The new agenda for the transformation of higher education in Latin America

In this article, Axel Didriksson presents, from an analytical and programmatic perspective, the existing debate for a new agenda of transformation of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean by analyzing its main features and components.
Introduction
Resolving the urgent need for a new form of development founded on equality and sustainability in Latin America and the Caribbean is strongly dependent on the outcome of strategic decisions currently being taken with regard to public policies on higher education, science and technology, and on the stances that governments adopt regarding participation in the creation of new knowledge platforms and learning experiences.
This view was expressed and universally supported (by more than four million representatives of higher education institutions) in one of the documents forming the basis of discussion at the UNESCO Regional Conference on Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (Gazzola and Didriksson, 2008), held in the city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, in 2008, and in the conclusions reached at the Regional Conference and those outlined in the final communiqué of the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education, held in Paris, France, in 2009.
According to these outcomes and conclusions, the past decade has seen some twenty academic, institutional and legislative reforms (some of them at national level) that, in one way or another, have had – and continue to have – a bearing on the construction of a new agenda for discussion between universities, education ministries and government departments. Read more...