The International Institute of Educational Development

Guide for preparing an Action Plan

Regional Centre for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean - ESALC/UNESCO-Caracas

© 1997 ESALC/UNESCO-Caracas

The main purpose of the Conference was to devise an action plan that would summarize the conclusions and recommendations issued by each of the commissions. However, the meeting turned into a real hotbed of ideas and proposals that grew into a such a strong flow of ideas that it was not possible to prepare the plan during the five working days. In order not to lose any of the excellent contributions that were made, we have chosen to submit them to a period of minimum distillation.

In agreement with the organizers, we offer this compilation entitled "Guide for preparing an Action Plan" and CRESALC has been entrusted with the task of preparing a concrete programme that will be implemented in the short term.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS OF COMMISSION 1: RELEVANCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

To procure the universalisation of advanced education of high quality and permanently subject to revision, in order to increase the spaces for new generations.
To integrate higher education institutions with the remaining levels of education, with the object of forming an articulated system in which they should assume a proactive behaviour aimed at identifying failures. Their contribution could be translated through applied research and their participation in the initial training of teachers, and in the improvement and updating of qualified staff, and advising in the design of curricular models.
To systematically organize its functions in order to fulfill the principle of permanent education and to attend to the training of workers, graduates and their own teaching staff, by means of formal and non-formal education plans.
To guarantee the principle of universal access to higher education and free higher education, in order to improve equity and ensure an adequate quality and effectiveness of studies.
To ensure the standardization of quality levels, without taking into account social levels, sex or geographical location, in order to improve equity.
To revitalize the reform of the study programmes, introducing flexible mechanisms in order to anticipate the signals from the world of work.
To guarantee the incorporation of vital values such as: freedom, human rights, social responsibility, ethics, and solidarity. At the same time, develop the capacity to relate knowledge to its application, knowing with doing, and the enterprising nature that should characterize graduates.
To actively participate in the formulation and implementation of national scientific and technical policies.
To evaluate the capacity to produce endogenous knowledge that makes possible forms of intelligent and fraternal development, to increase competitiveness, organization capacity and efficiency, to contribute to the reconstruction of the state and society.
To make the disciplinary and professional structures more permeable and flexible, recognizing the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to explore and experiment with proposals that must be original to solve our social problems.
To promote the University Civil Service via regular services by teachers and students in society, as a way to reinforce the extension function and revitalize the application of knowledge and understanding of reality.
To revitalize the capacity to study reality in a proactive way, via a dialogue with the different social sectors, receiving the problems posed, identifying the true nature of the obstacles and opportunities and promoting the necessary research activities required to prepare the proposals internally.
To accompany in an active way the regional and sub-regional integration processes with the object of making possible projects aimed at improving the quality of life and well-being of Latin American and Caribbean society. Evaluate with the Bolìvar Progamme the possibilities of cooperation with the productive sector.
To promote the organization of academic networks together with the Latin American Economic System (SELA), to optimize the analysis of development processes and external insertion, and to improve the decision-making process in the public and private sectors.
To stimulate, within the university ambience, initiatives which make it possible to determine the degree of relevance attained and its development.
To promote through the organization of a regional seminar, with the participation of representative sectors of society, the study, revision and eventual proposals to reform the legal structures that regulate higher education in our countries with the object of guaranteeing its greater relevance in harmony with the Latin American ideal.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS OF COMMISSION 2: QUALITY, ASSESSMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL ACCREDITATION

To promote the consolidation of the regional academic community -multinational, in nature- via the creation of ad-hoc organizations.
To stimulate the development of regional postgraduate studies, via the creation of networks.
To give pedagogic training to the teachers of the region and, in general, promote their professional, scientific and pedagogic improvement.
To make the self examination of higher education a curricular discipline, aimed at all the academic community, so that knowledge and learning nourish higher education's commitment to its improvement.
To counteract the danger of endogamic trends, creating a culture of assessment that is based on the objectives and commitments of academic institutions, and which binds them to their obligations.
To create multilateral teams to study and identify common values that serve as the structural framework for formulating policies and strategies.
To place the above mentioned multilateral teams in strategic higher education study centres and institutes, so that through them, the countries of the continent can confront these challenges jointly.
To establish common parameters for external assessment of the postgraduate programmes that are internationally accepted.
To incorporate experts from different countries in the external assessment processes.
To promote research into higher education, including the creation of UNITWIN Networks and UNESCO Chairs.
To integrate students in all these tasks.
To develop in-class or distance lifelong education programmes.
To support the programmes for training young researchers (master’s degrees and PhDs), encouraging the complementary relation between institutions from different countries.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS OF COMMISSION 3: MANAGEMENT AND FINANCING

