Along the Paths of Heteronomy: Administrative Rationality and the Regression of Rights in Higher Education of Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This is an analysis of the central role of universities in the construction of Latin American and Caribbean nations, and a characterization of the particular nature of these higher-culture institutions in the social fabric. The work includes a description and comments on a set of public policies that guide higher education in the region, and taking the recent legislative developments in Costa Rica as a paradigmatic basis, it concludes that universities suffer a regulatory encirclement that, in the interests of administrative effectiveness and efficiency, represents a regression of consolidated rights.