Policy Futures in Education

ISSN 1478-2103

Volume 7 Number 5 2009

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

SPECIAL ISSUE
Higher Education Policies in Latin America:
changes and continuities
Guest Editors: VIVIANA O. PITTON & RODRIGO G. BRITEZ

Viviana O. Pitton & Rodrigo G. Britez. Introduction. Higher Education Policies in Latin America: changes and continuities, pages 455‑462 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5. 455 VIEW FULL TEXT
Claudio Rama. Macrotendencias y Macrotensiones: las encrucijadas de la educacion superior en America Latina (Macro Tendencies and Macro Tensions: Latin American higher education at the crossroads), pages 463‑472
Enrique M. Larrechea & Adriana Chiancone Castro. New Demands and Policies on Higher Education in the Mercosur: a comparative study on challenges, resources, and trends, pages 473‑485
Norberto Fernández Lamarra. Higher Education Quality Assurance Processes in Latin America: a comparative perspective, pages 486‑497
Mario Diaz Villa. Thinking about Flexibility, pages 498‑512
Gustavo Rodríguez Ostria. Debates y desafíos Reformas de la Educación Superior en Bolivia, una sociedad multicultural (Debates and Challenges: higher education reform in Bolivia, a multicultural society), pages 513‑531
Marcelo Rabossi. Two Different Organizational Reactions: the university sector in Argentina and Colombia and the neoliberal proposal, pages 532‑543
Rosa Nidia Buenfil. Teletechnology and Higher Education: does the approach matter?, pages 544‑554
Norma Scagnoli. A Review of Online Learning and its Evolution in Latin America, pages 555‑565

OBAMA’S AMERICA
Michael A. Peters. Obama’s Health Reforms and the Limits of Public Reason, pages 566‑569 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.566 VIEW FULL TEXT

OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS
Henry Giroux. Hard Lessons: neoliberalism, education, and the politics of disposability, pages 570‑573 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.570 VIEW FULL TEXT
Henry Giroux. Youth and the Myth of a Post-Racial Society Under Barack Obama, pages 574‑577 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.574 VIEW FULL TEXT

BOOK REVIEWS
Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: science, education, and making society by making the child (Thomas S. Popkewitz), and Labor of Learning: market and the next generation of educational reform (Alexander Sidorkin), reviewed by David J. Ondercin, pages 578‑580 doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.578 VIEW FULL TEXT

Macrotendencias y Macrotensiones: las encrucijadas de la educación superior en América Latina

CLAUDIO RAMA Centro de Estudios de Educación Superior y Sociedad del Conocimiento, Universidad de la Empresa, Uruguay

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.463

This article is in Spanish. Higher education systems in Latin America are undergoing changes of great dimension. This is a transition between the old working models of higher education that characterized the systems for decades towards a new scenery of massive, differentiated, commercial, complex and global models. These are changes in the historical trends of higher education institutions in Latin America towards the development of new university paradigms in the framework of the knowledge society.This article is focused on the central nodes where those changes occur and on the tensions that those changes generate. The prefix ‘de’ is used in the article with the intention of opening up the academic debate on polemic concepts that contribute to the discussion on the future of higher education and public policy.

New Demands and Policies on Higher Education in the Mercosur: a comparative study on challenges, resources, and trends

ENRIQUE MARTINEZ LARRECHEA Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO), University of Enterprise (UDE), Montevideo, Uruguay
ADRIANA CHIANCONE CASTRO Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO), University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.473

This article attempts to analyze the main tendencies of the higher education systems and policies within the Mercosur, a regional bloc composed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The article discusses some global trends and describes the process of educational integration in the Mercosur as well as the higher education systems of each of these countries. In the Mercosur, as in many other parts of the world, there has been a shift from elite to mass higher education systems. At the same time, these higher education systems have become more complex in terms of their institutional differentiation, legal frameworks and structures. In line with this, these systems have developed new approaches regarding regionalization, internationalization, post-graduation and new technologies. Their main challenges, however, come from the need to establish new and stronger links to knowledge production and knowledge management. In this sense, the article concludes by pointing out a complex pattern of challenges and tasks that need to be addressed by Mercosurian higher education systems in order to support broader efforts made in other levels of the integration process (infrastructure, energy, trade and institutions).