Financing strategies

Governments must guarantee the fulfilment of the right to education. Consequently, they should assume responsibility for financing education, within the framework of the conditions and demands inherent in each educational system, without abandoning any of the levels of the education system, or redefining investment criteria, so that the latter expresses the importance given to education in the political discourse.
The public financing policy must go hand in hand with supplementary government initiatives such as: credits and scholarships for the students, as well as the creation of financial funds that increase the resources allocated to the higher education system.
Likewise, governments must encourage higher education institutions to make real use of their capacities, and to take into account their potentials for the study and integral solution of problems as well as for the identification and best use of development and integration opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, they must strengthen the capacities of the corresponding national Ministries of Education, so that their function is more organic and efficient with regard to the higher education in each country.
It must be understood that the nature and mission of higher education prevails as a criterion for identifying additional financing sources. Bearing this in mind, the institutions must develop strategies for increasing their own resources which also contribute to their financing. In this line of action, the priorities are: transfer of services, continuous education, co-operation of the university with the production sector, the goods and services sector and society as a whole. The needs of the latter have to be regarded as pressing by all the higher education institutions in the region. They will have to strive to seek or regain the confidence of society in their activities.
Acting proactively, the institutions must make changes in the academic, administrative and management fields; a methodological revolution of the working modalities of the institutions is fundamental. These must reformulate the educational model they have and the type of training they wish for their graduates. Integral formation, the rescue of ethical values and the acquisition of a social responsibility by those passing through the institutions is an urgent task to be carried out. In this context the search for financing should never distort the nature of these institutions.
The burden of the cost of education should not be transferred to the student, because the issue of equity must be addressed at all the levels of education. The concept of higher education as a public asset implies that its appraisal cannot be restricted to economic quantitative indicators. Its priority should rather be a social appraisal in the perspective of human development. Given that the University fulfills a key social function, the State cannot abandon its financing responsibility. Hence, it must ensure strategies for reallocating public spending, for changing the fiscal legislation, and attempt to progressively redirect taxes. Likewise, it must support institutions in their search for additional financing sources to public financing, provided the procurement of resources of their own is not detrimental to their functions.
There is a firm belief that the availability or absence of resources for higher education institutions in our region is not an economic, nor a financial problem. It is rather a strictly political problem that falls within the framework of the domestic and international decisions aimed at ensuring the autonomous development of each country.
The funds for financing higher education from multilateral organizations must be granted on the basis of criteria that take into account the interests and needs of the actors of higher education.
Measures taken in this field must effectively be aimed at complying with the recommendations made to the countries of the Region in the "Mexico Declaration" (1979), in that the countries must increase their budgets allocated to education until the latter is no less than a 7% of the Gross National Product.
Management improvement strategies
The management of higher education should help the systems and institutions to fully and clearly identify the changes that have taken place in their environment, as well as the prevailing historical conditions, and to obtain the capacity to adapt themselves to the speeds at which the phenomena occur in the different fields.
As regards research into higher education, and the advisability of the researchers themselves assuming the vanguard in promoting and carrying out research in this field was underlined, as well as the need for the institutions to establish and specify explicit policies in this field.
The set of proactive policies, strategies and actors identified in a first approach to the management model would include:
1. The permanent modernization and updating of the legal aspects related to the systems and the institutions.
2. Prospective direction of the change, via the creation of specialized centres or units that have the support and the participation of public and higher education institutions, among others.
3. Training high level leaders for higher education and development by means of strategies for setting up special programmes based on inter-institutional co-operation, with the aid of excellence centres, networks and other institutional resources.
4. Communicational ones, via the strategy of implementing special programmes and the combination of resources coming from teaching, extension and research units and bodies.
5. Financial ones, via the strategy for setting up the correspondence between relevance and quality, resources required with public funds and new strategies, with the assistance of different actors that are related to financing, both in higher education itself and in its surroundings.
6. Those dealing with administrative and decision-making optimization, via strategies for modernizing routines, the preparation of decision-making models, equipment for automated processing, based on integral information systems that are reliable, transparent, appropriate and timely.
7. Coordination that reformulates both strategies and lines of action of those organizations that represent corporate power in the institutions, with the object of facilitating the consensus that is indispensable for the successful implementation of decisions to achieve the educational projects.
8. Creation of an information system that makes the internal operating conditions of the institutions more transparent, making research into higher education in the Region possible.
Proposals for restructuring CRESALC

