CENTRAL AMERICA: Private higher education booming

Recent years have witnessed a boom in private education opportunities across the Central American isthmus. To some, it seems that private entities cannot open classrooms fast enough. Whereas 30 years ago there were virtually no private universities, today there are more than 151 and every year more emerge.

Foreign universities such as Ave Maria, Florida State University, Columbus University and IPADE Business School are opening franchises in Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica. A big concern is the lack of regulation.

Online degrees have multiplied, while entrepreneurs have been leasing buildings, hiring professors and offering degrees at such a rapid, unchecked rate that some complain a university degree has become meaningless.

"There is no comprehensive regulatory system," said Jaime Chahin, dean of the College of Applied Arts at Texas State University and an analyst of higher education systems in Latin America. "The number of private universities has grown very quickly and governments have not been able to keep pace to ensure there are appropriate controls."

Some countries have established regulatory bodies such as SINAES (National Accreditation System for Higher Education) in Costa Rica, the System for Monitoring and Improving the Quality of Higher Education in El Salvador, the Council of Private Higher Education in Guatemala and CNAE (National Assessment and Accreditation Council of the National Education System) in Nicaragua, among others.

Yet these entities lack the weight to protect students from sub-par experiences or degrees that become insignificant when the universities close down, Chahin said.

The proliferation of private entities is leading long-standing public institutions to accuse their counterparts of being more concerned with their wallets than the welfare of students.

"Save for a few exceptions, private education is a business," said Oscar Carlos Picardo, a higher education analyst in El Salvador. "While they are good companies, they are bad universities."

He noted: "They are limited in their admission filters - those that pay, are accepted."

Yet private universities have opened access to higher education to thousands of students who would not have otherwise had the opportunity to pursue a university degree.

Between 1994 and 2003, the number of students enrolled in higher education grew from seven million to 13 million in Latin America, with coverage jumping from around 1.2% of the population to 3.2%, according to the International Institute for UNESCO for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC).

"It's been primarily the private universities that have addressed the region's increase in demand for higher education," wrote Francisco Alarcón and Julio Guillermo Luna in a study done for IESALC in 2004. "The public systems' lack of resources have prevented them from absorbing these students."

Among the universities that have opened in the last few decades, some have been very good, some have been OK and some have been very bad, said Alban Bonilla, executive director of the Rectors Union for Private Universities (UNIRE) in Costa Rica.

"The good universities are the profitable ones. The bad are expelled from the system." He gave the examples, outside of Central America, of Harvard, Navarra, Deusto, Yale, MIT and Stanford, which "are profitable because they are good. If not, they would no longer exist."

But paralleling the growth of private education institutions, there's been fierce resistance from the public sector, where higher education leaders have warned of a "commercialisation of education".

As recently as the First International Forum for Higher Education held in Honduras in June, educators lobbied their respective governments for increased funding to absorb the growing student demand. They said they wanted to prevent capitalists from making money off what should be a social service.

It is not like private universities are rolling in money, argued Manuel Sandi Murillo, vice-president of the Association of Private Universities for Central America and Panama.

In fact, many are trying to maintain a delicate balance between keeping tuition fees low and covering their costs. "People think there is a lot of money in the private system. That's not true. We have to show that private education is a service and it's not only an avenue to create wealth."

While public institutions receive as much as 6% of their country's gross domestic product, private universities do not receive any financial support, and therefore are forced to charge tuition in order to stay in operation.

"Private institutions need to make money to exist, which doesn't mean that they only exist to make money," said Silvia Castro, rector of the Latin American University of Science and Technology in Costa Rica.

"They exist to satisfy the educational needs and aspirations of thousands of students who are entitled to the same opportunities as students enrolled at public institutions but who simply couldn't find an enrolment slot."

She added: "Occasionally, individuals at public universities accuse private institutions of 'commercialising education', an accusation that could only be made by those who have never had to worry about funding their own projects."

Public Versus Private Education in Central America

SOURCE: International Institute of UNESCO for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean