Effect of Institutional Evaluation Policies on Private Universities in the Cuyo Region

Abstract

Latin American universities are currently dominated by evaluation policies implemented at the beginning of the 21st century. Both self-evaluation practices and external evaluation processes have created new ways of looking at the institution that is the university and have brought about tension with previously rooted aspects of the system. Private universities in the Cuyo region of Argentina have also developed institutional evaluation processes out of which new perspectives on institutional configurations have emerged. Their identitary grades, particular management styles and center west location in Argentina means they have particular ways of functioning that are occasionally identified as weaknesses in evaluative processes. The complexity of social, political, economic-administrative and even geographical contexts have great influence on the implementation of public policy. Such is also the case of that which occurs in academic contexts. University evaluation policies seem to be designed following a logic that is spurious for the organizational structure of private universities in the region. The present work is part of a doctoral thesis whose objective is to understand the reach of the Argentine state's influence through the adoption of models of external evaluation inside private universities in the Cuyo region, based on their relationship with the State and their organizational singularity. We specifically seek to systematize the institutional evaluation experiences of private universities in the Cuyo region, describe the way in which evaluative practices are developed at our reference universities and understand the changes that have come about from external evaluation at these institutions.