A Survey of Literature and Research on Latin American Universities

Abstract

Literature on the latin american university is largely of a polemical and speculative nature, generally devoid of empirical grounding and theoretical significance. Research, in the sense of a systematic quest to enhance our powers to understand, predict, and control relationships among variables, is of recent origin. Parker (1964), in a review of over two hundred U.S. doctoral dissertations written on Latin American education, noted that few studies were concerned with university reform or the influence of universities on social, economic, and political improvement. Lipset (1966, p. 153), in a general survey of literature on university students in underdeveloped countries, observed that the influence of university studies, patterns of recruitment, modes of teaching on intellectual, professional, political and cultural standards and aspirations or the assimilation of students into the various spheres of adult activity is still terra incognita.