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Equity of access to higher education in the context of South–South cooperation in Latin America: a pluri-scalar analysis

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Abstract

This article draws from an education governance approach to conduct a pluri-scalar analysis of equity of access to tertiary education in the context of South–South cooperation. An account of distributional justice in access to tertiary education in the Federative Republic of Brazil and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is integrated with a structural approach related to South–South cooperation among the two nations as well as within the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), upon which two interrelated arguments are developed: first, despite persistent inequities in access to university education in both territories, state-interventionist policies enhance equity of access directly with respect to availability and accessibility. Second, South–South cooperation transforms the background conditions for educational justice by producing an alternative structure to the neoliberal global governance of education and its agenda of privatisation and commercialisation.

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Notes

  1. I generally follow the Venezuelan government in using university rather than higher education, as the latter suggests a hierarchisation that is incompatible with an integral approach to education that views all levels and modalities of education as complementary and equally important to individual and collective (social) development. Throughout the text, ‘university education’ is used interchangeably with ‘tertiary education’.

  2. ‘Federal’ refers to ‘national’, in contradistinction to (federal) state and municipal institutions. During the first four years of coming into effect, the law demands a minimum quota of 25 % (rather than 50 %) only (Presidência da República 2012 Article. 8).

  3. While the Agreement for the Establishment of a Special Border Regime (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela/Federative Republic of Brazil 2010b) was ratified by the Venezuelan state in 2010, in Brazil this was still in process in 2014 (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela/Federative Republic of Brazil 2014).

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  1. School of Education, Centre for International Education Research, University of Nottingham, Dearing Building, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK

    Thomas Muhr

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Muhr, T. Equity of access to higher education in the context of South–South cooperation in Latin America: a pluri-scalar analysis. High Educ 72, 557–571 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0017-9

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