A reform of CRESALC is proposed in an attempt to channel the actions proposed and to implement the action plan of this Conference. This reform will enable CRESALC to effectively co-ordinate the actions that have been proposed, implement those that are within its competence, and strengthen itself as an institution; its lines of action would consist of the following among others:
Carrying out studies, analyses, projects and research activities to support the generation of public policies and other initiatives related to higher education in the region;
Being a space for the discussion of issues, temporary problems, long-term challenges and opportunities related to higher education in the region;
Having an education programme that helps train and update the top management in higher education and their institutions in the region;
Being an information centre that supports the work of the research groups and the academic communities in the field of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the actors of civil society, the State and the production apparatus of both goods and services developing exchange and dissemination documentary processes with the pertinent entities.
Coordinating the UNESCO Chairs in the Region.
Strengthening the actions and the presence of UNESCO in the Region.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS OF COMMISSION 4: NEW INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (NICT)

Due to the fact that massive access to new information and communication technologies (NICT) is an instrument that can modernize wide sectors of higher education in the region, UNESCO can make a most significant contribution in this respect by recommending the governments of the Latin American and Caribbean region to adopt programmes aimed at increasing investments in joint information and telecomputing infrastructures, and in this way, obtain the resources required to finance domestic university networks, as well as the future foundation of the Latin American education network. Likewise, they will advised to develop domestic policies for their connection to global networks, favouring access to INTERNET and promoting INTRANETS.
Teachers and professors of the region must be given a training that enables them to integrate the use of NICTs in their teaching programmes, and prepare them to act as multipliers of the use of these technologies. On the other hand, modifying the study programmes of the degree courses related to Information Sciences plays a key role in the field of training professionals entrusted with the main role of creating and facilitating information, rather than simply systematizing it. Parallel to this, the study programmes of higher education should include, from now onwards and in all degree courses, the use of these technologies as indispensable tools for both learning and exercising their professional practice, in order to promote the creation of a new information culture in this perspective in which an unavoidable need is the introduction of highly trained staff specialized in telematics.
Design and implement campaigns to raise public awareness, aimed at different levels of the higher education institutions, with the purpose of generating a significant and deep change in the perceptions of students, teachers and researchers about the value of information and the wide opportunities offered by these technologies in the field of academic work.
To put forward the proposal that UNESCO convenes a World Conference on Information (paradigm of the XXI Century), which should be preceded by Regional Conferences, inviting all the actors who are linked, in one way or another, to the use and production of information and to the new technologies for preserving, accessing and disseminating information.
To request UNESCO to promote the creation of a Regional Centre to study the behaviour of decision-makers in relation to the use of information and knowledge.
To recommend that UNESCO fosters the organization and creation of committees of thinkers and creators in an attempt to promote the use and application of NICT-based information and knowledge, both nationwide and at a Latin American level.
To invite UNESCO to promote the use of financing sources to contract experts from Latin America and the Caribbean for specific developments via virtual media or remote work facilities. In this way, the financing that is available would be better used and bureaucratic spending would be considerably cut back.
To urge UNESCO to promote actions -via its education, communication, informatics and information sectors- to promote projects that introduce NICTs in the study programmes of schools at primary and secondary levels.
To set up a commission or body to co-ordinate the implementation and evaluation of programmes aimed at generating the development of education based on the use of the NICTs and communication to facilitate the transmission and/or generation of knowledge in the region.
To carry out systematic research into the transfer of information and its relation to learning.
To strengthen and expand the distance education programmes that use new information and communication technologies.
To facilitate the use of NICTs in the distance education programmes, via the creation of the corresponding local capacities, involving the companies that are interested in training their staff by means of these methods to obtain the necessary finance for this purpose, increasing the co-operation between universities and other organizations. To promote the idea that financing for the countries of Latin America should be devoted to distance education via the use of NICTs, maintaining in first place the human component as the key element, supplemented by technologies.
To promote the creation of University Centres that produce multimedia for teaching activities, information services and the preservation and dissemination of the Latin American and Caribbean documentary resources.
To favour national and international agreements of higher education institutions, aimed at developing multimedia products and carrying out joint academic activities based on the NICTs.
To make use of the INFOLAC server so as to have a regional focal WWW location of the higher education institutions.
To identify centres of excellence in the NICTs in the region, co-ordinating them as a network and disseminating their experiences.
To transform the university libraries into corridors leading to the INTERNET and the INTRANETS.
To promote INFOLAC to maintain a permanent forum on knowledge and the use of the NICTs.
To propose the creation of at least one UNESCO chair on the NICTs.
To foster intercommunication of all the actors in the knowledge and use of the NICTs, as well as implementing models that allow them to be adjusted and generalized.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS OF COMMISSION 5: REORIENTING INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION

