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Abstract
Over the past two decades regional agreements have become more significant in educational and training. This paper situates and analyses the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy and explores their influence on the integration of higher education systems in Mercosur (the Southern Common Market of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela). Mercosur is still a customs union, and the project of integrating higher education is at an early stage. Lacking organically established regional bodies, coordination of integration in Mercosur has focused on summits and meetings of officials. However, in a context of unequal maturity in regional integration, there is emerging evidence that the EHEA project is influencing the reforms of national systems of higher education and even Mercosur’s model for a regional area of higher education. A nascent Europeanization of higher education systems in the Mercosur region is emerging, by-passing Mercosur’s regional structures. The formulation of policies has been permeated by policy transfer from Europe to national territories within Mercosur.
Notes
1. ‘Mercosur was founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay with the signature of the Treaty of Asuncion. Venezuela is a full member since July 2012, Bolivia is in the process of becoming a full member since December 2012; while Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are associated states. Its Secretariat is based in Montevideo and it has a six-month rotating Presidency (…). In 1995, the EU and Mercosur signed an Interregional Framework Cooperation Agreement, which entered into force in 1999. A joint declaration annexed to the Agreement provides the basis for the political dialogue between the parties, which takes place regularly at Heads of State, Ministerial and Senior Official levels (…). The EU provides assistance to Mercosur through its 2007–2013 Regional Programme adopted in August 2007 in the framework of the Regional Strategy for Mercosur. The Regional programme provides €50 million to support projects in three priority areas: (1) Mercosur institutional strengthening; (2) Supporting Mercosur in preparing for the implementation of the Association Agreement; (3) Fostering the participation of civil society to Mercosur integration process’ (European Union, Citation2013).
2. ‘The social field can be described as a multi-dimensional space of positions such that every actual position can be defined in terms of a multi-dimensional system of co-ordinates whose values correspond to the values of the different pertinent variables. Thus, agents are distributed within it, in the first dimension, according to the overall volume of the capital they possess and, in the second dimension, according to the composition of their capital i.e. according to the relative weight of the different kinds of assets within their total assets (Bourdieu, Citation1985, p. 724). ‘The field is structured in hierarchy in the sense that agents and institutions occupy dominant and subordinate positions. These positions depend on the amount of specific resources that are possessed in relation to other occupants. Bourdieu refers to these field-specific resources as “capital”. Capital may be viewed as the specific cultural or social (rather than economic) assets that are invested with value in the field which, when possessed, enables membership to the field. The type of capital operating in the field of university education is an institutionalized form of cultural capital that has generally been termed “academic” capital’ (Naidoo, Citation2004, p. 458).
3. ‘The European Council held a special meeting on 23–24 March 2000 in Lisbon to agree a new strategic goal for the Union in order to strengthen employment, economic reform and social cohesion as part of a knowledge-based economy (…)’ (European Council, Citation2000).
4. ‘The Lisbon Strategy intends to increase productivity by improving employment and encouraging greater social cohesion in the EU, through the formulation of various policy initiatives to be taken by all EU member states. Lisbon also introduced the OMC which encourages member states to share common goals, while leaving the implementation of policies entirely in the hands of member states. The OMC is important for Education and Training 2010. The Lisbon Strategy was reviewed in 2005 and as a result the prominence of education and training has been further enhanced. The European Council, at its meeting in March 2005, continued to underline the importance of developing human capital as Europe’s main asset, and called for the implementation of lifelong learning to be indispensable in achieving the Lisbon objectives’ (European Commission, Citation2013a)
‘The OMC in the field of education and training is mainly based on the peer learning between the Member States and provides a useful framework for cooperation (…). ET 2020 pursues 4 strategic objectives: making lifelong learning and mobility reality; improving the quality and efficiency of education and training; promoting equality, social cohesion and active citizenship; and enhancing creativity and innovation at all levels of education and training (…)’ (European Commission, Citation2013b).
5. Mercosur countries have the same vision. In launching the Virtual School of Mercosur, with EU support, the Minister of Science and Technology of Brazil, Aloizio Mercadante said that the integration in the area of information technology is inspired by the EU goal of becoming a competitive region. The ambassador of the European Delegation in Brazil, Ana Paula Zacarias, on the same occasion, said the EU is Mercosur’s largest trading partner for development aid (Mercosul e União Europeia, Citation2011).
6. ‘As a result of the Bologna Process the educational systems in all European countries are in the process of reforming. This is the direct effect of the political decision to converge the different national systems in Europe. For Higher Education institutions these reforms mean the actual starting point for another discussion: the comparability of curricula in terms of structures, programmes and actual teaching. This is what Tuning offers. In this reform process the required academic and professional profiles and needs of society (should) play an important role’ (Tuning América Latina, Citation2013).
7. The Tuning Project is financed by Europe por intermédio do programa ALFA (América Latina Formação Acadêmica): ‘ALFA is a programme of co-operation between Higher Education Institutions of the EU and Latin America. ALFA III retains the original objective of the previous phases of the ALFA Programme, that is, to promote Higher Education in Latin America as a means to contribute to the economic and social development of the region, (European Commission, Citation2013b).
