Mexican higher education faces profound changes in the next decade. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has made Mexican academics mindful of the fact that U.S. universities in the new economic climate should be regarded as more than teaching institutions—they are a global economic resource that has and will have a profound influence on people who will never visit their campuses. The question of how Mexican researchers and academics are going to come to terms with the situation becomes pressing as NAFTA lowers the protective barriers. The illusion of being an equal partner or of being able to compete in many sectors is dangerous, particularly in the university sector.
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References
1.
1. Of course, if virtual reality becomes a common feature of the Internet, such a statement will be tempered.
2.
2. “If there is one thing that has characterised information technologies since their inception some 40 years ago, it has been their rate of change and growth....Furthermore, the rate of change of [information technologies] is increasing. It took the mainframe computer business 20 years to reach its present size, but took the micro business only 5 years to equal the size of the mainframe business.”Alex Reid, “Information Technology Trends and the Impact on University Life by the Year 2001” (Report, Office of Information Technology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 1991), p. 1.
3.
3. “While stewardship as a religious duty in America was as old as the first English settlements, it now also received a secular definition, and benefaction became the obligation of those who were the fittest in society, those whose special aptitudes and talents had made them the winners in the struggle of life... the gospel of wealth stated the responsibility of wealth to mankind, and it prompted much of the benefaction that underwrote the university era.”Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1965), p. 425.
4.
4. See Timothy Lenoir, “The University's Role in Multidisciplinary Technology: The Case of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance” (Working paper, Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, n.d.), esp. p. 23.
5.
5. For example, no Mexican university has the vast forests for teaching silviculture, oceanographic institution with teaching vessels, astronomical observatories in several countries, teaching museums in Italy and Washington, and other wonders that Harvard has.
6.
6. Lenoir, “University's Role in Multidisciplinary Technology,” p. 20.
7.
7. One indication of this revolution is that our era is variously described as the Internecine, the E-poch, and the Silicon Age. “Word for Word,”New York Times, 2 Apr. 1995.
8.
8. See Martin Carnoy, La educación como imperialismo cultural (Mexico DF: Editorial Siglo XXI, 1985), pp. 289-322.
9.
9. Moses Abramowitz, Thinking About Growth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 36.
10.
10. See Julie Holdren, “Cyber Soapbox,”Internet World, 6(8):50 (Aug. 1995).
11.
11. An analogy can be found in the desire of some in Quebec to separate from Canada. This separatism has resulted only in the decline of Montreal in comparison with Toronto.
12.
12. There are, of course, grants for academics from less affluent countries to attend meetings. I was given a Ford Foundation grant for my travel expenses from my university in Mexico to the Latin American Studies Association conference in Washington, DC, this year. Such assistance is limited, however.
13.
13. A corollary is that it may be increasingly difficult to keep outstanding Mexican researchers in Mexico. The recent award of a Nobel prize for chemistry to a Mexican now living in the United States illustrates this.
14.
14. “In general, universal higher education was seen to benefit state and nation as much as the individual student.”Heinz Eulau, Technology and Civility: The Skill Revolution in Politics (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1977), p. 54.
15.
15. Robert Famighetti, ed., The World Almanac and Books of Facts 1995 (Mahwah, NJ: Funk & Wagnalls, 1994), pp. 228-236.
16.
16. Alain Bienaymeet al., A Strategy to Improve the Quality of Mexican Higher Education (Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), p. 19.
17.
17. “The sources of economic growth spring at bottom from a social climate....The social climate of a time and place shape the political and economic institutions that are among the underlying determinants of technological progress and economic growth.” Abramowitz, Thinking About Growth, pp. 69-70.
18.
18. Roderic A. Camp, Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 164-165.
19.
19. Famighetti, ed., World Almanac, p. 221.
20.
20. Bienayme, Strategy to Improve, p. 20.
21.
21. Ibid.
22.
22. Ibid., p. 173. Lest one suspect that these were all being used for games, it should be noted that in 1994, while the biggest-selling compact discs were indeed Myst and Star Wars Rebel Assault, the top ten included as well the Grolier Encyclopedia and the Microsoft Bookshelf.
23.
23. The situation is considerably worse in some other Latin American countries. In 1995, Bolivia had 20 Internet users, Honduras had 30, Peru had 570, and Colombia had 770. Rosemary Calvache-Winters, ed., Telecommunications and Technology in Latin America 1995, Latin American Finance Supplement, pp. 37, 43, 55, 65 (Sept. 1995).
24.
24. Christine Macdonald, “Mexico Steering Toward the Info Superhighway,” conacy_list@cs.indiana.edu, 19 Oct. 1995, originally published in San Francisco Chronicle, 3 June 1995.
25.
