From 18 to 22 November 1996 the Regional Conference on Policies and Strategies for the Transformation of Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean was held in Havana, Cuba. This conference was convened pursuant to a decision reached in the course of the 28th General Conference of UNESCO (October/November 1995), as a preparatory forum of the World Conference on Higher Education which the Organization intends to hold in the second semester of 1998. The meeting, which will be followed by similar events in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arabian States, Asia and Europe, was organized by CRESALC in collaboration with the Ministry of Higher Education of the Republic of Cuba.
Its basic objectives were to define the guidelines of the transformation of post secondary education and to draw up a plan of action enabling, at that educational level, the "improvement of the pertinence and quality of its teaching, research and extension functions, offering equal opportunities to everybody by means of a permanent education without frontiers, in which merit will be the basic criterion for access, within the framework of a new concept of international cooperation."
The organization and execution of the event were facilitated by the coexistence and interaction of various factors and circumstances of the educational context and environment. Particularly worthy of note is the controversy triggered in the academic and political worlds by the interpretations and recommendations of various international experts with regard to the strategies of change and development of higher education. Another element involved has been the reduction and reorientation of investments at that educational level decided within the framework of the macroeconomic policies adopted in the region in accordance with recommendations of international financial organizations.
Added to this is the great political interest aroused by education due to the progress made in the systems of subregional integration and to its inclusion as a principal item of the Agenda of the Fifth Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government (Bariloche, 1995). Other important incentives were the growing social concern for the pertinence and quality of the educational systems and the motivation generated by UNESCO, through the multiple consultations on the situation and the prospects of higher education, held at the world and regional level since 1990 and summarized in the Policy Paper for Change and Development in Higher Education, published by the Organization in 1995.
In this context, CRESALC promoted the participation of over 4000 individuals connected with higher education in the region in the preparatory phase of the Conference, by holding 36 meetings: 23 at the national level and 13 at the subregional level. These meetings helped to mobilize the social actors connected with higher education around the problems to be discussed in the Conference; provided theoretical and methodological instruments for the organization of the discussions during the meeting; generated inputs for the supportive documents; and made it possible to test and validate the work methodology designed for the Havana meeting. The participants in these fora included high level government officials (presidents, vice presidents, ministers and directors of educational policies); members of parliament; presidents, secretaries and representatives of regional, subregional and national university associations and other higher education institutions; rectors, vice rectors, deans and directors of administrative departments of public and private universities; professors; researchers; students; representatives of teachers and student associations; representatives of United Nations agencies and of regional integration organizations.
That intense preparatory activity gave rise to 8 proceedings and 3 books related to outstanding aspects of the problems of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The research centres and the specialists entrusted with the drafting of supportive documents produced 5 principal documents and 55 basic documents respectively. The academic community, on its part, prepared spontaneously 72 free papers which helped to enrich the discussions in the meeting.
A representative sample of the series of actors mobilized, consisting of 688 individuals, belonging to all the aforementioned categories, attended the Regional Conference, participating in the drafting of the papers and in the preparation of the documents arising from it, approving them by consensus and expressing their commitment to the transformation of higher education in the region.
The way in which the working papers were presented and the organization of the workshops - with approximately 20 per cent of the time destined to presentations and the remaining 80 per cent to discussion - responded adequately to the demand of a great many participants to take part in the discussions and present their experiences. The participants appreciated this distribution of the time, which is unusual in other Conferences which usually dedicate the greater part of the programme to lengthy verbal presentations. The preparatory activities and the documents of the Conference showed the consubstantiation of most of the actors mobilized with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention Against Discrimination in Education, the UNESCO Constitution and the recommendations of the International Commission on Education for the XXI Century, with regard to everybody’s right to education, equal access for all in terms of the merits and capacities of each one, the transfer and shared use of knowledge and the development of the capacities of criticism and anticipation as regards the evolutional trends of the society.
The products of the Conference, that is to say the Final Report, the Declaration on Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Guide for Preparing an Action Plan, emphasize and discuss the nature of social welfare of higher education ; they stress its nature as an instrument which is "irreplaceable for human development, production, economic growth, the strengthening of cultural identity, the maintenance of social cohesion, the struggle against poverty and the promotion of a peace culture"; and they assume most of the principles defined by UNESCO in its Policy Paper for Change and Development in Higher Education and in the General Introduction prepared by CRESALC (1996).
The analysis of the process of transformation of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean based on the principles mentioned in the previous paragraph, launched since the eighties as a consequence of the economic, political and social changes in the regional and world environment, and accelerated as of 1995 by the initiative of UNESCO, suggests that this process can evolve in the short and medium term (1997-2001) in the form of two possible scenarios:
The results obtained in the phases of preparation and development of the Regional Conference indicate that the second scenario is more likely to be realized if a forum is consolidated which harmonizes, promotes and coordinates the initiatives and demands generated by the systems of higher education, their integrants and the social actors connected with them, in order to establish the new social consensus which would place "the higher education institutions in a better position to respond to the present and future needs of sustainable human development."
The participants in the Regional Conference identified CRESALC as the appropriate organization to perform those functions and entrusted it with the preparation and coordination of the Action Plan whereby the process of changes approved in the meeting with regard to pertinence, quality, management, financing, the use of the new information and communication technologies and the reorientation of international cooperation can be put into practice. At the same time, they suggested to UNESCO the transformation of the structure of the Centre and the updating of its functions, in order that it be in a position to assume those responsibilities efficiently and help to satisfy the demands and remedy the deficiencies of higher education in the region.
Whilst working on its reorganization, the Centre has begun the mission entrusted to it by assuming the edition and publication of this book which contains the opening speeches and inaugural conferences; the report, the declaration and the action plan prepared in the commissions and approved in the plenary assembly; and the closing speeches, in which Federico Mayor, DirectorGeneral of UNESCO, and Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Councils of State and of Ministers of the host country, comment on the importance of higher education and express their first reactions to the results of the meeting.
The supportive documents prepared especially for the Regional Conference by experts individually and by groups of specialists of outstanding Centres of research on higher education established in the Latin American and Caribbean region, will be disseminated in the next number of this Collection.
On behalf of the Director General of UNESCO and the Secretariat of the Organization, I wish to thank the institutions and dignitaries of the host country and all the participants for the disinterested and solidary contributions which they made to ensure the fulfillment of the objectives of the meeting. At the same time, I have the great pleasure of conveying to the Association of Montevideo Group Universities (AUGM), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Inter-American University Organization (IUO), the World University Service (WUS) and the Union of Latin American Universities (UDUAL), UNESCO’s recognition of the financial contributions which enabled the publication of the documents of the Conference.
Luis Yarzábal
