Horizonte 2018: Proposal for Ibero-American Higher Education Area

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DANIEL HERNÁNDEZ RUIPÉREZ

Horizonte 2018: A proposal for an Ibero-American Higher Education Area

The internationalization of Higher Education is an essential challenge

that demands immediate attention if we wish the new generations to be

prepared to tackle a world where the economy, businesses, politics and

culture are now, de facto, governed under global terms.

In 2018, the University of Salamanca is to celebrate its VIII Centenary

of Scholarship, and with this the Ibero-American Education System, since the

University of Salamanca was the “alma mater” of the first Ibero-American

universities, these taking the statutes of the Salamancan Studium as a model.

This could therefore be a timely moment to present a definitive final

project for the Ibero-American Higher Education Area (Span. acronym EIES):

we have time to work on cooperative programs; we have the time to create a

network able to finance the measures we wish to take, and we have time to

search for synergies and adapt our individual peculiarities so that this can be

a project for all of us.

The strengths, experience and capacity of the International Association

of Universities, IAU, could play a crucial role in the coordination of this

initiative, since in its ranks there are many agents who would eventually

become involved in this new EIES.

It thus seems appropriate that this could offer a benchmark to be

taken into account in the construction of the EIES, which, however, has

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indeed already started to take actions in a more isolated fashion but actions

that still pursue the spirit we are trying to convey from the VIII Centenary of

the University of Salamanca.

A Brief History.

The uninterrupted course of the University of Salamanca began in 1218

with the creation by King Alfonso IX of Leon of the first Schools in Salamanca.

Years later, in 1255, Pope Alexander IV conceded these Schools the rank of

“Estudio General”, endowing the University with a status comparable to that

of Paris, Bologna, Cambridge and Oxford, with the right of its teachers to

impart their knowledge across the whole world.

The growth of the Salamancan Studium reached its apogee between

the 15th and 16th centuries, which saw the large expeditions leaving for the

American continent. This influence became extended across the whole of

Europe and scholars flocked to Salamanca to participate in this climate of

lofty scholarship and humanistic and scientific advances.

It is within this context that the German physician, humanist and

cartographer Hieronymus Münzer visited Salamanca and wrote about what he

saw there: “Nowhere in Spain can one find such eminent General Studies as in

Salamanca. I have been told that some 5,000 students are enrolled in the

different Schools there. The fertility of the land, thanks to which food can be

bought cheaply, together with the excellence of the teachers imparting


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classes in different disciplines are undoubtedly the reasons why such an

extraordinary number of students attend the lectures there (…)”.

In that period, the University of Salamanca was witness to the birth of

the the Derecho de gentes (lit. The Law of Peoples), thanks to the tight

relations between the American continent and the important works of

Francisco de Vitoria, these latter in fact being the main precursors of current

International Law.

All this work carried out over the centuries has resulted in a rich

heritage that includes an old library (the oldest after Oxford and Bologna)

with 3,000 manuscripts (some from the 11th century), hand-written

parchments, incunabulae and some 40,000 books published since the start of

mechanical printing up to the 18th century.

The universal nature of the Studium was further strengthened when

the Spanish Crown established the first universities on American soil. Eighty

percent of those universities assumed a scaffold of statutes inspired by those

of Salamanca, this latter becoming the “alma mater” of old institutions in

Lima (1536), Santo Domingo (1538), Mexico (1551), La Plata (1552), Santiago

de la Paz (1558); Ntra. Sra. del Rosario (1619), San Francisco Xavier de

Chuquisaca (1621), San Carlos de Guatemala (1671); La Habana and Caracas

(1721), Santiago de Chile (1738), and a long etcétera lasting until 1812.


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This international vocation was built up over the years and currently

our Institution has cooperative agreements with agencies across the world.

However, special attention is paid to the Ibero-American scenario, where its

network of agreements is especially intense, and it is now looking to further

bolster such projects with concrete initiatives such as the Network of

Brazilian Universities, of which I shall speak later.

In Salamanca, as in so many other universities, the efforts made

towards internationalization and the combination of tradition and future

vision have resulted in very good levels of scientific and academic excellence.

Nevertheless, recent decades have shown us that an adequate preparation of

future generations requires us to delve deeper into internationalization and

collaboration within the sphere of higher education. This international

dimension has given rise to a new need: to measure, in some way, the quality

of teaching and research and the ability to transfer knowledge. This has been

standardized by means of rankings, in which, in the long run, very different

models of the university must compete.

