The State of accountability in the education sector of ...unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0025/002595/259540e.pdf · 2 1. Accountability in local language 1 The concept of accountability

D a n t e J . S a l t o 2 0 1 7

The State of Accountability in the

Education Sector of Argentina

This paper was commissioned by the Global Education Monitoring Report as background information

to assist in drafting the 2017/8 GEM Report, Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments.

It has not been edited by the team. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the

author(s) and should not be attributed to the Global Education Monitoring Report or to UNESCO. The

papers can be cited with the following reference: “Paper commissioned for the 2017/8 Global

Education Monitoring Report, Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments”. For further

information, please contact [email protected].

ED/GEMR/MRT/2017/C1/11

Country case study prepared for the 2017/8 Global Education Monitoring Report

Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments

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1. Accountability in local language1

The concept of accountability does not have a direct, simple translation to Spanish. According to Oszlak (1998), when a society or culture does not encompass certain values and behaviors that exist elsewhere, it does not usually reserve a concept to name it. This is the case with accountability as a term in Spanish. This situation may also be observed in other languages too. For instance, English borrows the term coup d'état from French, as the idea was alien to English society. In light of the difficulty of translating the nuances of the concept of accountability to Spanish, many scholars use the English term when referring to it. Although much controversy surrounds the understanding of accountability in Spanish, the most widely adopted translation to that language has been rendición de cuentas (literal translation). First, it was adopted by accountants and then spread to other professions and academia. According to this literal translation, accountability is limited to “account for” how governmental agencies have disbursed funds. In other words, the term is synonymous with funding oversight. While social scientists have not reached consensus on the definition of accountability in Spanish, a variety of scholarly articles, policy reports, and official documents in Argentina agree on a more nuanced version of it than the accountancy one. They conceive of accountability as answerability and responsibility of different actors for assigned roles, tasks, and duties (Oszlak, 2003). Regardless of how the concept has been translated to Spanish, accountability is an alien concept to Latin American countries, including Argentina. Its origins relate to civil society’s distrust of governmental and nongovernmental actors within a democratic regime. It is based on the idea that distrust toward the public sphere is a necessary step to assure the correct functioning of the democratic regime. It spread through a wide range of sectors, including education, public health, social welfare, etc. Latin American scholars agree on the inexistence or weakness of accountability processes in the region (Mainwaring & Welna, 2003). Argentina’s accountability system is not an outlier in Latin America, and this case portrays the primary attempts to establish an accountability system in education.

2. Introduction/Country Profile

Argentina, like most other South American countries, is a young and certainly weak democracy. Only since 1983 has Argentina been on an uninterrupted path of democracy. Before then, since its inception, Argentina has fluctuated between democratic and de facto, military regimes (García Delgado, 1994; O’Donnell, 1988). These regimes changes may have negatively impacted efforts to establish accountability mechanisms and long-term policy consensus (O’Donnell & Schmitter, 1986). Political regimes changes aside, Argentina is a federal democracy with a presidential form of government and a bicameral legislature. The federation consists of 23 provinces and a semi-autonomous federal capital (from now on provinces). Governors, as core provincial actors, weigh heavily on national decisions (Ardanaz, Leiras, & Tommasi, 2014). In recent history, Argentina has shifted from a centralized to a decentralized provision of public services, including education. At the peak of centralization in 1952, 43% of primary schools, 75% of secondary schools,

1 Written by Dante J. Salto, Instituto de Humanidades (IDH) - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) / Universidad Nacional de Córdoba ([email protected])

