Dreams of a Globalized University in Ecuador: The Reforms of the Rafael Correa Government

• Date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Ana María Goetschel,Fernando Carrasco,Betty Espinosa
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221084302
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221084302

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 244, Vol. 49 No. 3, May 2022, 31–48

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221084302

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

31

Dreams of a Globalized University in Ecuador

The Reforms of the Rafael Correa Government

by

Betty Espinosa, Ana María Goetschel, and Fernando Carrasco

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

The reform of Ecuadorian universities implemented since 2007 has followed the trend

toward internationalization and a globalized university system. It is inconsistent not only

with national needs but with historical traditions regarding university autonomy, cogov-

ernance, and social commitment in Latin America. These changes are part of long-term

processes that began in the 1970s with neoliberal reforms in Chile. Neoliberalism is not

limited to privatization but, nourished by the neoclassical school of economics, emphasizes

the individual subject, financing according to results and measured by the number of

students or by the production of scientific research articles with international reference,

competitiveness among actors and institutions, and the control and disciplining of insti-

tutions that contribute to the commodification of the relations within and between institu-

tions of higher education. These reforms have produced elements such as quasi-markets in

the public and social sectors.

La reforma de las universidades ecuatorianas implementada desde 2007 ha seguido una

tendencia hacia la internacionalización y un sistema universitario globalizado. Resulta

inconsistente no solo con las necesidades nacionales sino también las tradiciones históricas

en torno a la autonomía universitaria, el cogobierno y el compromiso social en América

Latina. Estos cambios son parte de procesos de largo plazo que comenzaron en la década

de 1970 con las reformas neoliberales en Chile. El neoliberalismo no se limita a la privati-

zación sino que, a partir de la escuela económica neoclásica, enfatiza el sujeto individual,

el financiamiento acorde a los resultados y medidas como el número de estudiantes, la

producción de artículos de investigación científica con referencia internacional, la com-

petitividad entre actores e instituciones, y el control y disciplina de las instituciones que

contribuyen a la mercantilización de las relaciones dentro y entre las instituciones de

educación superior. Estas reformas han producido elementos que podrían describirse como

cuasi-mercados en los sectores público y social.

Keywords: Neoliberalism, University reforms, Ecuador, Commodification,

Evaluation

Betty Espinosa, Ana María Goetschel, and Fernando Carrasco are all members of the Facultad

Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales Ecuador—Espinosa and Goetschel as professors and

Carrasco as a researcher and coordinator of its evaluations unit. Espinosa, a socio-economist and

specialist in social policy and development, is also visiting professor at University of Louvain’s

Center for Democracy, Institutions, and Subjectivity and editor of Mundos Plurales. Goetschel is a

sociologist and historian with research interests in women’s history, education, and punitive

action. Carrasco is a mathematician and a specialist in management and analysis of the social sec-

tor. Mariana Ortega-Breña is a freelance translator based in Mexico City.

1084302LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221084302Latin American PerspectivesEspinosa, Goetschel, and Carrasco/Correa’s University Reforms

research-article2022

32 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Ecuador, like the rest of the Latin American countries, has experienced a reform

of higher education in recent years that, according to official discourse, aims to

improve its quality. A constitutional charter enacted in 2008 included a mandate

of evaluating the universities. The 2010 Organic Law on Higher Education empha-

sized quality as a “constant and systematic search for excellence, relevance, opti-

mal production, knowledge transmission, and development of thought through

self-criticism, external criticism, and permanent improvement” (Ecuador, 2010:

Article 93). Since then the system has undergone several tests. The National

Council for the Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education of Ecuador

(CONEA, 2009) issued a first report on the evaluation and categorization of uni-

versities that led to the closure of 14 out of 71 universities (a fifth of the existing

institutions) in 2012. A second, controversial categorization was issued in 2013.

This paper addresses them. The 2010 law included a set of guidelines regulating

various aspects of academic life: academic regime reorganization, reconceptual-

ization of academic work through hierarchical systematization (CES, 2012), a pen-

alty framework, and institutional evaluation. In 2013 the National Examination

for Higher Education was introduced to regulate student entry and centrally allo-

cate public university quotas.

In parallel with the process of increasing state control over the university

system, four new public universities were created in 2013. The Universidad

Yachay Tech, which was presented as the model for the country, and the

Universidad Amazónica Regional Ikiam both emphasized training in science

and technology to reinforce the country’s policy of changing the productive

and energy matrix (Ecuador, 2009). The Universidad de las Artes had hosted a

previous urban project in Guayaquil. The Universidad Nacional de Educación

aimed to replace the pedagogical training offered at various universities with

the purpose of taking overall control of the training of elementary and middle

school teachers.

In Bourdieu’s (2014: 176) concept of the state, which emphasizes administra-

tion, the state is a relatively autonomous field that exercises a centralized phys-

ical and symbolic force (and is therefore constituted as a field of struggle) and

is inseparable from the social space as a whole. The social order is secured

through the power of regulation (Laval, 2018), which is a way of acting on sub-

jects. Governing, in this sense, means structuring the field of action of others

(Foucault, 1994: 654–655). In fact, it is through the instruments of public action,

both technical and social, that the social relations between the public authori-

ties and their recipients are organized and reorganized, allowing action to be

operationalized and materialized (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2012).

The devices that have transformed higher education in Ecuador were part of

a political project that began in 2007 with the presumably left-wing govern-

ment of Rafael Correa and the so-called Latin American Pink Tide (Chodor,

2015). In fact, this administration favored the state and modernization through

extractivism (Sacher and Acosta, 2012), aggressive debt creation since 2014

(Contraloría General del Estado, 2018) that since 2015 has exceeded social

expenditures (Espinosa, Palacios, and Cisneros, 2017: 32–33), and detrimental

policies with regard to indigenous peoples and the environment (Muñoz etal.,

2014; Modonesi, 2016). In fact, this regime went so far as to criminalize social

protest (FIDH/CEDHU/INREDH, 2015; De la Torre, 2012; Aguirre, 2008).