Higher education in Latin America in times of crisis

Abstract

Higher education faces new challenges in current times. The university formed by a diversity of conceptions and perspectives has been suffering uncountable reforms and pressures that question its historical identity, its goals, and the meaning of the work of teaching. The solutions and recommendations of current global and national educational policies are one response for overcoming the economic crisis and are guided by a marketing and neoliberal perspective that sets the grounds for a new paradigm for the university. From this perspective, this introduction to the special issue Higher Education in Latin America in Times of Crisis addresses some themes relevant to that field of study in Brazil, Chile and Peru, such as educational policies, distance learning, finance, evaluation, teaching work and careers, and internationalization. Each theme, in its own way, questions the traditional, conservative ways of organizing higher education in each of these countries and provides guidelines for related analyses in other countries of the region. The papers that compose this issue demonstrate that higher education is immersed within a complex scenario characterized by rapid changes that have repercussions for the future of the university and of the work of teaching.