LATIN AMERICA: Alliance pushes increased university access

The Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (Alba), brainchild of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Cuba's former president Fidel Castro, is expanding its alternative vision of higher education across Latin America. It has supported moves for reform in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, provoking violent street demonstrations and fierce opposition from the university sector, writes Meesha Nehru in Times Higher Education.

University access is one of the key objectives of the Grandnational Project Alba-Education, part of the alliance's wider programme to promote a regional alternative to the market-driven globalisation model. It believes higher education should be free of charge as a public social good and rejects the 'commoditisation' of higher education underway in Europe and the US. The alliance includes Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.
Full report on Times Higher Education site