25. Thomas P. Carter, Mexican Americans in School (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1970), p. 43.
26.
26. American universities recruit internationally, so the term is used here for professors of whatever nationality serving in American universities. The fact that American universities look overseas for outstanding faculty is itself a danger to research and development in other countries—the brain drain.
27.
27. See David E. Lorey, The University System and Economic Development in Mexico Since 1929 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 96-97.
28.
28. In any event, Mexican academics are unlikely to have the time to do research. Three-quarters of the university teachers in Mexico are part-time, and the great majority have only a bachelor's degree. Bienayme, Strategy to Improve, p. 23.
29.
29. The accusation is made that most Mexican universities have “neither the appropriate research capabilities nor the inclination to cooperate with the productive sector in developing new technologies.” Ibid., p. 29.
30.
30. Camp, Intellectuals and the State, p. 175.
31.
31. The typical Mexican university spends 90 percent of its budget on salaries and related costs, leaving little for research, libraries, or laboratories. Bienayme, Strategy to Improve, pp. 76-77.
32.
32. See Wesley Cohen and Richard Florida with W. Richard Goe, “University-Industry Research Centers in the United States” (Paper delivered at the conference “University Goals, Institutional Mechanisms, and the `Industrial Transferability' of Research,”Center for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1994).
33.
See also John J. Hirschbuhl and Loretta F. Wilkinson, eds., Computers in Education, 5th ed. (Guildford, CT: Dushkin, 1992).
34.
34. See William S-Y. Wanget al., Language, Writing, and the Computer (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986).
35.
35. Thomas L. McPhail and Brenda McPhail, “The International Politics of Telecommunications: Resolving the North-South Dilemma,”International Journal, 42(2):289, 291 (Spring 1987).
36.
36. See Nathalie Duscoulier, “Databases and Data Banks,” in Expanding Access to Science and Technology: The Role of Information Technologies, ed. Ines Wesley-Tanaskovic, Jacques Tocatlian, and Kenneth H. Roberts (Tokyo: United Nations Press, 1994), pp. 65 ff.
37.
37. Nichole Wolf, who is director of services for Soluciones Avanzadas de Redes, an Internet service provider in Mexico City, comments that “unless the economic situation improves, computers are going to remain an incredible luxury in Mexico. Food has to go on the table first.”Paige Bierma, Mexico City News, 9 Dec. 1995, p. 38.
38.
38. See Kevin Kelly, “Off the Desktop on to the Web,” in The World in 1996, ed. Dudley Fishburn (London: Economist Group, 1995), p. 100.
39.
39. “For some, technological interactions are empowering; the machine extends the reach of one's knowledge and facilitates the swift performance of previously laborious or even impossible tasks. For others, information technology disenfranchises: automation takes away some jobs and de-skills others; computerized storage of information violates the privacy of those whom the machine `knows about.' Information technology, then, like any other instrument, is incorporated within a social matrix that allocates power.”Raymond Barglow, The Crisis of the Self in the Age of Information (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 164.
40.
40. See A. H. Halsey, “Educational Priority,” in Equal Opportunity in Education, ed. Harold Silver (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 348.
41.
41. For one thing, expensive obsolescence is the rule in the computing field. Consider the fate of the Altair 8800, Amiga 500, Apple I, Apple II, Apple Iic, Apple Iie, Apple II+, Apple III, Apple Lisa, Apple Lisa MacXL, Commodore C64, Commodore Pet, IBM XT, IBM Portable, IBM PC, Intertek Superbrain II, Kaypro 2x, Osborne 1, Tandy 1000, Tandy 1000SL, TRS-80, and countless other machines. Bruce Sterling, “Casualties of Progress,”Harper's Magazine, p. 22 (Dec. 1995).
42.
42. Jacquelin Fortes and Larissa Adler Lomnitz, Becoming a Scientist in Mexico (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 35.
43.
43. Quoted in Tom Barry, “Education and Student Organizing,” in Mexico: A Country Guide, ed. Tom Barry (Albuquerque, NM: Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, 1992), p. 244.
44.
44. See Patricia Gomez Bustamante, “Technología y educación,”Información científica y technológica, 15(205):14-18 (Oct. 1993).
45.
45. The disparity can be dramatized by comparing total Mexican governmental expenditures with American expenditures on basic education alone. In pre-devaluation 1993, the total expenditures for all activities of the Mexican federal and state governments were U.S.$53 billion, including education at all levels, while the expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools alone in the United States were U.S.$253 billion. The U.S. federal budget in 1993 was U.S.$1408 trillion. Robert Famighetti, ed., The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1996 (Mahwah, NJ: Funk & Wagnalls, 1995), pp. 111, 117, 217, 797.
