Date: May-June 2000

Location: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Description: The goal of the Fulbright-LASPAU Faculty at the Crossroads seminar was to provide future university leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean with an understanding of the current reform agenda for higher education in the region and to explore with them the reform issues concerning faculty members and their role in fostering or hampering these processes of change.

Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean has experienced considerable change in the past 20 years. Enrollments have expanded, private provision of higher education has increased, institutions and the students they serve are now more diverse, accountability mechanisms are being tried everywhere, and even classic funding mechanisms are under pressure, not without resistance from the interests affected. Although much transformation has occurred by accretion, trial and error, and even mere chance, a certain consensus crystallized in the mid-nineties about desirable reform, an idea of transformation by design: a true reform agenda, including privatization of provision and funding sources, development of technical and vocational training, evaluation and accreditation, flexibility in norms and functions, among other aspects.

Seldom have policy planners, higher education scholars, or even academics considered the role of faculty in these processes themselves. Yet, just as students have proved to hold the key to success in some areas of reform, such as tuition policy in public universities, faculty members are crucial actors in the transformation and betterment of their institutions. It is hardly conceivable that curriculum reform, the establishment of faculty reviews, or changes in compensation schemes, will materialize without the active involvement of faculty members.

Through instruction, collaboration, case study, discussion, and debate—both online and onsite at Harvard's Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts—the participants in the Fulbright-LASPAU Faculty at the Crossroads seminar worked to develop a deeper understanding of the issues and challenges facing faculty members as they return to changing institutions of higher learning.

Sponsor: The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State

Hosts Institution: The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University

Facilitators: Philip G. Altbach (Faculty, Boston College), Andres Bernasconi (Faculty, Harvard Graduate School of Education), Winthrop Carty (Faculty, LASPAU), Juan Carlos Navarro (Faculty, Inter-American Development Bank), Debra Shetler (Sponsor, United States Department of State), Erin Brownlee Dell (Staff, LASPAU), Joanna Erman (Staff, LASPAU), and Marna Walthall (Staff, LASPAU)