Prepared for delivery at the 1995 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, The Sheraton Washington, September 28-30, 1995.
http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/lasa95/kent.html

In the mid-1990’s the policy debate on higher education, in Latin America and in other regions of the world, has moved to the international arena. Multilateral lending organizations, such as the World Bank has spurred debate with its 1994 publication, Higher Education: The Lesson of Experience. The Inter-American Development Bank has shown renewed interest in the issues surrounding higher education in Latin America with a meeting of Rectors held last year. UNESCO has been active in promoting in ternational debate, first with the publication (with the Economic Commission for Latin America) of Educación y Conocimiento: Eje de la Transformación Productiva con Equidad and, most recently, with its recent policy paper on higher e ducation. The Conference of Rectors of the European Community has been promoting the discussion of common issues with Latin American rectors through the Columbus Project. In the context of NAFTA, trilateral discussions between Canada, the United States and Mexico have taken place in the educational sphere. The MERCOSUR has also placed educational issues on its agenda. Since the early part of the decade, the Ford Foundation has supported a research effort to think about higher education policy in Latin America, headed by José Joaquín Brunner, which produced La educación superior en América Latina: Agenda de problemas, políticas y debates (Brunner et al, 1994). A specific instance of internationalization in the policy debate is the fact that, since mid-1994, the OCDE has sent two groups of experts to Mexico to inquire and report on science and technology policy and on higher education policy (OECD, 1994).
There is clearly an international ferment in this area. What is its significance? What agreements and disagreements are emerging? I would like to address these issues by looking comparatively at two documents on higher education policy that are now in circulation: the World Bank’s study and UNESCO’s recently published Policy Paper for Change and Development in Higher Education. The World Bank publication explicitly deals with the developing countries, whereas UNESCO purports to cover higher e ducation generally. However, the UNESCO document is full of specific references to the developing world. It is fair to say that both organizations have expressed specific positions concerning higher education in developing countries.
The following is an attempt to compare these positions based on:
1.- Their assumptions: what values and presuppositions seem to underlie each position?
2.- Their diagnosis: How does each organization conceptualization the current crisis in higher education?
3.- Their prescriptions: What does each position recommend for reforming higher education?