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and 83% of vocational schools were national2 (Murillo, Tommasi, Ronconi, & Sanguinetti, 2002). The national government began decentralizing the educational system in 1978, during a military dictatorship. At that time, the national government transferred preprimary and primary education levels to the provinces. In 1992, during a democratic regime, the national government completed the decentralization process by transferring the secondary and non-university higher education levels to the provinces. Thus, the provision of educational services, except for national universities, is the direct responsibility of the provinces. In both instances, decentralization followed an economic rationale. In other words, the national government transferred the educational system to the provinces mostly as a way to reduce its involvement in funding education (Filmus, 1998). Immediately after the national government transferred all educational services to the provinces, Congress enacted the Federal Education Law of 1993 to reorganize the educational system based on the new reality. In 1995, Congress passed the Higher Education Law, a specific regulation aimed at higher education institutions. For the first time, two laws regulated the entire educational system, its responsibilities, and its aims. In 2006, the Federal Education Law was replaced by the National Education Law. Through a combination of regulation (aforementioned education laws) and targeted goals, Argentina has relatively high schooling rates. In fact, Argentina was one of the first Latin American countries to reach universal primary education, currently with a historic high net enrollment rate of 99% in primary education (Salto, 2015; UIS, 2013). The 1993 legislation targeted compulsory education from the last year of preprimary education through lower secondary education. The 2006 legislation increased compulsory education to encompass upper secondary education (Miranda, 2013). Argentina faces various educational challenges, including access and quality issues. Preprimary and secondary education enrollment rates have not reached universal thresholds yet. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics (2013), in 2013, Argentine preprimary net enrollment rates reached 71%, an increase of 16 points compared to 1998. The secondary education net enrollment rate reached 88% in 2013, up from 75% in 1998. The gender parity index shows equal access to preprimary and primary education but not to secondary education (UIS, 2013). While access has improved over time, the system still faces high dropout rates and low graduation rates, mainly at the secondary and higher education levels (Busso, Bassi, & Muñoz, 2013; García de Fanelli & Adrogué de Deane, 2015). Also, due to large regional differences, subnational performance in access, retention, and dropout indicators are highly unequal. Educational issues become more puzzling than enrollment targets when considering the quality of the service provided (Salto, 2015). The next section illustrates how different actors in the educational system are held accountable to reach policy targets and solve structural issues.

3. Actors and Accountability

Despite the advancement of convergent educational policies worldwide, national traditions still shape the types of actors involved in education. Government tends to be a critical component in the policy process, regulation, and provision of education in Argentina although in many instances, without proper accountability mechanisms. International organizations have increasingly influenced policy making in Argentina, particularly since the 1990s (Miranda, Senén González, Lamfri, & Nicolini, 2003). Other actors such as teachers, parents, and students, are becoming key players in accountability mechanisms. In all cases, while there is a noticeable push toward increasing accountability for different actors, it also represents an iterative process in which

2 In the Argentine context, national refers to all public services directly provided by the national government.

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monitoring and answerability tend to be weak. This section portrays the role of those actors in the accountability process, highlighting key areas of progress and core limitations. 3.1 Government in the policy formulation process

The government in Argentina plays a crucial role in the policy formulation process. García Delgado (1994) links the strong presence of government in policy decision making to the way Argentina consolidated as an independent country. The first independent governments prioritized the development of a national citizenry among the existing population and immigrants arriving in different waves. Specifically, during the 19th century, civil society and social organizations were weak. Many immigrants did not even speak Spanish, the official language, and in most cases, immigrants were illiterate (Sánchez‐Alonso, 2013). Thus, the government took over essential functions due to the inability of civil society to fulfill any role at that time. The lack of an active citizenry may explain not only the core role of government but also the limited accountability policies in place. Due to the predominant role of government in the policy process, other social actors do not play a meaningful role in policymaking. In Argentina, as in most recent democracies, citizen participation has been mostly limited to voting, without (or with very limited) occasions to participate in between elections (O’Donnell, 1993, 1996). The Worldwide Governance Indicators project (World Bank, 2015) has designed an index to measure voice and accountability worldwide to capture perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens can participate in civil society actively.3 The comparison shows clear differences between developed and developing countries. In an index that ranges from -2.5 to 2.5 points, the worldwide average is exactly in the middle (zero points). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries average 1.12 points, whereas Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries score 0.36 points, which is closer to the global average than to that of developed countries. Argentina is located a few decimals below (0.33) the LAC average, showing a relatively low level of civil society participation in policy and relatively weak accountability mechanisms. Another feature of the role of the Argentine government in policy process relates to the inability to establish and enforce intertemporal agreements (Spiller & Tommasi, 2003). This issue affects the education sector as well, in many cases due to ideological differences between different governmental administrations. For instance, in the 1990s, the national government pushed for an overhaul of the education system, in what are usually called market-friendly reforms. With the change in government and political ideology in 2003, the national government called for another switch in the focus of education, in this case, closer to conceptualizing education as a public good and a human right (Feldfeber & Gluz, 2011). Finally, Argentina’s federal structure and the decentralization of the educational system has switched responsibilities from the national government to the provinces. Section 3.3 addresses accountability issues in policy implementation related to the federal structure. 3.2 Role of the international community

