The privatization of universities in Latin America and the Caribbean: Colonization of the public sphere and rights in question

From its origins, the Latin American university assumed particular characteristics. Based on dispersed institutional experiences, a framework with common elements gradually emerged, defining a regional university model, albeit with dissimilar manifestations in each country. The characteristics of this model are based on public institutions; autonomy, a feature that tended—even with many interruptions—to shape their relationship with the State; an "open-door" approach that enabled significant processes of social mobility in several countries; and reformism. That is, a model of university that is self-governing, where students, graduates, faculty, and non-teaching staff participate in a form of co-governance; and a highly politicized institution with a strong commitment to social issues, which fostered an important role for the student movement in the political arena. The Latin American university thus served as a democratizing factor in the political life of the region's countries, contributing to the strengthening of the public sphere in societies where democracies were precarious and unstable (Krotsch, 2001). This identity was challenged repeatedly through reforms driven by governments within the framework of guidelines promoted by international financial organizations, through the creation of alternative institutional models and more recently through strong processes of privatization and commodification.

In the 21st century, two concomitant processes occurred: on the one hand, there was a redefinition of the meaning of the university that contributes to its democratization, promoted both by the recognition of higher education as a social public good, a universal human right and a duty of the State (CRES 2008), as well as by the policies that were developed within the framework of post-neoliberal governments, aimed at expanding access and strengthening the public sector in regional higher education. But at the same time, much of the expansion of access to higher education in the region was through the private sector, which increased its share of enrollment in absolute and relative terms and came to represent more than 50% from 2003 onwards. This positions Latin America and the Caribbean as the region in which the privatization and commodification of higher education has grown most acutely and sustainably in recent decades, giving it the character of “hyper-privatized” (Atairo, Trotta and Saforcada, 2025), not only because more than 50% of its enrollment (54%), its graduates (59%) and its institutions (67%) belong to the private sector but also because there is a clear trend towards sustained growth of the sector, both in countries with highly privatized systems and in those with a strong tradition of the public sector.

Recent years have been characterized by pendulum swings in the governments of the region, which express competing social models and which, in many cases, involved a cycle of conservative restoration that brought new impetus to the reappearance of the market as the organizer of the social, establishing strong disputes of meaning around education and the emergence of new forms of privatization.

In this sense, it is necessary to develop critical analyses of the underlying logics of the privatization and commodification of the social economy in the region in order to help clarify processes that contribute to an impoverishment of the public sphere and a weakening of the commons.

The proposal stems from the conviction of the need to build bridges of dialogue between the production of knowledge about the university with public and institutional policies, and with teacher training, in order to improve our practices from a political-pedagogical sense and, from there, build keys for collective action and the development of autonomous and sovereign projects.

GENERAL PURPOSE:

To analyze from a critical perspective the processes of privatization of and in the university in order to contribute to the understanding of current disputes surrounding the Latin American university

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:

•  To problematize the different dimensions of the processes of commodification and privatization of higher education
•  To understand the privatization and commodification trends that prevail in the region, as well as the local forms they take in different national cases.
• Identify the actors driving privatization processes and their local strategies
• Analyze the role of the state and public policy in each national case
• Understanding the changes and challenges that university institutions and their actors face in the face of the questioning of the expansion of rights that the commodification and privatization of higher education entails.

• Theoretical and methodological perspectives for the analysis of university privatization
• The privatization of higher education from a regional perspective and the right in question
• Privatization of public resources through demand financing
• Public-private partnerships and the virtualization of education
• Symbolic privatization: the idea of ​​the university as a business and the centrality of university management
• Privatization and commodification in research: the centrality of the productivist model
• The precarization of university teaching work as a dimension of the privatization process
• The colonization of the public sphere: privatization as a political strategy

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The basic requirements for taking a seminar are:

• Availability of at least 4 hours per week to dedicate to the seminar course.
• Internet access.
• Reasonable handling of communication and computer tools.
• Language proficiency in the language in which the course will be taught. The official languages ​​are Spanish and Portuguese.

The seminars last 10 weeks, plus the completion of a final project. A total of 90 hours of dedication will be credited.

A course consists of ten classes, each accompanied by required reading bibliography, supplementary bibliography, discussion forums and training activities proposed by the teaching team, partial deliveries and a final project.
The course is online and asynchronous. Some instructors may propose synchronous activities. In those cases, the time and date will be agreed upon beforehand between the instructors and the students to ensure everyone's participation. Attendance at synchronous sessions is not mandatory.
To pass the seminar, you must participate in at least 80% of the discussion forums and activities proposed by the teachers, have completed the scheduled partial deliveries, and pass the final work.

The possible payment methods are by credit card or bank transfer.