Rankings assess the strengths and weaknesses, without attending to

particularities but searching for common elements that do not always

describe the institution in question satisfactorily. In the case of higher

education systems the particularities of each institution mark the differences

among them, such that the construction of an EIES would help to provide

uniformity in assessable aspects. Thus, the “still shot” resulting from


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assessments made in the international arena could be adjusted and made

more realistic, allowing a better starting point for collaborative efforts.

An example of success in this sense can be seen in the setting up

some years ago of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), whose

achievements are now recognized, and indeed lauded, within the

international context.

The creation of an Ibero-American Knowledge Area that would

include higher education, investigation and innovation, represents a

fundamental contribution to the future of thousands of young people who in

the coming years will be responsible for overseeing the region. In this sense,

one could speak of the first steps for the construction of an EIES in terms of

an original initiative encompassed within the Declaration of Salamanca

(2005), under the auspices of the Organization of Ibero-American States and

the Ibero-American General Secretariat, which permitted the formal creation

of work aimed at creating an EIES.

Before this, however, there were other minor proposals that

emerged from Institutions seeking collaboration with other Universities and

that had their own normative frameworks. This has given rise to different

models of integration, sometimes based on a formal integration through

intergovernmental agreements, sometimes based on real integration, and

others on integration derived from the daily activities of the universities

themselves.


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The Ibero-American Summits provided partial agreements despite

certain unpropitious circumstances, such as the fact that in the nineties the

idea that the creation of networks such as these represented more of an

expense than an investment was widespread; this meant that their inclusion

in cooperative policies was discouraged.

Some of the first and best known programs with components related

to mobility in Ibero-America have been as follows:

 The Mutis Program (1992) for third cycle university mobility for

Ibero-American students, approved at the II Ibero-American Summit of

Heads of State held in Madrid.

 The Intercampus Program of the Spanish Agency for International

Cooperation (Span. Acronym AECI) for the mobility of students,

professors, and managers between Spanish and Ibero-American

universities.

 The Mistral Program (1995) for student mobility, posited at the V

Ibero-American Summit at Bariloche, which never passed beyond the

design stage.

The universities themselves began to develop their own cooperative

projects with other entities and the institutions themselves propitiated

the creation of agencies such as the Ibero-American University Council

(Span. Acronym: CUIB) in 2002; the Ibero-American Network of Quality

Accreditation, or the Program for Exchange and Academic Mobility (Span.


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Acronym: PIMA) launched by the Organización de Estados Ibero-

Americanos, OEI, whose aim is to promote interuniversity cooperation

with a view to achieving a better integration among the participating

universities and developing the Ibero-American dimension of higher

education.

Currently, the project also involves a commission for the creation of

the Ibero-American Knowledge Area, designated in 2005 by the

Organization of Ibero-American States under the mandate of the Summit

of Heads of State and Government.

The Commissioner, Félix García Lausin, has expressed his interest in

strengthening programs that have already been initiated under the

tutelage of the OEI, such as those related to innovation, industrial

property, the promotion of development, academic mobility, enterprise,

small and medium-sized businesses and youth employment.

Seven years have passed since that first step aimed at the creation

of an EIES was taken in Salamanca, and this has now attained a degree of

maturity that allows us to consider the possibility that, with the work that

can be developed from this point onwards, it will become a pole of

influence in the fields of education, investigation and innovation.

Such endeavours must necessarily confront some of the main

problems detected in the advancement of consolidation. One such aspect

is the absence of a unified system of accreditation that would provide

harmonized assessments and that would generate confidence among the


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various institutions. In the EHEA, this was solved by means of the

introduction of ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) credits. This

brought important changes and adaptations in the higher education

systems of the integrating countries. Without a reliable assessment

system, and one that will not generate rejection among the institutions,

the recognition of degrees is not possible and this therefore hinders the

activities of professors abroad from their respective frontiers, which in

turn perverts the aims of internationalization.

Mobility is another determinant element, and increasingly so, in

higher education policies, but also in those addressing the cooperation and

integration of nations and regions, since it allows the globalization

phenomenon to be tackled better. However, a large number of agents

have been involved, which has thus generated a highly varied tone in

programs already ongoing. International mobility has been promoted from

different areas of action: universities, governmental agencies,

cooperation agencies, and international agencies, with very disparate

results. Likewise, these mobility programs have moved from having

students as the core aim to incorporating professors, researchers and,

more recently, administrative staff. With this, we have managed to reach

a state where internationalization affects not only education but also the

ways in which the various institutions are organized, allowing us to

improve certain processes and other crucial aspects aimed at

consolidating strong and efficient institutions.