The international community plays a fundamental role in setting educational policy agenda through international agreements such as Education for All, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Sustainable Development Goals (Birdsall & Vaishnav, 2005; Chabbott, 2007; Colclough, 2005). Also, multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, among others, are a core part of the international community, as they provide funding and technical assistance to developing countries to meet internationally set targets (Birdsall, Levine, & Ibrahim, 2005; Levy, 2005).

3 The index includes indicators that capture perceptions of government effectiveness, freedom of elections, reliability of budgets, transparency in public procurement, freedom of the press, among many others. For more information on the Worldwide Governance Indicators project, refer to http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home.

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By the time UNESCO released the Education for All goals, Argentina had almost reached universal primary education. However, high dropout and low graduation rates in that level were still a major issue. In 1993, the national government promoted an educational reform that increased compulsory education from 7 to 10 years (from the last year of preprimary education to the end of lower secondary education). The law also established that education investment should reach 6% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Due to several factors, including a lack of short-term goals, the financial goal was not achieved during that decade (Miranda et al., 2003). Since 2005, the national government has set a goal to reach 6% of the GDP within a more comprehensive plan than the 1993 one, but to date the goal has not been reached (See section 3.3.1). Based on UNESCO’s goals, international organizations that funded educational reforms in Argentina in the 1990s were interested in promoting policy innovations other than system expansion. Those agencies introduced the idea of accountability in the system. For instance, the World Bank provided funding for two major educational policy reforms: the Federal Education Law and the Higher Education Law. In both cases, the World Bank promoted the inclusion of quality assurance mechanisms (Carlino & Mollis, 1997; Miranda et al., 2003): in the Federal Education Law, through the creation of an annual test for students in primary and secondary education, and in the Higher Educational Law, through the establishment of an accreditation agency. Until that point, the government was only held accountable for providing the service, and its success was only measured by the percentage of the population attending school. The reform introduced learning outcome assessments in education. This development required building capacity of existing national and provincial governmental agencies to produce information (Gvirtz, Larripa, & Oelsner, 2006; Montoya, 2015). Furthermore, multilateral organizations invested in the establishment or enhancement of statistical offices to collect data and generate a national standardized exam. The goal of the test is to know the effectiveness of the system, without public consequences for students, schools, and teachers (low-stakes test). Also, scores have not been used to rank institutions. The national government implemented the test in 1993, and until 2001, the test was administered annually. However, as highlighted in the previous section, the difficulty in establishing intertemporal agreements resulted in a discontinued administration of the test over the last five years, and in complete replacement of the test a few months ago, under a new administration (Ganimian, 2015). As a result of the disagreements between different government administrations on how to measure education quality, main policy developments have been evaluated on the basis of enrollment targets rather than educational quality. The 2006 reform expanded compulsory education from the last year of preprimary education until the end of secondary education, adding three more years of compulsory schooling. To fulfill those access targets, the national government set the goal to invest 6% of the GDP in education once more (more information in point 3.3.1). 3.3 Government in policy implementation

