The Challenges of Latin American Universities Good morning, Ladies - - PDF document

Presentation of the Rector of the University of São Paulo in the “2015 Magna Charta Observatory Seminar”, Bologna, 17 September 2015

The Challenges of Latin American Universities

Good morning, Ladies and gentlemen, Magnificent Rector of the University of Bologna Dear colleagues, members of this panel, The three major challenges that the Latin American universities face today are: 1) to assure that all persons have the opportunity to participate in higher education, regardless of social background, ethnic origins or financial means, 2) to improve the quality of teaching, taking into account the needs of the local society and the global changes, and 3) to foster research that is valuable to the mankind but also pertinent to the local or regional environment. A significant expansion of university access characterizes the Latin American countries, between 1970 and 1990. The total enrollments increased from 3 to 6 times in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico, and UNAM and UBA have more than 300 thousand students each. Mexico and Brazil have participation rates of 18-22 years olds in post-secondary education around 15%, whereas Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, with much smaller populations, have achieved participation rates around 30%. Brazil, with 200 million inhabitants, has 7.3 million higher education students, 75% of them in private for-profit institutions. These huge numbers reveal a 25 times growth in the last 50 years. Access to the universities depends on an entrance examination; usually there are more than ten applicants for place in the best university programs, which are public and

• free. The quality of most secondary public schools is very low, and many

applicants cannot pass the entrance examinations, especially in the most prestigious careers of medicine, law, dentistry and engineering. The good private secondary schools are expansive, so that students from the richer families have the best chance of getting into the top public

• universities. While 80% of the secondary students in Brazil attend public

schools, 65% of the students newly enrolled at the University of Sao Paulo came from private schools. This tends to perpetuate inequalities. There are strong pressures and debates to change this situation. Essentially there are two alternatives to achieve more equality of opportunities: 1) a policy of quotas, as imposed by a law for the 68 federal universities; 2) a bonus for the public school students proportional to the score obtained in the entrance examinations, as carried

• ut at the University of S. Paulo.

A controversial aspect of the law of quotas, in a country with a long history of miscegenation, is that it reserves a proportion of places on the basis of racial

• background. However, the solution adopted by the University of Sao Paulo

shows that an increase of social inclusion, by admitting more students from the public secondary schools, automatically increases the proportion of nonwhites because they predominate in the lower social strata. For centuries, teaching and research have been the two traditional pillars of the university life. A relevant feature of the traditional universities of the region is the strong links between teaching and research, reminiscent of the Humboldtisches Bildungsideal. This view is consecrated even into an article

• f the Brazilian Constitution, which also guarantees autonomy. It says that

“The universities shall have didactic, scientific, administrative and financial autonomy, and shall follow the principle of indivisibility of teaching, research and extension”. There is, however, a significant gap between reality and the unifying model dictated by the Constitution, since research and graduate training of quality is restricted to only a small number of institutions, whereas the large majority dedicate solely to teaching. For instance, the University of São Paulo alone, among the two hundred universities of the country, is responsible for 27% of all scientific articles published by Brazilian researchers, and it grants 22% of all doctoral titles in Brazil. This is not only the result of the fact that private for-profit universities do not, as a rule, support research of any type, but also of the debate involving academics and government about a university responsive to the market as

• pposed to a center for generation of knowledge or culture.

One view is that the university should related strongly with the market, with a greater emphasis on the immediate, useful or applicable knowledge, whereas many academics argue that generation of knowledge and the world

• f culture requires some distance from the everyday life. Experience has

shown that the coexistence of the two views, even though it may be a permanent source of disputes, is useful in maintaining the necessary diversity of interests and goals. In the last decades, the third mission emerged as an important component of university life, comprising technology transfer to the local productive system, the participation in the solution of public relevant questions of education, health, culture and agriculture, and shaping of public policies. These activities may serve as the basis both for research and for teaching programs that link the university with the society, the city or region. However, this mission should not be seen as a jack-of-all-trades by local governments and private companies to solve problems that are their own

responsibility, for which they have not provided the necessary resources, and that do not originate from legitimate interests of research and teaching. A key issue is the question of autonomy. Every university and all the governments recognize its importance for the university mission. In practice, however, there is a long distance between the statements and the practice. The challenges to university autonomy in Latin America take different shapes and degrees. The control by force of the universities, which was part of the military interventions in the 1960-1990 in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, almost disappeared in the present decade, although there are still remnants in a few Latin American countries. A more subtle and widespread pressure is exerted by governments by control of budgets, payment of the personnel and of funds for research. The degree of inference is variable. For instance in Brazil, the three universities maintained by the government of the State of Sao Paulo, such as my own university, have the least interference, since the budget coming from the State is defined by law as a fixed percentage of 9.5% of the tax revenues. By contrast, the universities maintained by the Federal Government depend on the permanent good will of the Minister of Education and the availability of funds that are liberated without a firm commitment or schedule. Similarly, academic freedom is often violated by government rules and regulations generated by political, economic or ideological reasons, as well as by the economic pressure of companies and by demands for the third mission that are not linked to the research or teaching programs, and therefore do not respect the academic freedom. An essential condition for the academic staff to preserve the freedom to determine what research and teaching is undertaken, they must have access to financial support provided on the basis of the quality of their research, in

• rder not to be open to private or corporate pressures.

This means that the university itself should provide support for laboratories, infrastructure, technical staff, in addition to funds coming from research

• agencies. Additionally, researchers of the University of Sao Paulo have access

to funds from different research agencies, especially FAPESP, the research foundation of the State of São Paulo, which receives 1% of the state tax revenues. The second condition is that all types of research contracts and extension activities with external partners must be reviewed and approved both on the basis of its legal aspects and of its academic contents. At the University of Sao Paulo this means that every research contract, external research project or

extension project must be reviewed and approved at the department council and the correspondent higher council, either of research or of extension. Finally, I would like to describe briefly a strategy guided by the concept of research-based teaching, which our university uses to strengthen the synergy

• f teaching, research and extension. The undergraduate students are invited

to participate in a research and extension program supported by fellowships given by the university or a research agency. Each participant student develops his or her own one-year project under the supervision of faculty

• member. At present, more than seven thousand undergraduate students

participate in the program. The results are presented annually in an undergraduate congress. In my view, this is a suitable realization of university education as described by Karl Jaspers in “The Idea of University”: “The university is a school – but of a very special sort. It is intended not merely as a place for instruction; rather, the student is to participate actively in research and from this experience he is to acquire the intellectual discipline and education which will remain with him throughout his life. Ideally, the student thinks independently, listens critically and is responsible to himself. He has the freedom to learn.” Thank you.