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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

New Private-Public Dynamics: Graduate Education in Uruguay

Pablo Landoni Couture
Pablo Landoni Couture is a professor at the Catholic University of Uruguay and a PROPHE affiliate: Address: Av. 8 de Octubre 2738 Montevideo, URUGUAY CP 11600. E-mail: plandoni@ucu.edu.uy.

Uruguay was the last country in Latin America to authorize private higher education institutions. Current regulatory and financing arrangements contribute to a still rather limited private-public competition but that may be changing, and the graduate level is a key locus of such new competition.

A New Private Sector
Private higher education was not allowed in Uruguay until 1985, when the government authorized the founding of the Catholic University. Ten years later, a new regulation was passed, opening the way for ample private growth.

Since 1995, 17 private higher education institutions have been recognized by the state. In the past 10 years, the sector has expanded and now offers 98 academic programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Uruguay’s private sector now holds 12 percent of total national enrollments, although this percentage remains far below the private sector’s share in Chile, Brazil, and other countries in the region, some of which have more than half the enrollments in the private sector.

The venerable University of the Republic (Universidad de la República) is the country’s only public university. It has a rather open admissions policy, and it does not charge tuition. As a consequence, the private sector is constrained in its ability to attract students, especially from low- and middle-income families. This dual nature of the system, in terms of finance, is the main reason why private-public competition at the undergraduate level remains limited.

Graduate Education
From the beginning, Uruguay’s private higher education institutions developed programs at the graduate level. This focus contrasts with the almost exclusive undergraduate emphasis of early decades in the private sector in most Latin American countries. Uruguay’s private higher education leaders saw graduate education as an area in which they could successfully compete with the public university.

The University of the Republic has mostly followed the traditional Napoleonic model inherited by a good number of public universities in Latin America. A major feature at this university is its organization into professional schools (facultades) with five- or six-year programs (seven in medicine). In that context, graduate programs have been limited to few fields of study (largely medicine and basic sciences) until recently. In 2001, the institution regulated graduate education, introducing a key policy change for the sector: allowing tuition for professional graduate programs. This approach makes the situation in Uruguay similar to that in Argentina, where tuition, avoided at the public undergraduate level, is common at the public graduate level. Given that most Uruguayan programs at the doctoral and even master’s level have an academic profile and thus do not charge tuition, competition among institutions for graduate students in professional programs is producing new private-public dynamics.

Private universities have from the start pursued a different path, with most undergraduate programs requiring just four years, in a baccalaureate format—following the U.S. model (programs in law are an exception). Their academic focus has been to develop programs in areas with high market demand, like business administration and computer sciences. The same areas of knowledge have been developed at the graduate level. Other fields of study with important private enrollments include education and psychology, due to public failure to develop successful programs in those areas. All this is fairly typical for private higher education development in Latin America, except that Uruguay’s private-sector development started later.

In the last decade, graduate programs have expanded rapidly in both sectors of higher education. In 2002, 1,354 students were admitted to all institutions at the graduate level, 32 percent of them to private institutions. In the same year, 35 percent of graduates came from the private sector. Clearly, the private share of graduate enrollments far exceeds the private share at the undergraduate level.

In terms of programs at the graduate level, the University of the Republic accounts for 81 percent. The public share is high, largely because of the health sciences. The public university offers education in 86 specializations in medicine and nursing. Leaving those aside, the private share of Uruguay’s graduate programs constitutes 34 percent.

At the doctoral level, only the public university offers authorized programs. Nevertheless, private universities are developing Ph.D. programs jointly with international universities. Some of these programs are under review by public authorities. At the master’s degree level, the private-sector’s share encompasses 33 percent of the total number of programs.

New Private-Public Dynamics
Private-public relationships in Uruguay’s graduate education are changing due to the increased competition, among institutions, for graduate students (and revenues) in professional programs.

The foremost example is the field of professional graduate programs in business administration, including MBAs. Challenges for the public university come not only from private universities but also from foreign universities and distance-learning providers. In 2002, the private sector enrolled 54 percent of the graduate students in the field of business administration.

The extent to which a traditional public university has been forced by the private institutions to compete is an interesting aspect of privatization. In areas under competition with institutions outside the public sector, a generally easily accessible and hitherto free university, completely subsidized by the state, needed to develop organizational structures and strategies quite different from those long dominant at the public university.

The public university’s actions aimed at the new graduate-level competition have focused on advertisements, hiring international faculty, and “coercive isomorphism.” For an institution that enjoyed a monopoly for more than 150 years, developing an advertisement campaign was a novelty. For the last three years the public university, fully financed by the community, has placed expensive paid advertisements in the press during the registration period. To improve the quality of the programs, the public university has hired international professors, as the leading private institutions were already doing.

Along with competing openly, the public university has tried to prevail by pushing through the government regulatory agency that oversees private higher education new requirements for private graduate programs, which will increase the costs of those programs. However, new standards that may augment private costs might also bolster the quality, legitimacy, and thus attractiveness of the programs to the students both sectors want to lure.

Conclusion
The private higher education literature highlights the diversification effects produced by private growth. A relevant factor for private development is public-sector failure. In Uruguay, it is clear that private universities took advantage of limited public development in professional graduate education. A fresh private-public dynamic has emerged as the public university decided to charge tuition for professional graduate education. With open competition, the institution has been forced by the market to engage in private-sector-like strategies and behavior to attract students.

The impact of private higher education development in other areas—undergraduate and academic (as opposed to professional) graduate programs, especially at the doctoral level—is still mitigated by the dual nature of the system, with a fully subsidized public sector and a private side that does not receive public funding.

Experiences elsewhere in Latin America are mixed. Uruguay seems to follow developments in countries like Argentina, with a dominant public sector and small niches of competition including graduate education. Nevertheless, private and public institutions are increasingly engaging in a new competitive dynamic as private enrollments grow and the public university gets involved in some privatized endeavors.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number41/p15_Landoni.htm