The Higher Education System in Argentina. Networks, Genealogies and Conflicts

Santos Sharpe Andrés

doi:10.4236/ce.2015.618200

Abstract

The present manuscript aims to identify the genealogies, understood in a Foucaultian perspective, which leads to the actual Higher Education System in Argentina, by distinguishing how series of events are organized, distributed, organized in terms of institutional relations, signifying chains in the social amalgam and educational networks. This analysis will allow understanding the hierarchical relationships between higher education institutions and how the differences on cultural and curricular traditions and history also motivate (though not impose) the differences on the students and on policies. Finally, it is as well an accurate description of the Higher Education System in Argentina with a strong emphasis on universities.

Highlights

There are two subsystems that are considered higher education, as they are studies performed after high school, but that: 1) The social composition of each of these systems is different; 2) The distribution and geographical range varies; 3) Graduates from each of the subsystems work in different sectors of the labor market; 4) Institutional cultures are significantly different, especially regarding traditions of teaching, autonomy, links with society, with the state, and with scientific research, among others
It is worth saying that there are many aspects which are not mentioned and which are crucial in the development and organization of the University Education System
From 1995 onwards, in Argentina—as well as in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Russia, Bulgaria and Mongolia, among other countries in Latin America and the former socialist bloc—an “international agenda for the modernization of higher education systems” was installed, mainly promoted by international lending agencies like the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (Marginson & Mollis, 2001) which involved creating central bodies to evaluate and accredit university institutions, among other things (Mollis, 2001). These centralized evaluation and accreditation bodies were founded in order to classify universities under a quantitative “quality criteria” and under standardized specific international standards. This policy was strengthened with a tendency to build a model of higher education aimed at satisfying the global(ized) labor market, and that operated both in terms of knowledge transfer as well as the production of knowledge, which were governed under international classification parameters

Summary

Introduction

Studies in higher education began to take shape as a field of studies in Argentina from 1995 onwards; if a foundational milestone should be established, that would be the opening of the seminars “La Universidad como objeto de investigación” [“The university as a research object”] that began that year (Carli, 2012: p. 13). Studies in higher education began to take shape as a field of studies in Argentina from 1995 onwards; if a foundational milestone should be established, that would be the opening of the seminars “La Universidad como objeto de investigación” [“The university as a research object”] that began that year While prior to the 2001 crisis, it could not be said that there was a strictly delimited field, mainly because of “the absence of rules that structure the conflict, responsibilities and positions on the different legitimate ways of producing knowledge in this level of the education system” (own translation, Krotsch & Suasnábar, 2002), we can still find some recurrent topics in studies on higher education; the most important being related to changes in university policies, globalization in higher education and, regarding students, the student movement as a leading actor (Carli, 2012).

Santos Sharpe

Findings

Conclusion