Bridging walls and crossing borders in the Caribbean

Academe, May/Jun 2002 by Canino, Maria Josefa

Globalization and neoliberalism have altered higher education in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, Cross-border collaboration and cooperation can strengthen higher education across the region.

The main forces restructuring Latin American higher education today are globalization and neoliberal regimes. In response to these forces, colleges and universities across the region are making adjustments and introducing reforms. In the Caribbean, institutions in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and, with socialist variations, Cuba, increasingly compete for funds from private and public sources as governments reduce subsidies to higher education and encourage institutional self-sufficiency. At the same time, government programs and other initiatives increasingly support university involvement in the marketplace, legislation to reform and restructure the university, efficiency in management, and the use of

national evaluation systems to guide funding allocations. In this way, Caribbean colleges and universities are leaning toward the entrepreneurship that has characterized North American institutions, especially in recent decades. Together, these developments are shaping the opportunities and challenges facing public higher education in the Hispanic Caribbean.

In the traditional Latin American view, public education is seen as a vital force in society, particularly in countries where the challenges of poverty seem intractable. In the Caribbean, individual achievement in higher education is held in high regard, as is the prestige of faculty status and intellectual work. Also important is the perceived commitment of public universities to fostering national autonomy, social progress, and global awareness.

Across Latin America, people see faculty as the conscience of society, a role that carries the weight of moral obligation to a greater extent in Latin America than in the United States. The ideal of academics as constructive critics and classical seekers of truth within autonomous institutions of higher education remains especially strong in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In Cuba, by contrast, academic knowledge and problem solving are urgent and concrete contributions to nation building, grounded in the state's emphasis on perfeccionamiento, or continuous improvement.

Overshadowing these varying expectations regarding faculty roles is a debate about the function of public higher education. In the 1960s and 1970s, colleges and universities in Puerto Rico and Cuba were seen as extensions of the state, charged with preparing graduates for their long-term roles as social beings and as economic agents in a rapidly changing national marketplace. In recent decades, Puerto Rican and Dominican faculty had begun to ascribe the economic aspect of this function to private institutions, but that view is changing. Though still debated on campus and by policy makers, the perceived value of short- and long-term university-society-market relationships has gained marked ascendancy. There is now broad agreement that state universities should promote economic progress through research and workforce development and should educate faculty, students, and administrators about their obligation to help governments and citizens address complex social, political, and economic issues.

Many institutions have responded creatively to challenges emerging from the turbulent environment created by declining public funding, escalating demands on higher education, and the pressures of economic internationalization. Yet this altered landscape has also introduced some intractable new tensions. For example, universities struggle to balance short-term market pressures and increased government scrutiny with the need to prepare students for their diverse roles in society. At the same time, institutions face demands for efficiency and accountability in Cuba and Puerto Rico and, to a lesser extent, in the Dominican Republic, where patronage and corruption continue to plague the government.

Students in the Margin

Meanwhile, the mission of public institu lions to educate marginalized groups per sists as a fundamental challenge within Caribbean higher education. In the 1970 access and equity joined nation building, economic development, and social democracy as functions of higher education. The admission of students whose career expectations and racial, ethnic, gender, and social backgrounds differ from those previously served by postsecondary institutions has revealed new claims and needs, bringing forth complex issues for universities in the region.

Integrating marginal groups of black, poor, and, to a Jesse: extent, female students into all levels and disciplines of higher education remains weakest in the Dominican Republic, although, clearly, this goal has not been fully resolved in Puerto Rico, Cuba, or the United States. Each of the Caribbean countries made substantial gains, especially between the 1950s and 1980s, in moving toward gender, racial, social, and geographic equality in enrollments.