Technical/ vocational higher education in Colombia and Mexico: an overview
In: Higher education studies in a global environment: Vol. 1, p. 55-66
"The authoress focuses on technical and vocational higher education and analyses the rationales behind the emergence of this particular type of higher education institution in Colombia and Mexico. Based on concepts of diversification of institutional types and growing diversity of the student body in the face of massification of higher education, the authoress reports the main strains of controversial international debates since the 1960s pertaining to the emergence of a non-university sector. She sketches the development of short-cycle technical and vocational higher education in Mexico and Colombia working out the differences and similarities in role and function. She emphasizes the rather low social acceptance of this type of higher education provision compared to traditional universities and Looks at how its graduates fare on the labor market. And while in Colombia technical and vocational higher education is following a process of academic drift by upgrading itself, Mexico has made considerable progress in improving the quality of such provisions. In both countries, the sector has served to not only fulfill policy goals of expansion and equity of access but to also meet newly emerging needs of the respective labor markets. But in both countries many social prejudices against this type of higher education continue to exist. The authoress concludes that technical and vocational higher education is as yet a poorly researched issue in both countries and that Colombia in particular needs more targeted policies for the role of technical and vocational education in achieving its social and economic goals." (excerpt)