Global or Local Models? “Extensión” and Transfer Offices in Latin American Universities

• In Event: Highlighted session: Higher education, development, and sustainability in Latin America

Proposal

This paper analyzes the influence of science and higher education policy in the organizational structure of universities in Chile and Colombia. It focuses on the development of research, innovation, and extension offices since they represent global and local trajectories in Latin America. The institutionalization of university bodies in charge of social and political involvement, knowledge, and technology production was observed in the organizational charts of universities’ web pages and analyzed through a theoretical neo-institutional approach. Findings show that changing institutional frameworks are related to the formal commitment of 69 percent Colombian and 71 percent Chilean universities to develop research supported by research offices. In turn, in less than a decade almost one fifth of universities in Chile have reacted to normative pressures, research funds, and accreditation, and created transfer offices that are almost inexistent in Colombia. However, these new developments also occur together with the persistent uniqueness of outreach (extensión) offices in 49 percent and 66 percent of Colombian and Chilean universities. A university ideal that promotes student participation in governance, political involvement, and social and cultural programs is hybridized to the entrepreneurial university model that privileges applied research, especially in Chile where the model is imported faster through governmental regulations. Future research may reflect on the relationships between new forms of governance and isomorphism or path dependency in university structures.

Author

• Pedro Pineda, INCHER University of Kassel