Due to the federal structure of the governance system in Argentina and the decentralized nature of the educational system, the national government shares the responsibility of providing the educational service (except university-level higher education) with the provinces. The 1993 Federal Education Law created the Federal Education Council (FEC), a space where the national and subnational ministries of education decide on the implementation of educational policies. The aim was to generate consensus on how to implement policies at the subnational levels, coordinate efforts, and preserve similar approaches to policy implementation. In other words, it produced an accountability system for provincial governments. In theory, provincial ministries of education would be held accountable with regard to how educational reform was implemented in their territories. However, the decisions reached in that council were not binding. In many cases, governors decided to implement policies in a different way than initially approved by their ministries of education (Miranda et al., 2003; Tiramonti, 1995, 1997). This situation resulted in a chaotic implementation, for instance, of a new organizational structure. The 2006 National Education Law attempted to solve that loophole, but it is a

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challenging situation because provinces are autonomous from the national government and they cannot be required to follow mandates. The law gives freedom to the members of the Federal Education Council to set binding policies if all of the ministries agree on that (Feldfeber & Gluz, 2011). However, it is not clear how this policy could be enforced. Changes in how the national government approaches policy implementation also affected university-level higher education. The higher education governance landscape changed after the enactment of the Higher Education Law (Krotsch, 2001). The law created new buffer institutions adding to the existing National Inter-University Council (CIN) and Private University Rectors Council (CRUP). While these buffer bodies are composed of rectors from public and private universities, respectively, the new ones established a more diversified composition of their members. The newly created Council of Universities (CU) is chaired by the National Ministry of Education and comprises the executive board of the CIN and the CRUP, a representative from each Regional Council for Higher Education Planning (CPRES), and a representative from the Federal Council of Education. The role of the CU is crucial in the quality assurance process, as it is the institution that cooperates with the Ministry of Education to establish standards to assess undergraduate- and postgraduate- level programs. The addition of these buffer institutions meant that universities had to be accountable to a diverse number of actors and not only to the national government. In other words, the new law reshaped the university accountability system in existence until that moment. The newly established Secretariat of University Policies (SPU) and the buffer institutions have expanded the bureaucratic coordination of the system by adding more intermediate levels (Clark, 1983; Krotsch, 2001). These new layers of governmental coordination were conceptualized as tools to reduce resistance to changes that were introduced by the reform.

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Figure 1. University-level governance in Argentina.

Source: Author’s elaboration. Note: Blue boxes indicate national government agencies, green ones indicate buffer institutions, and orange ones indicate university-level institutions. 3.3.1. Financial functions

Efficient use of resources and investment in education are necessary, albeit not sufficient, for the successful implementation of the access and quality policy targets. As mentioned earlier, the Federal Education Law of 1993 aimed at investing 6% of the GDP in education. However, the law did not include a target year (Morduchowicz, 2008). In 2005, under a new government administration, Congress enacted the Education Funding Law. The law specifies the efforts that the national government and the provinces had to make to reach the goal of investing 6% of the GDP in education by 2010. At the time of the legislative enactment,

