Global higher education trends and national policies: access, privatization, and internationalization in Argentina

ABSTRACT The literature on education and globalization states that patterns of higher education systems tend toward international convergence, and that trends such as massification, privatization and internationalization are observable in nations with different degrees of development around the world. Neo-institutionalism and world systems theory differ on whether focus should be given to international convergence or domestic adaptation. Studies addressing historical and contextual dimensions of policy diffusion are relevant as they will further specify the nature of the extranational effects on national policies. The case of Argentina’s national higher education policy is particularly relevant to this literature due to political and academic traditions that have inhibited the diffusion of many global trends into the country. This study offers a comparative historical analysis of the issues that have been prioritized in Argentina’s higher education policy over three decades (1983–2015), the strategies employed by higher education actors, and the socioeconomic and political factors that led to unique manifestations there of global trends, such as massification, privatization, and internationalization. The paper shows how Argentina’s system became massified without privatization, why privatization failed to reach the levels of other Latin American countries, and how an internationalization strategy via regionalization was a means to lockdown domestic reforms.