To urge universities to include special budget items for horizontal regional co-operation.
To promote the creation of specialized units for managing international co-operation in each university, as well as the central professional associations.
To promote a Network of Networks, resulting from the combination of efforts of the different ventures underway in the region, namely: the Montevideo Group (AUGM), UNAMAZ, UNICA, CSUCA, among others.
To promote the concept of academic consortia in co-operation initiatives, to make the best use of the existing facilities, laboratories, infrastructure and resources.
To consider the following as priorities in the field of international co-operation: the environment and sustainability, the new social actors and the participation of ethnic, linguistic, type and class minorities as spokesmen and main characters involved in the processes of change of higher education.
To put forward the proposal that Portuguese should also be an official language in future Latin American and Caribbean meetings of international co-operation.
Likewise, as mentioned in the General Report Commission 5 unanimously adopted the following proposal:
1. To recommend that UNESCO turn CRESALC into an autonomous institution in charge of Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, within the framework, sets of rules and specificities that this international organization maintains.
2. To invite all the -regional, sub-regional and national associations of universities and higher education institutions, the representatives of private and public universities and higher education institutions, the networks of institutions and research and teaching work groups, as well as development organizations and agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations- and those who were not present due to different reasons which participated in this regional conference to adhere to this key recommendation made by Commission No. 5.
3. To suggest that this new entity:
  1. Compiles the resolutions and action plan that have emerged from this conference, in order to give its tasks a meaning and to frame them within a programme, from the perspective of setting up a centre of evaluation, extension and information, and a data base of the Latin American system of universities and institutions of higher education, science, technology and humanities, as a collegiate body of horizontal co-ordination and co-operation, and a centre for the research, development and training of the new intellectual and cultural capital to revitalize the endogenous and creative capabilities of our countries.
  2. Be supported by a broad representative regional consultative body of organizations, associations, networks and co-operation programmes that will work for the success of its implementation and development.
  3. Promotes and co-ordinates activities and tasks carried out within the framework of the UNITWIN programme and the UNESCO chairs that are underway in the continent, and also to support, promote and co-ordinate research and training activities of other organizations and associations.
4. It is also recommended that:
  1. The Cooperative Network of Higher Education Institutions for the Pedagogic Formation and Improvement of Higher Education (REDES-LAC) be reinforced in order to promote the use and management of new learning technologies and to strengthen the ties and communication media for the purpose of academic co-operation and exchange.
  2. Mechanisms are implemented to assess its work and offer advice in this field, to have a favourable impact on the quality of teaching and research into higher education, and above all to guarantee the permanence, influence and reproduction of our intellectual capacity.
  3. To support and promote the existing sub-regional networks and the creation of new ones, in order to multiply these successful experiences in different regions of the continent.
  4. To work in key areas and priorities for the region that make it possible to construct endogenous and co-operative capacities, above all in nuclei of borderline knowledge, have an impact on the solution of huge social problems, the environment and the sustainability of development, research in higher education institutions and universities, training teachers, professors and high-level staff in institutional leadership, communication and new technologies, human rights and democracy, technology transfer, patents and intellectual property, and the strengthening of an education for all, social well-being and the cultural heritage.
  5. To promote and undertake concrete actions to support and implement programmes for student and academic mobility, in order to achieve common basic profiles and the recognition of courses and degrees.
  6. To formulate an integral development programme to promote a new type and style of international co-operation that makes it possible for the development of mutual South-South and North-South experiences to have a favourable impact on the Latin American and Caribbean region, based on the agreements and objectives proposed in this conference.

COPYRIGHT © 1997 BY ESALC/UNESCO-CARACAS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS TEXT MAY BE USED AND SHARED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FAIR-USE PROVISIONS OF U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW. ANY USE OF THIS TEXT ON OTHER TERMS, IN ANY MEDIUM, REQUIRES THE CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR AND THE PUBLISHER, THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.