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Argentina invested 3.5% of the GDP in education; by 2010, this had reached 4.6%. Although the goal was not met, in the following years, the rate kept growing and reached 5.3% in 2013 (UIS, 2013). The law requires that both national and provincial governments make an effort to increase educational funding. The national government would contribute 40% of the funding and the provincial government the rest (Bezem, Mezzadra, & Rivas, 2012). The national government would step up to support poorer provinces only if they showed a commitment to increasing educational spending. If not, the national government would reduce its support and distribute the remainder among the compliant provinces. A highly influential think tank in Argentina, the Center for the Implementation of Public Policies promoting Equity and Growth (CIPPEC), consolidated as a central actor in monitoring the implementation of the educational funding law. CIPPEC’s education team analyzed how the national government and the provinces made progress toward investment in education, and it identified areas for improvement. Also, the think tank evaluated the targets identified in the legislation, which included access and infrastructure goals. The final report depicts mixed results. Although the funding target was not met, the national government and the provinces made critical strides toward that goal. However, the law was not able to solve the inequities among the provinces. The poorer provinces could not reach similar investment levels per pupil as the richer ones (Bezem et al., 2012). The report also highlights the critical role that teacher unions played in lobbying provincial governments to increase their share in educational investment, in part, because the target implied better salaries and more teacher hiring (see section 3.4). The Education Funding Law has been a landmark legislation, and for the first time, both national and provincial governments committed to increasing investment in education and have made efforts toward that goal. The National Education Law enacted in 2006 establishes a minimum investment in education, instead of a target, of 6% of the GDP. Overall, enrollment rates have increased in preprimary and secondary education based on investment in infrastructure and hiring of new teachers (as described in section 2). All of these accomplishments took place in the context of GDP growth. However, there are indications that due to recent economic slowdown, investment in education may be compromised. Finally, CIPPEC’s report (Bezem et al., 2012) problematizes the idea of setting an investment target. Is 6% of the GDP enough? What other indicators could be used to measure progress? How would it be possible to reduce the investment gaps between provinces? Issues with the management of statistics at the national level (as portrayed in section 3.2) also affected implementation of the Educational Funding Law. In 2007, the national government decided to make drastic changes to the National Statistics and Censuses Institute (INDEC), the office in charge of producing statistics. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) “censured” Argentina due to inaccuracies on how inflation and GDP were calculated (The Economist, 2016). Within this context, in 2014, Argentina released updated figures on inflation and GDP. Because the investment in education was tied to the old GDP calculation, the national government showed that they have reached and even surpassed the 6% target. However, as analyzed above, educational expenditure fell short of the target. This situation indicates the relevance of accountability and the need to produce reliable data to monitor and assess any public policy. 3.4. Teachers

Argentina has a tradition of strong unions, and education is not an exception in this regard. Teachers’ unions are among the largest unions in Argentina. Because the educational system is decentralized and salaries and working conditions depend on the provinces, unions are considerably more powerful at the subnational level (Murillo et al., 2002). There have been attempts over the years to make teachers (and principals) accountable for educational results. However, those efforts were neutralized before even becoming policy. Teachers in Argentina are not held accountable for students’ performance; there is no merit-pay system. Teachers’ salaries only improve through collective bargaining agreements and the number of years teaching, like any other type

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of public employee, or if teachers decide to take responsibilities in management positions (e.g., principals). However, teachers are increasingly being held accountable, as shown below. As described in section 3.3.1, teacher unions have been instrumental in monitoring and lobbying provincial governments to increase their share in educational investment to fulfill the 6% GDP investment target. In many cases, teachers went on strike to demand fulfillment of those salary increments that represent a large portion of the targeted expenditure. In 2003, Congress passed a law to hold teachers accountable for the number of classes taught per year. In times of economic downturn, the education budget is usually affected. In some provinces, union conflicts have resulted in a decrease in the number of school days. In part, this is why in 2003 Congress passed a law making it compulsory to provide a minimum of 180 days of classes per calendar year. The law states that those provinces that do not reach the minimum days have to implement ways to recover classes. As a recurring theme in accountability systems in Argentina, the law has not been enforced, and many provinces have not complied with the minimum number of days (Narodowski, 2013).4 The law includes a specific clause whereby the national government could provide funding to provinces to pay teachers’ salaries. The goal was to prevent strikes to fulfill the minimum number of days (Feldfeber & Gluz, 2011). Enforcement of this policy has been challenging due to several reasons. First, in many cases, the educational calendar has been fixed to 180 days without counting days that schools do not operate due to teaching training workshops. So, the educational calendar is already flawed, without even considering teacher strikes. Second, strikes are almost inevitable, because teaching salaries are usually low and do not keep up with inflation. A study on teachers’ unions in Argentina found evidence that links the number of days in school to educational performance at the system level (Murillo et al., 2002).5 If that is the case, then the 180-days law is holding teachers accountable for student performance in an indirect way. 3.5. Students and parents

