"Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean has expanded dramatically in the past 15 years, as the average gross enrollment rate has more than doubled, and many new institutions and programs have been opened. Although higher education access has become more equitable, and higher education supply has become more varied, many of the 'new' students in the system are, on average, less academically ready than are their more advantaged counterparts. Furthermore, only half of higher education students, on average, complete their degree, and labor market returns to higher education vary greatly across institutions and programs. Thus, higher education is at a crossroads today. Given the region's urgency to raise productivity in a low-growth, fiscally constrained environment, going past this crossroads requires the formation of skilled human capital fast and efficiently. 'At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean' contributes to the discussion by studying quality, variety, and equity of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The book presents comprehensive evidence on the recent higher education expansion and evolution of higher education labor market returns. Using novel data and state-of-the-art methods, it studies demand and supply drivers of the recent expansion. It investigates the behavior of institutions and students and explores the unintended consequences of large-scale higher education policies. Framing the analysis are the singular characteristics of the higher education market and the market segmentation induced by the variety of students and institutions in the system. At this crossroads, a role emerges for incentives, information, accountability, and choice."

Based on studies of higher education in seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru), the volume identifies opportunities for raising Latin America's profile on the global stage"--Jacket.

Latin America higher education has undergone an astonishing transformation in recent years, highlighted by the private sector's growth from 3 to 34 percent of the region's total enrollment. In this provocative work Daniel Levy examines the sources, characteristics, and consequences of the development and considers the privatization of higher education within the broader context of state-society relationships. Levy shows how specific national circumstances cause variations and identifies three basic private-public patterns: one in which the private and public sectors are relatively similar and those in which one sector or the other is dominant. These patterns are analyzed in depth in case studies of Chile, Mexico, and Brazil. For each sector, Levy investigates origins and growth, and then who pays, who rules, and whose interests are served. In addition to providing a wealth of information, Levy offers incisive analyses of the nature of public and private institutions. Finally, he explores the implications of his findings for concepts such as autonomy, corporatism, and privatization. His multifaceted study is a major contribution to the literature on Latin American studies, comparative politics, and higher education.

"Myth, Reality, and Reform bridges these critiques by balancing the importance of the four key functions of higher education: academic leadership, professional development, technological training and development, and general higher education. The book suggests how to consolidate the strengths of higher education systems while fundamentally reforming their weaker features.

Academic autonomy has been a dominant issue among Latin American social studies, given that the production of knowledge in the region has been mostly suspected for its lack of originality and the replication of Euro-American models. Politicization within the higher education system and recurrent military interventions in universities have been considered the main structural causes for this heteronomy and, thus, the main obstacles for 'scientific' achievements. This groundbreaking book analyses the struggle for academic autonomy taking into account the relevant differences between the itinerary of social and natural sciences, the connection of institutionalization and prestige-building, professionalization and engagement. From the perspective of the periphery, academic dependence is not merely a vertical bond that ties active producers and passive reproducers. Even though knowledge produced in peripheral communities has low rates of circulation within the international academic system, this doesn't imply that their production is - or always has been - the result of a massive import of foreign concepts and resources. This book intends to show that the main differences between mainstream academies and peripheral circuits are not precisely in the lack of indigenous thinking, but in the historical structure of academic autonomy, which changes according to a set of factors -mainly the role of the state in the higher education system. This historical structure explains the particular features of the process of professionalization in Latin American scientific fields.

This book presents how Digital Transformation is a requirement to upgrade Latin American universities to a next level in management, lecturing and learning processes and strategies. The book starts with a thorough introduction of the Latin American context addressing the three main topics in the book: Digital Transformation, Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence & Industry 4.0. They will be depicted by region, with a clear distribution between Central America & Mexico, Comunidad Andina (Perú, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia), Mercosur (Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay and Uruguay), and other countries. The book also shows how online learning is a key part of the transformation, with a clear focus on learning management systems, innovation and learning analytics. Further, personalised services for every single profile at the university (students, lecturers, academic managers) are presented to guarantee inclusive education service aggregation for networked campuses. Following, the book addresses strategy and overall services that concentrate on sustainability and revenue models integrated with a strategic planning. Finally a set of chapters will show specific experiences and case studies of direct application of Artificial Intelligence and Technology 4.0, where the readers can learn from and transfer directly into their educational contexts.

Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) form skilled human capital in two or three years. Through original empirical research, this book explores SCPs? outcomes and returns, their supply, and what makes them good. It draws attention towards a higher education sector that has been typically overlooked in research and policy.

"Examines the relationship between private education and public policy in Latin America by combining conceptual analysis with empirical research, and incorporating case studies from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela"--Provided by publisher.

"Addresses the question: What will it take to overcome the many challenges that Latin America faces in developing quality, inclusive education for its diverse population?"--

This book presents an overview of the region with one of the fastest growing higher education sectors in the world. Until the beginning of the 1980s, universities were restricted to the elites in Latin American countries, with less than 5 million students enrolled in its courses. In the last four decades, however, the region went through a boom of higher education institutions and now has more than 25 million students enrolled in more than 3,800 universities – approximately 10% of all students enrolled in higher education courses in the world with four times more higher education institutions than Europe. The boom of Latin American higher education is analyzed in this contributed volume by leading experts from the region. They discuss the causes and consequences of this massive expansion and the challenges they pose for different stakeholders such as governments, private entrepreneurs, teachers, researchers, students, policy makers, educational managers and many other social groups. Topics discussed in the volume include: Massive expansion of tertiary enrollment in Latin America Expansion of private higher education Proliferation of new kinds of institutions, different from the classic university model The challenge of developing quality assurance and accreditation systems Internationalization of academic research and teaching in Latin America The challenge of integrating academic research and technological innovation Higher Education in Latin America and the Challenges of the 21st Century will be a valuable resource for educational researchers, sociologists, political scientists and other social scientists dedicated to the study of the expansion of higher education and its social implications in different parts of the world. The book will also be of interest to policy makers s and both public and private agents interested in understanding the global dynamics of higher education.