The decade of the 90's has seen a remarkably consistent worldwide reform agenda for the finance and management of universities and other institutions of higher education. What is remarkable about the consistency is that there are very similar patterns in countries with dissimilar political-economic systems and higher educational traditions, and at extremely dissimilar stages of industrial and technological development. Thus, there seem to be similarities among countries greatly disparate in wealth and in political-economic systems. And there are similarities in the reform agendas of countries whose higher education systems are elite and universal, predominantly public or private, or relatively wealthy or staggering under austerity. This review is an attempt to assess the status of this worldwide reform agenda in the late 1990s, in anticipation of the first years of the next millennium. This financial and management reform agenda can be viewed in five themes: a) expansion and diversification; b) fiscal pressure; c) orientation to the market; d) accountability; and e) quality and efficiency.

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The financing and management of higher education : a status report on worldwide reforms

Changing knowledge production and Latin American universities

The aim of this paper is to discuss the prospects of Latin American public universities. Its main assertion is that universities could become important actors of development in Latin America, but prevailing trends point in another direction. The paper focuses on the interactions between, on the one hand, specific traditions and social contexts, and, on the other hand, global trends concerning the role of knowledge and academic changes. The specific traits of the evolution of Higher Education in Latin America are discussed, in order to describe the emergence of an original ‘idea of University’. Changes and continuities during the last decades of the 20th century are summarized. Similarities and differences between developed countries and Latin America concerning current trends in Higher Education are analyzed. Particular attention is given to the interactions between what is happening in Latin American universities and the new insertion of the continent in the global economy. A prospective analysis is attempted, focusing on the social commitment of universities.

Latin American Universities: From an Original Revolution to an Uncertain Transition.

This article proposes an approach to answering two questions: first, does investment in education help growth; second, does the allocation of investment in education matter? I develop a model where individual ability is heterogeneous and education both trains students and reveals their suitability for further training. I use UNESCO data on educational enrollments and spending to estimate the efficiency of existing educational allocations in a panel of countries. A cross-country growth decomposition regression shows that the correlation of human capital capital accumulation and GDP growth is not significant in countries with poor allocations but is significant and positive in countries with better allocations.

Economic Growth and Investment in Education: How Allocation Matters

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Rollin Kent

Papers

Higher Education in Latin American

Educación superior en américa latina: una agenda de problemas, políticas y debates en el umbral del año 2000

Institutional Reform in Mexican Higher Education: Conflict and Renewal in Three Public Universities