Although parents are usually mentioned as core actors in educational policies, they hardly play a significant role in accountability policies. According to Argentine educational legislation, parents are responsible for sending their children to school, thus complying with compulsory education. However, compulsory education has never been systematically enforced in Argentina. This changed in 2009 when the national government created the Asignación Universal por Hijo [Universal Child Allowance (AUH)] program. This program is based on cash payments to poor parents on condition that their children keep up with school attendance and health checkups. It has reached approximately 3.7 million children and adolescents up to age 18, which represents 9.3% of the population. This innovative approach in Argentina, which follows similar conditional cash transfer

4 Only the provincial governments are held accountable by the national government. The former has to report data, but that data is not made available to the public. There is a lack of public accountability and monitoring over the number of school days. Enforcement of the legislation requires provincial governments to recover school days, so teachers would have to teach extra days until they complete the 180-day calendar. However, since the national government does not enforce the policy, teachers do not have to teach sessions lost due to strikes. In 2016, following a year of teacher strikes, the province of Santa Cruz only reached 90 days of school days and the national government has threatened to not validate school diplomas. However, due to the political problems this issue may cause, it is unlikely that the national government will enforce the law (Infobae, 2016).

5 Murillo et al. (2002) compare system level indicators (number of days in strike and student performance in national tests). The study estimates education production function including school factors (e.g. class days), teachers’ factors (e.g. job satisfaction), student and family (e.g. parents’ education), and classroom factors (e.g. students/teacher ratio). Through a multivariate regression (ordinary least squares), the study finds that class days, job satisfaction, tenure, and student/teacher ratio significantly affect student performance; one additional day of class results in an improvement of approximately 0.4 percent in student performance.

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(CCT) programs already in place in other Latin American countries6 like Brazil, establishes an accountability system between non-educational social policies and education and health. A preliminary report on the impact of the CCT program on education indicates that those children who receive the benefit are 60% less likely to drop out of school than children in the control group (UCA, 2016). A report on Colombian CCT shows similar results to the one implemented in Argentina (Barrera-Osorio, Bertrand, Linden, & Perez-Calle, 2008). One could hypothesize that compulsory education enforcement works better when parents and students are held accountable through specific social policies such as CCTs than when targets are only tied to government oversight, thus not making the direct beneficiaries accountable as well. 3.6. Toward an accountable autonomy in higher education

The university-level higher education system has a total of 122 institutions and almost two million students (SPU, 2013). The national government fully subsidizes public universities, providing tuition-free public education.7 As noted in section 2 of this report, the national government did not transfer public universities to the provinces. Although universities rely on national government funds, they are highly autonomous. In 1995, Congress passed the Higher Education Law, establishing the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU). The accreditation agency represents more governmental involvement in the higher education system than before the reform to regulate a system with still ample institutional autonomy (Salto, 2017). Public universities contested the introduction of this new regulatory framework as an attack on their autonomy. This positioning against governmental regulation was in part a result of direct intervention during periods of military dictatorship and a longstanding legacy of autonomy traced to the 1918 Cordoba reform (Krotsch, 2001). In that context, one of the most salient features of the Higher Education Law enacted in 1995 was the establishment of a quality assurance agency, a development that institutions perceived as a possible threat to academic and institutional autonomy. Compulsory quality assurance of undergraduate and graduate programs as a form of accountability met with resistance on the university side. However, a few years after the first accreditation round, all universities submitted programs to accreditation (Salto, 2017). Both public and private universities have to submit all graduate programs and all professional undergraduate programs to accreditation. If the programs do not meet the minimum requirements, the accreditation agency requests modifications. If those modifications are not met within a few years, the programs cannot open new cohorts. The accreditation agency reports that all undergraduate programs have met the minimum requirements, although some programs required a few years to adapt to those standards. In the case of graduate programs, the accreditation agency estimates that about 30% of the programs have not met the minimum requirements and thus had to cease enrolling new cohorts (Salto, 2016). Professors from other universities are part of the process through peer-review practices, and they are the ones deciding whether a program is accredited or not (Marquina, 2016). This specific regulation made programs and institutions accountable for the quality of the education provided. To some extent, the accountability policy redesigned the role of government and universities. Starting at that point, universities were also accountable for the quality of the services provided at both public and private institutions, thus preserving institutional autonomy in a move that could be called “accountable autonomy”.

