model is only such if it resides in the minds of the observed actors and affects their behavior.

A Legal Perspective on “Privateness” and “Publicness” in Latin American Higher Education

Abstract This paper considers how the law conceptualizes what is public and what private in higher education, and the legal consequences of those definitions. Following the institutionalist perspective, our interest is in the law as a source of coercive isomorphism. From the evidence gathered from seven countries in Latin America, exhibiting private sectors of varying dimension and degrees of maturity, it appears that the law assigns the same comprehensive mission to the two sectors, and expects from both the same all-encompassing repertoire of functions, regardless of the degree of development of private higher education. Yet, the law allows greater autonomy to the public sector, and delineates separate oversight and coordinating systems for private and publics, even where all of higher education is governed by the same law.

Constitutional prospects for the implementation of funding and governance reforms in Latin American higher education

The rationale for comprehensive reform of Latin American higher education crystallized in the mid‐1990s in policy documents published by the World Bank and the Inter‐American Development Bank. This ‘Washington consensus’ of the multilateral banks advocated, among other measures, greater reliance on private sources of funding, increased accountability, and a more effective management and governance structure for public universities in the region. A decade later, these prescriptions not only remain current, but have been somewhat bolstered by policy developments consistent with them in Europe, Asia and Australia. This article compares this reform agenda for funding and governance with the norms on higher education finance and control written in the current constitutions of the Latin American nations. Its purpose is to assess, from a juridical point of view, the viability of the policy prescriptions of that reform agenda for higher education. Major constitutional obstacles to cost recovery via tuition fees are provisions establishing the right to a free higher education in the public sector, while as to the matter of governance, in many countries in the region, the government is not constitutionally authorized to modify by mandate the governance structure of universities, which can only be defined by the institutions themselves.

Too Small to Succeed

The vast majority of universities leading in worldwide rankings are located in developed countries with large economies, such as the US, Germany or the UK. Developed countries with relatively smaller economies also have a solid presence: witness the Scandinavian nations, the Netherlands, or Israel.

Chile: Chilean Universities: Not So Tuition-Free After all

The dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile (1973–1990) expanded private higher education and introduced tuition fees in the higher education public sector. Three decades later, Chile is the OECD country with the smallest share of public expenditure in the overall tertiary education spending. It also has the second highest level of tuition fees after US private universities, when adjusted to the per capita gross national product.