Expanding higher education systems are ready for partnerships

By Angel Calderon. Latin America as a region has been undergoing an important transformation for some decades. Education has played a pivotal role in the steady development of the region, and levels of participation in higher education have increased significantly over the past 40 years.
It is projected that by 2035 the region will have more than 59.4 million enrolments in higher education and that it will have the third most enrolments in the world, behind only East Asia and the Pacific, and South and West Asia.
In analysing the Latin American emerging markets for tertiary education, a group of countries stands out from the rest in the region as these countries are performing relatively well on a number of indicators, and their higher education national systems are more advanced.
They are Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. Mexico ought to be in this group, but it is lagging on a number of indicators, notably gross enrolment ratio (GER) for tertiary education as well as the proportion of the population who have completed secondary and tertiary education.
Another group of countries is behind the standouts of the region, but these countries are relatively small in terms of population and economy, or their national systems are still undergoing transformation.
These middle countries are Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela, which could be considered over the medium to long term as emerging markets for tertiary education.
Central American countries, with the exception of Costa Rica, are yet to undergo the transformative process that should put them in a competitive position in the region.
* Angel Calderon is principal advisor for planning and research at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. This is an edited extract from the paper, “Latin American Perspectives and Drivers for Tertiary Education Development: A PEST analysis”, published by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. More...