6 Many Latin American countries have developed CCT programs in the last decades. Mexico’s Oportunidades (2002) and Brazil’s Bolsa Familia (2003) programs are the most institutionalized and longstanding CCTs in the region (Sewall, 2008).

7 There are a few, recently created provincial higher education institutions that are tuition-free but depend on provincial governments for their funding.

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4. Small Case Study

As analyzed in point 3.6, the relationship between the national government and universities in Argentina drastically changed in the 1990s. The government stepped in to command from a distance through regulation (Salto, 2014). It did so not by providing the service (or micromanaging the system) but by linking results to competition for monetary and non-monetary rewards. In other words, educational reform, specifically in higher education, has promoted market-friendly policies. These policies tried to incorporate an output-oriented measurement scheme, for two main developments: quality assurance agency and a merit-pay program for faculty members. These two events are related to new policies introduced by the government, signaling a switch towards an “evaluative approach” (Neave, 1998). This shift implied a financial trend leading to the diversification of universities' income sources, replacing the traditional “benevolent” relationship regarding evaluation and funding mechanisms (Brunner, 1990; Krotsch, 2001). Policies that tend to promote greater accountability may be understood by factors influencing higher education, such as the massification of the system, the institutional diversification (increasing growth of the private sector), and increasing national and international student mobility at the undergraduate and graduate level (Krotsch, 2001; Trow, 1996). Most countries in Latin America have increased their enrollment rates, and they have shifted from “elite to mass higher education” (Salto, 2015; Trow, 1973, 1999). Argentina has moved forward to reach universal higher education thresholds. This trend has produced an increase in enrollment rates at the university and non-university-level in Argentina. Figure 2. Tertiary education gross enrollment ratio by year (Argentina)

Source: UIS, 2013. The regulatory frameworks that were established during the 1990s for the higher education system in Argentina changed to some extent the power balance between the institutions, the state and the market (García de Fanelli, 2012). The first explicit transformation took place with the establishment of the Secretariat of University Policies (SPU) within the Ministry of Education in 1993, the first bureau within the national government designed to develop policies for the university sector. This public agency was in charge of developing the first merit-pay system for faculty members. It is the first time in Argentine education history that professors were held accountable for their research productivity, including the number and quality of publications, grants received, and supervised research projects (García de Fanelli, 2005).

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The Professor-Researcher Incentive Program (PIDI) was created with the goal of increasing research activity in public universities.8 Following a professional model of higher education, until recently, universities in Argentina were mainly dedicated to teaching (Krotsch, 2001).9 Increasing research productivity was seen as an important step towards strengthening teaching quality. The central assumption behind the program is that teaching, and thus student learning, would benefit if professors dedicated at least part of their activities to research. 4.1. Intended and unintended consequences

