Commodification, Credentialism and Political Capture: Barriers for Academic Freedom in Paraguay

• In Event: Academic Freedom and Democratic Backsliding in Latin America

Proposal

This research project examined how commodification, credentialism, and political capture shape higher education in Paraguay and limit the exercise of academic freedom and university autonomy. Within the Latin American context, the autonomy of educational institutions has faced growing challenges due to the privatization and commodification of the university system, social pressure for degree attainment, and the interference of political elites in academic governance. This study focused on the history of institutionalization and regulation of higher education in Paraguay, seeking to understand how commodification, credentialism, and political control become institutionalized as barriers for academic freedom and university autonomy.
Using a comparative case study of three fields of study (Medicine, Law, and Political Science), the research analysed variations across each field in how credentialism, commodification, and political capture affect academic practice and culture in Paraguay. Data were collected through documentary analysis, a review of accreditation policies, interviews with students, graduates, and faculty, and a study of professional trajectories to identify both structural barriers and the mechanisms of self-censorship and institutional bias that limit critical thought.
The study revealed how the timing of a discipline’s institutionalization relative to political regime type, civil service reform, and higher education liberalization determines its mode of growth, its relationship to patronage or merit, and the scope for critical inquiry the academy. In Paraguay, a coalition of educational reformists and traditional-party legislators undertook higher education liberalization and kicked off a period of private and public massification in the sector, long after it occurred in other Latin American countries and after a prolonged 35-year dictatorship that exercised deep political and partisan control of both the operation and the content of higher education. Very limited civil service reform occurred even later, after higher education liberalization, producing rapid growth in credentialized disciplines under conditions that constrained the emergence of a robust scientific culture and academic freedom. Discipline-specific variation—between older professional fields and emergent social sciences—reflects this interaction between historical foundation, political control, and labor-market incentives, rather than any intrinsic differences in disciplinary content.
The study demonstrates how academic freedom is not just a matter of formal university versus market governance; it depends fundamentally on whether a discipline is cultivated as a scientific culture, as opposed to a credentialized path to a career. Where disciplines exist mainly to certify bureaucrats or political actors, the scientific norms essential to academic freedom fail to develop.

Author

• Gustavo Setrini, FLACSO Paraguay