Private Universities in Latin America

Research and Innovation in the Knowledge Economy

G. Gregorutti, J. Delgado, G. Gregorutti, J. Delgado

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137479389
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

Using policy analysis and case study approaches, Private Universities in Latin America examines the significant amounts of research and innovation being made available from private universities in Latin America.

Chapter 1

---

Introduction

Jorge Enrique Delgado and Gustavo Gregorutti

The current scientific and technological paradigm gives knowledge an essential role for social and economic development. Hence, supporting research and innovation has become imperative. In this context, applied research has become more important than basic inquiry, and the whole scientific endeavor converges with the advancement of technology, so knowledge can be transferred to benefit societies and propel economies. Governments, non-for-profit organizations, and private businesses can use knowledge generation to become more competitive and to hold up in the national and international arenas. Under these circumstances, productivity is required to efficiently use resources in order to obtain the highest benefits.

Traditionally, Latin American participation in the global science, technology, and innovation (STI) has been modest. In the past two decades, however, its scientific outcomes have increased significantly because many governments have made important investments and implemented policies to promote research and development. In many cases, funding and other resources are mostly or exclusively available for public universities where most research in the region originates. Nevertheless, the private sector has been the major contributor to the expansion of higher education in the past four decades. Private institutions have focused more on teaching (preparing professionals) than on developing capabilities and generating new knowledge from research. There are exceptions though. As a response, some governments have started to create strategies to encourage private universities to develop their research. They include accreditation and quality assurance systems, access to some funding with public monies, fiscal incentives, support of professional organizations, and stimuli to develop government-university private-sector initiatives. Mechanisms vary from country to country.

Now, how can private universities adapt and generate research that leads to innovation and economic progress? This is a central question that guides Private Universities in Latin America: Research and Innovation in the Knowledge Economy. We start by recognizing that many private universities in Latin America have a longer tradition than their public counterparts. Several of those institutions are actors that make important contributions to STI at the national, regional, and even international levels. On the other side, there are other private institutions that emerged recently and can, in many cases, adapt more easily to changes and challenges than public universities. We provide several positive examples of private universities that are adapting to current demands and generating mechanisms to develop research focused on innovation and economic progress. Some institutions have had to overcome teaching-oriented cultures and limited public funding in order to open the door to research in their missions. Others already had a research tradition that is expanding. Those institutions have learned to look for opportunities for collaboration and projects beyond the institutional and national context.

This book analyzes, on the one side, the context of STI and higher education in Latin America (in the region and selected countries) and the role of private universities in generating research and innovation. On the other side, the book introduces cases of Latin American private institutions that are developing interesting research strategies and how they turn them into productive ventures. Accordingly, we have divided the book in two broad parts.

Part I is titled “Regulatory Environment Impacting Research Productivity in Latin America” and includes four chapters. In chapter 2, “Research as a New Challenge for the Latin American Private University,” Claudio Rama and Gustavo Gregorutti discuss how Latin American private higher education has evolved over the past 30 years toward an increasing segmentation where some institutions prioritize research as a distinctive characteristic while others focus on absorbing higher education demand. Rama and Gregorutti also analyze what being a research university means and the requirements to become one. Jorge Enrique Delgado, in chapter 3, “Latin American Private Universities in the Context of Competition and Research Productivity,” analyzes the development of STI policy in Latin America in the past 20 years and how it has moved from prioritizing building capacity and infrastructure to incentivizing productivity and evaluating performance. Delgado also reviews the main university rankings regarding competitiveness and productivity and identifies the best ranked private universities. As a conclusion, he analyzes characteristics of successful private universities in a context of productivity and competitiveness and the emphasis on innovation for the future of universities. Chapter 4, “Quality Assurance and Public Policy Research Funding: Their Impact on Private Universities in Argentina,” authored by Ana García de Fanelli and Ángela Corengia, looks at answering the question: do quality assurance and research funding public policies promote research activity in the Argentine private university sector? Using Clark’s internal approach and DiMaggio and Powell’s new institutionalism as analytical perspectives, García de Fanelli and Corengia explain the impact of policies in relation to institutional characteristics. They conclude that the result of policy in Argentina is institutional and program isomorphism in terms of minimum quality standard (quality as a “floor,” not as a “ceiling”), but it has not affected interorganizational diversity; the accreditation of undergraduate programs had a greater impact on change than the institutional assessment; and the research funding policies had a greater impact on those private universities and fields of knowledge whose missions give significant weight to research. In the last chapter under this section, “Institutional Frameworks and Scientific Productivity in Chile and Colombia, 1950–2012,” Pedro Pineda compares the institutional frameworks of higher education and research performance in Chile and Colombia. Public funding seems to be a central feature that has also segmented universities in both countries. The author suggests policy options for advancing more research involvement in both countries.