The accountability scheme had intended and unintended consequences. Several studies have found various positive outcomes from this policy (Araujo, 2001; Carullo & Vaccarezza, 1997; Sarthou & Araya, 2015). First, it stimulated research and highlighted the centrality of research as one of the core university functions. Second, the number of professors involved in research activities increased from 11% to 23% in the first four years (1993-1997) of its implementation and reached 33% in 2011. Third, during the first years of its implementation, the merit-pay program represented on average a 40% salary increase. This increase was particularly relevant at the time the program started, as professors’ salaries decreased by 32% in the 1993-2003 period in real terms (Groisman & García de Fanelli, 2009). Fourth, the merit-pay program incentivized full-time researchers (without teaching load) to teach at public universities. Although the aim of the program is to increase research activities, the merit-pay program is based on the assumption that research directly and indirectly enhances the quality of teaching. As stated earlier, the program incentivized more full-time researchers to teach undergraduate courses, thereby increasing the number of faculty members available in public universities. As with every policy, the program had its share of unintended consequences. Studies (Araujo, 2001, 2003) have found that the program promoted an intensification of the academic work rather than a professionalization of professors. Unfortunately, the incentive was not paired with necessary infrastructure and investment in research grants needed to generate innovative research. The increasing pressures ‘to publish or perish’ caused an increase in fraudulent behaviors such as plagiarism, publication of the same article with incorporation of minor changes in other outlets, misrepresentation of information in curricula vitae (CVs), falsification of diplomas, among others (Araujo, 2001, 2003). Some link those practices to the implementation of the program. The program was implemented without building the capacity to increase research output, not only concerning infrastructure but also in professors’ training. The latest data released by the Secretariat of University Policies (2012) show that only 9.6% of public university professors hold a doctoral degree. It would be possible to venture that this percentage was even lower when the program was created in 1993. Due to its implementation, an emphasis on research activities in academics without prior record of conducting research may have shifted the focus from teaching undergraduate courses to research, thus reducing the time spent in teaching activities. The focus on outputs, measured as the number of publications in journals and books, has generated a movement away from the humanities and social sciences paradigm towards that one of the natural and physical sciences. As Ghoshal (2005) stresses, there has been an attempt made by some social sciences such as

8 Except for a few elite private universities, the private sector focuses on teaching rather than research activities, in most cases hiring professors on a part-time basis and with lower salaries than in public universities.

9 Many Latin American universities, specifically public universities in Argentina have followed a professional, also called Napoleonic, model. This professional model refers to an emphasis in a secular, pragmatic, and state-oriented conception that has the mission of training professionals and public administrators (Clark, 1983). For instance, most early public universities in Argentina focused on professional fields such as law, accountancy, and medicine (Krotsch, 2001).

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economics to become more like the physical sciences, resulting in several limitations. In the case of the merit-pay system established in Argentina, the performance assessments tended to set the standards for the number of publications or structure of research projects reflected in the “hard” sciences, which have a particular logic for the number of publications that does not fit the way knowledge is produced and disseminated in the social sciences. This policy was highly innovative in the context that it took place. Before the higher education reform, Argentine higher education institutions, specifically universities, benefited from high levels of autonomy. For instance, before the establishment of the accreditation agency, universities created programs without the need to meet minimum standards. The introduction of a merit-pay program in Argentina is another step toward making universities and professors accountable. These types of programs already existed in other Latin American countries. For instance, Mexico established its program in 1984 and Venezuela in 1990. A possible explanation for the large number of professors who participate in the program is the fact that it is a peer-driven accountability policy. Peers are the ones evaluating the credentials and the quality of the research output, and they assign categories to other professors. Although the program has not kept pace with inflation and thus has lost the financial incentive component, the program has become a symbol of status (Araujo, 2003). Most professors highlight the category that they achieved in their CVs and academic presentations.

5. Policy Recommendations

In the long term, establish and enforce intertemporal agreements. Educational policies, like other major public policies, require long-term agreements among different parties to prevent the dismantling of past policies. Lack of continuity and consistency hinders the positive effects of accountability. Generate mechanisms to enhance policy enforcement. In many cases highlighted in this report, policies have been enacted but lacked enforcement. Build capacity in the bureaus that produce data. As exemplified in this document through the GDP investment in education and the law establishing a minimum of 180 class days, reliable data are critical to designing, monitoring, and assessing public policy. Make data publicly available and easily accessible to different stakeholders. Generate more links between non-educational social policies, such as conditional cash transfers, and education. As shown in this report, they may enhance monitoring and enforcement. Because Argentine accountability systems tend to be weak and only a few actors are made accountable, increase the number and diversity of actors that are held accountable for policy targets. The implementation of the CCT scheme in Argentina shows that holding parents responsible for school attendance has positive effects on the likelihood that students will enroll and stay in school.

6. References

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