8. Could this be a discreet version of the OMC for inter-regional policy-making?
9. The first Priority of EU, declared in 2007 is Support for Mercosur institutionalisation: ‘One of the key challenges identified by the analysis of the Mercosur integration process is the delay in the incorporation of Mercosur rules into national legislations: only 48% of the bloc’s rules are in force (…). The objective of European cooperation would be to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Mercosur institutions, allowing them to fully contribute to the decision-making process. Furthermore, the unique EU experience in the different fields of integration would give a special added value to the process. European cooperation should invest in selected forms of institutional support, according to Mercosur’s plans for institutional development. Support should be given to concrete projects for institutional development and not simply provide operating funds’ (European Commission, Citation2007, p. 24).
10. According to Pierre Bourdieu (French sociologist), ‘I call the left hand of the state, the set of agents of the so-called spending ministries which are the trace, within the state, of the social struggles of the past. They are opposed to the right hand of the state, the technocrats of the Ministry of Finance, the public and private banks and the ministerial cabinets. (Bourdieu, Citation2013).
11. Bourdieu forges an original conceptual arsenal anchored by the notions of habitus, capital, field and doxa. Habitus designates the system of durable and transposable dispositions through which we perceive, judge and act in the world. These unconscious schemata are acquired through lasting exposure to particular social conditions and conditionings, via the internalization of external constraints and possibilities. This means that they are shared by people subjected to similar experiences even as each person has a unique individual variant of the common matrix (Wacquant, Citation2006, p. 6–7). Habitus is an old philosophical concept, used intermittently by Aristotle (under the term hexis), Thomas Aquinas, Hegel, Weber, Durkheim, Mauss and Husserl, among others. Bourdieu retrieved it in a 1967 reinterpretation of art historian Erwin Panofsky’s analysis of the connection between Scholastic thought and gothic architecture in the medieval era and refined it afterwards, both empirically and theoretically, in each of his major works’ (Wacquant, Citation2006, p. 6).
12. In contrast to the heterodoxy of the years 1950 and 1960 from ECLAC/CEPAL (Economic Commission for Latin America—ECLA—the Spanish and Portuguese acronym is CEPAL).
13. Interview to Valtteri Melkko: Flavio Foguel—Vice Rector of UNIVAG: ‘When we talk About education in Brazil, you have an open space there especially in the university education (…). The majority of the Big educational groups have foreign, invested money behind them. For example, Anhembi Morumbi—Universidade Anhembi Morumbi—An—A hembi Morumbi University is part of Laureate International Universities (…). Kroton Educacional—Kroton Educational—bought Unopar—Universidade Norte do Paraná’(Melkko, Citation2012, p. 45–46).
14. ‘By 1900 the French solidified their cultural dominance in Brazil through the establishment of the Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts. Brazil still lacked a university, however, and in 1934 Francophile Julio de Mesquita Filho invited anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and Braudel to help establish one. The result was formation of the new the University of São Paulo’ (Conservapedia, Citation2013).
15. However, because reform programmes are voluntary, the traditional institutions for the formation of elites are not required to take on this new curriculum, so elite universities can continue to offer a classical education. In addition, Even if these elite institutions adopt the curriculum structure similar to IBs, meritocratic selection methods preserve the environment for the reproduction of elites (because merit is also a social construction).
16. Critical interpretation of open regionalism can be found in: Thomas Muhr (Citation2010) and Jayasuriya (Citation2003). Jayasuriy asserts ‘politically, the critical issue relating to open regionalism is not just its technical rationale as a set of economic strategies, but rather that this rationale reflects an underlying set of politically constituted set of relationships between market sectors. Open regionalism is not about regional market making but about maintaining export markets; and also about helping to cement the dominant coalition between domestic cartels in the non-tradeable sector and the tradeable sector. For these reasons, open regionalism may be seen as denoting a particular political project of regional integration undertaken by powerful domestic actors’ (Citation2003, p. 341).
17. Acording to Barroso, President of the EC, in the preface of Europe 2020
A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, ‘the Commission is proposing five measurable EU targets for 2020 that will steer the process and be translated into national targets: for employment; for research and innovation; for climate change and energy; for education; and for combating poverty. They represent the direction we should take and will mean we can measure our success’ (European Commission, Citation2010, p. 3).
18. ‘The Commission will draw up in 2010 a trade strategy for Europe 2020 which will include: (…) Proposals for high-level strategic dialogues with key partners, to discuss strategic issues ranging from market access, regulatory framework, global imbalances, energy and climate change, access to raw materials, to global poverty, education and development. It will also work to reinforce the Transatlantic Economic Council with the US the High Level Economic Dialogue with China and deepen its relationship with Japan and Russia (…)’ (European Commission, Citation2010, p. 24).
19. There are many questions to be answered, but for reflection, are some questions: who is the tuner? Who really loves whom? Is it about a formation of a global society of solidary sharing knowledge or it is only about power (gold digger)?
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo
Mário Luiz Neves de Azevedo is associated professor in Education Policy at the Universidade Estadual de Maringá - UEM (Paraná-Brazil), Researcher at CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - Brazil), Visiting fellow at University of Bristol (UoB) - Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies (GES) - Support of “Fundação Araucária” (Brazil).