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Finally, there is an element that could also act as a bolstering

mechanism if it is accorded its due importance: this is the language shared

by the Ibero-American community, mainly Spanish, but also Portuguese,

both of which are accessible owing to their closeness with the whole of

the Ibero-American community.

In this sense, the supremacy of English as the language of science

has forged a tendency to value the education and research presented in

that language in a more positive light. Spanish, by contrast, is also one of

the most widely spoken languages in the world, which should provide an

element of cohesion in the development of a new pole of attraction.

However, this is something that is simply not happening, as shown by the

figures relating to mobility and exchanges among the countries in Ibero-

America, which are very low, and according to data taken from the

UNESCO in 2010 Ibero-Americans still prefer the United States as their

destination, together with France and even Germany.

These are only some of the problems which the construction of the

Ibero-American Knowledge Area (Span. Acronym EIC) must face up to. It is

therefore necessary to immediately set up itineraries able to generate

policies that will surpass individual barriers, even those from our

respective legislations, and contribute to providing a definitive boost to

the EIC but at the same time respect the particularities of its integrating

elements.


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The University of Salamanca wishes to support such actions and is

prepared to offer all its experience to a project whose results could

benefit millions of people. With this starting premise, we have already

begun work in this area, such that in 2018 it will be possible to release a

new Declaration inspired in the Bologna Accord, which finally gave rise to

the EHEA, but adapted to the specific geographic and cultural spaces of

Ibero-America.

Our extensive experience in the field of internationalization, which

as mentioned above can be said to have started in the 16th century, could

help by placing emphasizing and developing further the endeavours made

so far and offering greater insight into experiences that have already been

deemed successful. Examples are our Centre for Brazilian Studies and the

Ibero-American Institute, which have generated large numbers of

graduates and much research work, or the Japanese Cultural Centre and

the exchange programs in the Asia-Pacific zone. These actions show that

our horizons should be open and collaborative.

It is in this search for horizons and the wish to bring Ibero-America

up to the status of being a region of influence that we find the Salamanca

Network of Brazilian Universities, which became a reality in 2012 after

several efforts linked to the development of the Campus of International

Excellence of the University of Salamanca. This network comprises 11

Brazilian universities and that of Salamanca and is based on the mutual

recognition of degrees, the opening up of joint lines of research, and the


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exchange of students with automatic recognition by host universities. I

believe that the construction of the EHEA(está bien o es el EIC?)= can be

forged via concrete models, such as that represented by this network,

where it is possible to come into contact with new ideas, detect

problems, and find solutions to them.

However, this is merely another initiative, to which one could add the

agreement recently signed between Columbian and Spanish Universities to

the same ends, and other initiatives that reveal the pathway that the

various institutions wish to follow and that clearly point to (the creation

of) an Ibero-American Knowledge Area.

This brief overview only aims to provide a framework for reflection

since its format leaves no scope for more. Nevertheless, it is clear that we

need a broad debate orchestrated around work teams formed ad hoc in

order to advance along the project, as has been posited by the

Commissioner. However, I believe that it was important to speak of these

matters in a forum such as this one, where an intense mingling of broad

experiences in international university associationism prevails: something

that will be crucial for putting the EIC definitively on track. The

integration of the broad experience of the IAU in the development of an

initiative such as the Ibero-American Higher Education Area could help to

speed up and set up actions whose possibilities of success have already

been tested.


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Thus, although I have not gone into too much depth here it seems

reasonable to mention other aspects pending reflection, among others the

harmonization and recognition of educational systems; the creation of

networks within the sphere of research; the creation of an attractive

framework for patent filing and the diffusion of research and innovation

results; the creation of a pole of attraction directed at talent under the

auspices of the EIC, and funding.

The settling and debate of these aspects, as well as others that will

transpire during the construction of the EIC, require a timing and general

framework that will facilitate its implementation. This framework could

be the year 2018, and to help in its development it would be desirable to

see the creation of a commission that within the IAU will integrate the

representation of the member states and experts and agencies that, like

the Commission (OK?) of the IEC, are already working on the construction

of this space.

With the creation of this work team it will be possible to set up a realistic

calendar for the initiation of contacts and integration with the

governments of the member states. These are crucial aspects if the

proposals for advancement are to be realistic and to open the doors to a

new area for the development of knowledge linked to Ibero-America and

the millions of Ibero-Americans who see in education and research a

model of progress for forthcoming generations.


Horizonte 2018: Proposal for Ibero-American Higher Education Area

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