Higher Education Quality Assurance Processes in Latin America: a comparative perspective

NORBERTO FERNÁNDEZ LAMARRA Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.486

The article first considers a characterization of higher education in Latin America, the principal problems and the scenarios that have led to the inclusion of quality assessment and accreditation processes in higher education as a priority in the regional agenda. The following aspects are then developed from a comparative perspective: the main current conceptions in the region concerning quality and its assurance; current regulation of evaluation and accreditation, with a detailed description; the quality assurance organizations and a comparative approach to their institutional functions and characteristics; and the main methodological approaches to quality assessment and accreditation. For each of these topics the article gives a resumé of the regional situation with, if necessary, a description of the most representative national situations. Finally, the main trends and achievements are analyzed, along with the challenges to regional quality assurance, with a special focus on the Latin American experience.

Thinking about Flexibility

MARIO DÍAZ VILLA Universidad de San Buenaventura, Colombia

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.498

This article emphasizes the complexity of the term flexibility and discusses its meanings and political dimensions, along with its expressions or realizations within the field of higher education. It proposes a new principle of flexibility that overcomes an understanding of flexibility within higher education as the mere ability or versatility to adapt itself to the demands of a life regulated by the technological, organizational and economic contingencies of the labor market. Instead, the author suggests a new way of conceptualizing and organizing academic work. This implies redefining the rigid limits within and between teaching and research and between these two practices and their social contexts.

Debates y Desafíos: reformas de la educación superior en bolivia, una sociedad multicultural

GUSTAVO RODRÍGUEZ OSTRÍA Universidad Privada Boliviana (UPB), Bolivia

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.513

This article is in Spanish. The objective of this article is to analyze from a critical perspective the changes in Bolivian university higher education policies in the last two decades. The 1990s were characterized by neoliberal policies of educational reform in Bolivia. However, a reform perspective from a populist national vision framed by an indigenist ideology has emerged since 2005. The administration of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first aboriginal president, is offering a new discourse on educational reform. However, it is still debatable whether the government is indeed accomplishing the transformations in eduation that its post-neoliberal indigenist discourse promises.

Two Different Organizational Reactions: the university sector in Argentina and Colombia and the neoliberal proposal

MARCELO RABOSSI Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.532

The neoliberal reform arrived at the market of higher education with the intention of introducing private dynamics into public organizations. Through this strategy, the objective was to improve efficiency by promoting intra- and intersectoral competition. The introduction of performance funding shifted the concept of accountability for expenditures, and now public universities will be accountable for results. The expansion of the private sector as a complementary service to public higher education, and the introduction of tuition fees in non-private institutions, implied a shift of the higher education cost burden that now is shared by parents and students. Argentina and Colombia are two cases that show that not all university sectors in South America have reacted alike when the neoliberal recipe proposed this ‘paradigm shift’. Even when the reform was formally declared in both countries, organizational forces inside the national university in Argentina prevented an in-depth reform. On the other hand, Colombia behaved as one of the best disciples of the neoliberal proposal, where the ‘privatization’ of the university sector found a better place to flourish.

Teletechnology and Higher Education: does the approach matter?

ROSA NIDIA BUENFIL Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (Cinvestav), Mexico

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.544

This article discusses how international and national understandings of information and communication technology (ICT) and the knowledge economy inform contemporary higher education policies. Acknowledging that national educational policies in Latin America are increasingly influenced by the recommendations of international organizations (e.g. the World Bank, UNESCO, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the article provides a clear example of the logics of policy transfer operating in the region. Challenging the interpretations that have tended to stress either the imposition and domination of international meanings and recommendations onto national policies or the total indifference of national reforms vis à vis those international views, this article contends that international policy narratives are locally appropriated and resignified. Specifically, the article deals with the ways in which higher education policy narratives on knowledge and information found in UNESCO’s publications are appropriated and reconstituted in Mexico’s policy documents.

A Review of Online Learning and its Evolution in Latin America

NORMA SCAGNOLI University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2009.7.5.555

The integration of some form of online learning in higher education and its adoption in distance and continuing education has increased exponentially in the last decade. This growth has been consistent in different parts of the world, although its implementation in mainstream educational systems varies according to the economic development of the region. But what is ‘online learning’ and why is it used as a synonym of distance education? This article presents a review that goes through the last 10 years of literature on online learning. It presents the definitions by different authors, and describes its evolution, characteristics, benefits, and use and implementation in education and training. The review concludes with a summary of the development of online learning in Latin America.

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