The Bologna Process from a Latin American Perspective

Abstract

Although Latin America’s geography, history, and languages might seem a suitable foundation for a Bologna-type process, the development of a common Latin American higher education and research area meets predictable difficulties.The reasons are to be found in the continent’s historic and modern institutional patterns. Latin American governments increasingly limit their interventions to funding and rely on the free play of the forces of supply and demand, institutional and corporate interests, and negotiated rules of the game to coordinate their systems. Moreover, Latin America’s dynamic tertiary education systems face structural, organizational, and functional obstacles that often discourage international convergence.However, Bologna is stimulating closer university collaboration between Latin American and European institutions, particularly Spanish and Portuguese universities, in an effort to create an Ibero-American area of knowledge, with student and faculty exchanges. Thus Bologna has had an indirect stimulus by encouraging collaboration, and concomitant issues such as Latin America’s current debate about curricular reform and higher education competitiveness.