Ethically engaged public universities in Latin America: institutional values, well-rounded education, and social commitment

• In Event: Examining Public Policies, Curriculums, and Programs across the educational ecosystem in the LAC region

Proposal

SUMMARY: This study was conducted to answer the research question, how do institutional development plans, annual reports, and other official documents of four Latin American public universities portray their ethical and social engagement in terms of institutional values, well-rounded education of students, and social commitment? We conducted a document analysis-based qualitative study of one national (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México—UNAM) and three state/province/department-level universities (Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes—UAA, México; Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso—UFMT, Brazil; and Universidad del Valle—Univalle, Colombia). Besides the three etic categories included in the research question, the study used a series of emic categories, identified mainly in institutional philosophy documents, institutional statements, and development plans of recent periods, to attempt to build grounded theory. We found that UAA emphasizes humanism for the education of students, UFMT and Univalle address issues of access and equity affecting disadvantaged groups of the population, and UNAM stresses its position as a top national academic, cultural, and artistic hub. Most public universities in Latin America have been spaces of contestation of the social order and criticized for leaning towards leftist political ideologies. However, they establish their principles as open, plural, democratic, and interdisciplinary institutions.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: To examine the ethical and social engagement of the four university cases of this study, we chose three themes that represented the essence of university identities and endeavors. They are institutional values, well-rounded education, and social commitment. First, university philosophies and goals are often defined in institutional statements such as missions, visions, and core values. Second, an aim commonly regarded as essential to education relates to what students should learn. In Latin America, it is typical talking about formación integral (in Spanish) or formação integral (in Portuguese) as an understanding of the education of a human being as a whole. That notion underlies institutional foundations and pedagogical and curricular approaches to education. Third, after a wave of policies, reforms, and narratives that give increased value to research from a perspective of productivity and competition (i.e., academic capitalism), there is a renewed interest in promoting more articulation and collaboration between higher education institutions and the society.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The search and analysis focused on ethical values that do not represent the mainstream trends and pressures that universities face to contribute to the economic development of countries and to be competitive and productive in the context of market pressures that have turned knowledge into a commodity. Therefore, values or principles related to academic quality, accountability, management, excellence, and innovation from the knowledge and economic perspectives were excluded. The focus was on ethical values and commitment from a humanistic perspective (education of students and well-being of university communities) and social responsibility (of graduates and universities as a whole).
This study only looked at what is written on paper. Even though the data collection tried to triangulate the content by considering more than one document, there needed to be a way to learn how values turn into plans, programs, and specific actions. Even less, we could assess if they became outcomes such as changes in the relationships of universities with their surrounding communities, the results of those actions, and how university graduates live their lives or contribute to society. The documents reviewed represented university-wide perspectives and not those of academic and non-academic subunits or specific campuses. In some cases, they showed the philosophical standing of the institutions and how they were used to frame development plans in particular periods. We only reviewed the most recent documents available online when there were several versions or represented previous development plans.
The four universities represent in their documents their specific contexts and purposes. They all describe institutional values differently, particularly those related to well-grounded education and social commitment. UAA is a state-based institution created with a Christian-based humanistic focus. UGMT is also a state-based university and specializes in the accessibility and permanence of students, notably from two historically underrepresented and excluded communities, Quilombolas and Indigenous Brazilian. Like the previous two, Univalle is a department-based institution that has created access and support for young people from poor and marginalized communities. UNAM, the only nationwide case in this study, sees itself and emphasizes its value as a national treasure and a hub for knowledge and culture creation and dissemination. The size of UNAM probably makes it the group's most decentralized institution; therefore, developing an institutional philosophy beyond its bylaws could be more challenging. This reflection should be explored in future research.
In general, the values identified in this study regarding ethical and social engagement show their applicability in students’ education and the projection and participation of universities in the societies they serve. There is a particular emphasis on democracy in all the different principles/values analyzed. Defining democracy is complicated. However, something that should require further study is the left-leaning, conflict-driven, subversive image that public universities have in the region. It should be analyzed if the democratic nature of universities requires new ways to see democracy from those used under modernization and functional/structural perspectives or if they have become biased toward specific ways to understand and challenge the social order. Most Latin American public universities were inspired or influenced by the University of Cordoba movement of 1918 and other social movements in each country. The only university in this group that emerged from social demand and unrest was UAA, but its focus from the beginning was Christian-based humanism.

Authors

• Jorge Enrique Delgado, University of Pittsburgh

• Nancy Palacios-Mena

• Nilce Vieira Campos Ferreira

• Salvador Camacho-Sandoval

• Jose David Alarid-Dieguez