The Brief
Americas Union
Exploring student mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean
With the Buenos Aires Declaration placing emphasis on boosting intraregional mobility, we look at where the region currently is placed, and where it can grow.
In recent history, Latin America and the Caribbean have made strides towards boosting education mobility in the region and encouraging further collaboration. The first Buenos Aires Declaration, created in January 2017, was clear in its aims for the region, seeking to:
"Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all."
Five years later in May 2022, the accompanying document of the third Regional Meeting of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the 2022 Declaration of Buenos Aires, renewed the commitments from 2017, and added further urgency on its goals. Shaped by the pandemic, the new declaration put in to focus what was at stake, ramping up its wording:
"We acknowledge that we are living an educational emergency resulting from the serious impact of the pandemic on our educational systems. We value the collaborative joint work developed during this period to promote regional advocacy, political dialogue and the exchange of experiences and good practice to ensure the continuity of education during school closures."
The emergency was made clear in the World Bank's 2023 report, Collapse and Recovery: How COVID-19 Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It. According to the report, while youth unemployment fell sharply in 2021 and 2022, the first such decline in seven years, the overall trend remained above 2014 levels. Over a more than 25 year period, by 2022, youth unemployment returned to the same level as 1996, shortly before the economic recession of 1998-99.
Despite the improved youth unemployment, earnings shrank by 15 percent in 2020 and 12 percent in 2021. “Reversing the pandemic’s impact on them and investing in their future should be a top priority for governments. Otherwise, these cohorts will represent not just a lost generation but rather multiple lost generations," said lead author of the report and Chief Economist for Human Development, Rorbert Schady, said.
Proportion of Latam international students studying in a second Latam country
Proportion of EU international students studying in a second EU country
With the key objective of the declaration being to increase student mobility, we looked at current levels of mobility within the region.
Somewhat surprisingly, a higher proportion of international students hosted by Latin American universities come from within the region than for the European Union, although, this is likely due to fewer students choosing the region for study overall. The EU hosted almost 1.5 million international tertiary education students in 2020, according to the European Commission. In 2019, Latin America hosted 137,00 international students, although this appears to have increased. By volume, there is significant opportunity for growth in intra-regional study.
While the majority of international students in Latin America come from within the region, the US is the largest single source market at almost 14 percent.
Top 20 source countries for Latam
In boosting intra-regional mobility, the QS International Student Survey (ISS) gives some insights into the areas that most attract students. For the top five countries, there are some key themes that connect them, with substantive outliers.
All five countries are understandably influenced by scholarships to some extent. An institution offering a scholarship is the most important factor for Peru, Colombia and Brazil, while Ecuadorians rate it second and Americans rate it the third most important factor.
Being welcoming is of less importance to students from the US, but is also a key theme for the remaining four, rating it second or third most important factor.
The ISS shows a clear theme that an attractive destination for students in the Americas has three key components: it offers high quality teaching, it offers scholarships, and it is welcoming.
What things are most important to students when choosing a university
USA
Peru
Colombia
Brazil
Ecuador
Specific course I'm interested in
1
3
It offers high quality teaching
2
2
1
It offers scholarships
3
1
1
1
2
It is welcoming to international students
2
3
2
3
It is well ranked
3
Conclusion
Achieving the intentions of the Buenos Aires Declaration present an interesting and unique challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean. Compared to other regions in the world, the countries within already have one of, if not the, highest proportions of their international student bodies coming from within. The challenge, however, is scalability.
A clear leaning towards scholarships indicates a high level of price sensitivity. Considering the World Bank's concerns around monumental loss of human capital, it's becoming more important than ever to break down barriers for access.
An area worth noting, which correlates to the World Bank's position on receiving education, is that with the exception of Peru, students from the top five sending countries were fairly unconcerned by an institution's rank, sitting outside the top three priorities. Rankings are, of course, only one lens throughout which to view higher education, and they remain an important measure of the performance of universities. But what this suggests, and confirms for the World Bank, is that receiving an education is of the utmost importance to a student, and barriers are the biggest concern. Students want to feel welcome and want a return on investment. These two points clearly trump rank and area of interest and rank, and represent the biggest opportunities for universities so support the declaration.