The future of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean: a foresight reflection

• In Event: The power of ideas/idealism in Latin American and United States higher education

Proposal

The transition from extractivist to knowledge/technology-centered developmental models (as triggered by the fourth industrial revolution) in tandem with the epochal change (i.e., a change in values and mindsets) imply new capacities to shape the global structural, productive, sociocultural, technological, geopolitical, and environmental matrix. Drawing from critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2012), anticolonial thought (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2019; Tuck and Yang, 2012, Dei, 2006), and foresight, especially from the School of Human and Social Prevision (Medina, 2020; Bitar, 2016; Massini, 2013), this presentation asks what kinds of curricular, pedagogical, and research experiences will be more valuable for higher education institutions in the future (2030/2050)? Why? Whose ends are served? To address these questions, documents (reports, research articles, white papers, etc.) from the OECD, ECLAC, and the WEF from 2010 to 2021 regarding higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean are analyzed. Using the analytical matrix proposed by Bitar et al. (2021), preliminary finds in the following dimensions indicate:
• Environment/sustainability: High territorial differentiation inside and among countries.
• Technology, education, and productivity: heterogeneous socio-productive circuits with unequal and slow techno-economic, social, and educational growth.
• Geopolitics: low regional integration, low global participation.
• Politics, security, and peace: a mixture of capable/failed states; co-opted democracies; unprotected citizenship.

Bitar, S., Máttar, J., & Medina Vásquez, J. E. (2021). El gran giro de América Latina: Hacia una región democrática, sostenible, próspera e incluyente. Programa Editorial Universidad del Valle.
Bitar, S. (2016). Las tendencias mundiales y el futuro de América Latina. CEPAL.
Dei, G. J. S. (2006). Introduction: Mapping the terrain–towards a new politics of resistance. In G. J. S. Dei & A. Kempf (Eds.), Anti-Colonialism and Education. The Politics of Resistance (pp. 1–23). Sense Publishers.
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2012). Decolonization and the pedagogies of solidarity. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 1(1), 41–67.
Masini, E. B. (2013). Estudios sobre el futuro: métodos y prospectiva. In J. E. Medina Vásquez & A. Alonso Concheiro (Eds.), Eleonora Barbieri Masini: Alma de los estudios de los futuros (pp. 113–135). essay, Fundación Javier Barros Sierra.
Medina Vásquez, J. (2020). Abriendo caminos en la prospectiva de América Latina y el Caribe (pp. 213-242). Programa Editorial Universidad del Valle & Editorial USACH.
Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2019). Ch’ixinakaxutxiwa: A reflection on the practices and discourses of decolonization. Language, Culture and Society, 1(1), 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.00006.riv
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, 1(1).

Author

• Andrés Fernando Valencia, Universidad del Valle