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Excellence or Equality at The University: The Latin American Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Orlando Albornoz
Orlando Albornoz*
Affiliation:
Universidad Central de Venezuela
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It would be a truism to state that for the Latin American universities, as well as those of the Third World, questions of excellence or equality can be resolved by accepting the idea that equality also means a lack of excellence (quality). In other words, we are dealing with universities that operate in countries where the process of democracy is still precarious and consequently the universities respond in a way that produces or legitimizes dominant classes. With regard to the qualitative level, the first duty is not to create or disseminate knowledge but rather to create functions in the Weberian sense of the word. Universities of the Third World are the germinators of new classes; but in general, in small societies, the possible social participation of those “new” classes is of a limited and elitist nature. The university does not play an intellectual role but rather a social role, in terms of creating and legitimizing its operative functions within a context where professional characterization is foremost instead of knowledge. Thus, in a Third World society, although it is important for an individual to obtain a university degree, it does not necessarily mean that he will also possess the knowledge and skills that this implies. The intellectual knowledge gained through university education may well be effectively divorced from the social function.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , 1976 , pp. 125 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Letter dated London, 13 August 1825, in “Bolívar y su época” (Publications of the X International Education Conference, Caracas, 1953), 1:234-38.

2. “The Intellectual Situation in German Higher Education,” Minerva 13, no. 1 (Spring 1975): 114.

3. On the political organization of Venezuelan society see my book Desarrollo político en Venezuela (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1974) and José A. Silva Michelena, Crisis de la democracia (Caracas: Universidad de Venezuela, 1970). Also see my book, La sociedad venezolana (Valencia, Venezuela: Universidad de Carabobo, 1973).

4. For more details on the recent organization of Venezuelan higher education, see Luis Manuel Manzanilla, “Política de educación superior en Venezuela” (Ponencia presentada ante la Conferencia sobre Innovaciones Educativas, Guadalajara, México, 3 a 7 de marzo de 1975). A more complete analysis is Sistema analítico de la educación superior (Caracas: OPSU [Planning Office for Higher Education], 1974). A chapter of my Ideología y política en la universidad latinoamericana (Caracas: Publicaciones del Instituto Societas, 1972) is devoted to the Venezuelan situation at the level of higher education.

5. Even in a society like America, one can see these situations. In addition to Christopher Jencks et al., Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York: Basic Books, 1972), see William H. Sewell “Inequality of Opportunity for Higher Education,” American Sociological Review 36, no. 5 (October 1971).

6. See The Motivation to Work (New York: John Wiley & sons Inc., 1959) and Work and the Nature of Man (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1966).