By IPS Correspondents
MONTEVIDEO, Mar 12 1998 (IPS)

The process of integration between the southern common market (Mercosur) countries so far has neglected education at university level, which researchers consider crucial for thinking strategically as a regional block.

While Mercosur structures have considered some mechanisms to facilitate the flow of academics between its members – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – none actually have been implemented.

A spokesman for the Association of Professors from the State University of Uruguay told IPS that there are not even degree equivalent measures to encourage regional exchanges, much less programs that targeted specific areas like those that exist in the European Union.

Still, there is some integration of universities within the framework of the Montevideo Group, which brings together the m major institutions of tertiary education in the region. According to the Institute for Communication and Development (ICD), this consists of direct and autonomous liaisons between universities which, though crucial, is insufficient because regional processes require the existence of spaces within which these institutions can be effective at a macro level, and consistent with the orientations of the Mercosur community.

The ICD, an non-governmental organization based in Montevideo, focuses on producing knowledge and generating initiatives that will contribute to greater citizen participation in processes of regional integration. ICD has been critical of some of the ways in which Mercosur has been implemented.

According to the organization, regional governments have paid attention primarily to economic integration, while ignoring its social aspects.

ICD has stated that the vision put forth by the states and official institut ions has been exclusively economic, paying little attention to judicial, administrative or social matters, particularly in the area of education.

Researchers in the region point out that there has been no stated interest on the part of politicians to work towards the integration of university systemsnot even in scientific and technological matters, which are crucial to the strengthening of regional integration.

A study conducted by social anthropologist Hugo Lovisolo from the University of Rio de Janeiro, documents the development of university systems in the two largest Mercosur countries, Argentina and Brazil, arguing that dealing with these differences could be key to the future of the region.

According to Lovisolo, Argentina historically emphasized the democratization of education, while Brazil developed a more elitist tertiary educational system by developing graduate programs and creating a tight scientific and technologica l community.

In Argentina, like in Uruguay, the university was conceived as a liberated territory, almost like a state within a state, which was at the service of social reform, and guided by principles of emancipation, autonomy, equality and social justice.

In these two countries, the university has a long traditional of confrontation with political power, and at the same time, it profoundly politicized itself a refuge for progressive and leftist sectors.

The case of Brazil, where the expansion of higher education did not begin until 1968, is quite different. Historically, Brazilian universities have had a relatively small number of students. The University of Sao Paulo, the largest in the country, has the same number of students (50,000) as the Economics faculty at the University of Buenos Aires.

The development of higher education in Brazil was guided by an academicist strategy. It prioritized the formation of an academic elite, through its diverse gr aduate programs, while neglecting the democratization of access to the institut ion.

An overwhelming majority of university students in Argentina and Uruguay attend public institutions, while 70 percent of Brazilian students are enrolled in private u niversities.

In Brazil, the military government that ruled the country between 1964 and 1989 implemented a nationalist development strategy that required the training of high-level technicians; but they feared that broad middle-class access to universities would politicize these institutions and make they a focus of opposition against their regime.

Many scientists and intellectuals, moreover, thought that the democratization of access to tertiary education would bring high degrees of disorganization and would limit the rigor of training as well as research.

Lovisolo concludes his comparison between a democratizing and integrating syste m and an academicist and fragmenting one, by saying that both have good and bad elements, which would mutually strengthen them for the benefit of regional int egration.

In Brazil, public universities must overcome their fragmentation, increase their undergraduate offerings, and evaluate students at this level with the same rigor expected of their graduate students, he says.

In Argentina and Uruguay, on the other hand, the formation of a scientific community will depend in large part on the creation of graduate programs, and simultaneo usly on the ability of generating agreements between universities and the state . (FIN-IPS-dg-ag-ed-dv-mg-mk-98)

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