Part II of the book titled “Successful Cases of Research Productivity at Private Universities” intends to give some practical examples of institutions that have made significant changes to strengthen research. The section starts with chapter 6, “A Research and Innovation Ecosystem Model for Private Universities: The Monterrey Institute of Technology Experience,” in which Francisco J. Cantú-Ortiz maps the evolution of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM: Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey) in Mexico from a mainly teaching-oriented institution to one that stimulates innovation through the creation of spin-offs and jobs. Cantú-Ortiz presents the “research and innovation ecosystem” approach that ITESM used in this transformation. He argues that this perspective could be helpful for those administrators who are looking for models to implement in institutional reforms oriented to develop research and innovation. In chapter 7, “The Emergence of the Puebla State Popular Autonomous University as a Successful Mexican Research University,” Stephen P. Wanger and Édgar Apanecatl-Ibarra present the case of a Catholic private institution. The Puebla State Popular Autonomous University (Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla) exemplifies how even religious universities can become research-intensive institutions if the right leadership and internal policies are strategically applied. Nanette Svenson, in chapter 8, “Central American Outliers: Leveraging International Cooperation for Research Productivity,” explores how some Central American private institutions are using their international networks to advance regional innovation. She concludes that autonomous and nonpublic academic governance, along with limited development-oriented course offerings, resources from international organizations and universities, and localized knowledge and experience, can be strategically leveraged to produce sustainable, innovative, and knowledge-generating institutions.

Elizabeth Balbachevsky and Antonio José Botelho describe the Brazilian prominent private higher education system in chapter 9, “Research and Knowledge Production in the Private Sector: The Brazilian Experience.” To do that, they explore two cases to show how different degrees of commitment to research and graduate education entail a differentiation inside the private sector that, in turn, advance more research. Professors José Anicama and José Livia in chapter 10, “Contributions from a Private University in Peru: The Case of the Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University,” portray the historical development of Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University and the mechanisms this Peruvian institution has been using to increase faculty research outcomes. It is interesting how this institution since its founding has been establishing visionary strategies to produce important scientific contributions in a very unstable national political and economic context. This emphasis has brought prestige and international visibility to the institution. Marcelo Rabossi, in chapter 11, “Research and Incentives: The Case of Two Private Universities in Argentina,” analyzes differing private universities in Argentina. One is a research-oriented and the other is a more teaching-oriented institution. Rabossi’s study explores the mechanisms these institutions put into practice to select their best human resources and the type of promotion and salary strategies they follow to increase faculty research productivity. Part II closes with the case from Uruguay, a country with a small private higher education sector. In chapter 12, “Private University Strategies to Promote Knowledge Production: Development of a Graduate Program in Biotechnology in Uruguay,” Enrique Martínez Larrechea and Adriana Chiancone present the case of biotechnology program at ORT University, one of the only four private universities in Uruguay. The ORT University has been a teaching-oriented institution in technology and job-oriented fields. Martínez Larrechea and Chiancone’s study analyzes the strategic decisions this private university made to open the biotechnology program and the strategies implemented to develop human resources, promote applied and transferable knowledge, and contribute to the national economy.

Finally, as this book fills an important research gap for English-speaking readers, it also represents a comprehensive discussion of some of the trends regarding research development and knowledge generation among Latin American private universities. It provides both an overview and analysis of the main issues and a detailed discussion of regional and national case studies. With contributors from a wide range of backgrounds, this book includes several models used by institutions in the region to develop research and innovation capabilities and outcomes. We expect to contribute to the understanding of the conditions that can help private universities to be more proactive in supporting research and of the implications for institutional and national development.

