Abstract

The rationale for comprehensive reform of Latin American higher education crystallized in the mid-1990s in policy documents published by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. This 'Washington consensus' of the multilateral banks advocated, among other measures, greater reliance on private sources of funding, increased accountability, and a more effective management and governance structure for public universities in the region. A decade later, these prescriptions not only remain current, but have been somewhat bolstered by policy developments consistent with them in Europe, Asia and Australia. This article compares this reform agenda for funding and governance with the norms on higher education finance and control written in the current constitutions of the Latin American nations. Its purpose is to assess, from a juridical point of view, the viability of the policy prescriptions of that reform agenda for higher education. Major constitutional obstacles to cost recovery via tuition fees are provisions establishing the right to a free higher education in the public sector, while as to the matter of governance, in many countries in the region, the government is not constitutionally authorized to modify by mandate the governance structure of universities, which can only be defined by the institutions themselves.