This book may be of interest not only for university professors and students concerned about higher education, particularly from international and comparative perspectives, but also for practitioners, policy analysts, higher educational specialists, governmental officials, and senior managers in the higher education sector. We also hope this book encourages Latin American private universities to support STI because of the positive impact it can have on the economy and on the society.

Part I

---

Regulatory Environment Impacting Research Productivity in Latin America

Chapter 2

---

Research as a New Challenge for the Latin American Private University

Claudio Rama and Gustavo Gregorutti

Introduction

This chapter presents a global overview of how private higher education has expanded and evolved toward research productivity over the past 30 years in Latin America. Its exponential growth in the early stages can be understood through a multifactorial combination of variables such as the promotion of neoliberal policies, as a response to the increasing demand for access in a context of shrinking national budgets for education in the region (Gaffikin and Perry 2009; Rama 2012a,b). That expansion of private universities initially focused on the training of professionals in traditional disciplines, which did not require high investment but had high demand (Gascón and Cepeda 2007). However, as private universities multiplied and, more importantly, enlarged, they evolved by adding new functions. Over the years, and through the stages described in this chapter, it has been possible to see that new policies created by different actors have addressed quality as a dominant concern about higher education in Latin America. This can be observed in the interaction of government regulations and the increasing influence of international organizations that have promoted, in addition to training, the creation of new knowledge as a central function of higher education in the region. Knowledge generation became a new mission for many institutions that have been carrying on education with almost no research productivity (Gregorutti et al. 2014).

Notions of quality have been changing throughout the period of this study. At the beginning, the almost total absence of legislation to regulate private universities prompted a dominant concern over quality as an opposite paradigm to the growing commercialization of educational services in the region (Monckeberg 2012). As new issues and challenges emerged, quality was understood and enriched with new models that embraced more and more research as a defining feature for distinguished and qualified universities. This represented an important paradigm shift that has driven many reactions that ended up in substantial reforms of higher education in Latin American countries. Producing discoveries and transferring the resulting knowledge to generate jobs and economic growth has been increasingly assumed as a meaningful role universities must take upon for the current knowledge-driven society (Toakley 2004). Accrediting agencies and collegial bodies, along with all kinds of national and international organizations, mirrored these trends and tried different models of quality assessment that reconfigured the higher education landscape. Furthermore, many leading private universities have also taken research as a marketing tool to reposition themselves in the most prominent rankings (Burness 2008; Marginson and Van der Wende 2007; Rauhvargers 2011). Thus, rankings reinforced the idea that research is a stamp of quality and differentiation for institutions that look for visibility through innovation. These trends resulted in powerful forces that stratified universities allowing the top runners to become more and more entrepreneurial accessing increasing amounts of external funding to advance research. Several decades ago, Robert Merton (1968) observed similar trends in higher education and called this type of polarization the “Matthew effect” to describe how accumulated advantage helps productive institutions to receive more resources and recognition.

Another goal for the second part of this chapter is to describe basic elements of the emerging research university, as well as some of the challenges administrators may face to advance knowledge production. Toward the end, the discussion section includes some crucial issues leaders need to address to become a research university in a globalized world.

Private Higher Education in Latin America

The Expansion Phase (1975–1999)

Since mid-1970s and toward the end of the twentieth century, private universities have been steadily multiplying in number, allowing the sector a dynamic positioning in the region (Altbach 2002). This stage was characterized by a strong expansion and transformation centered around new institutions to supply the demand with more flexible access through less requirements, innovative programs (for instance, among others, business administration, informatics, tourism, and marketing), and a more differentiated administration that considered students as costumers as opposed to the public university under the free tuition education. In this new context, the emerging private university flourished enrolling the “left out” students providing alternative schooling systems during evenings, weekends, and online classes. In addition, many of these institutions built campuses closer to students, facilitating easier access to the working class and adults relatively excluded from traditional universities (Rama 2009a,b,c). According to Daniel Levy’s (1995) taxonomy, this phase was related to the third wave in which private universities absorbed the nonelite demand and the students rejected from public universities (see also Silas 2005). This was a natural consequence of the policies that had increased quotas and screening entrance processes in state-funded universities (Brunner 1985...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1   Introduction
• Part I   Regulatory Environment Impacting Research Productivity in Latin America
• Part II   Successful Cases of Research Productivity at Private Universities
• Appendix
• List of Contributors
• Index