Collaboration among Macro-Universities. Linking Latin American and the Caribbean Public Universities

Historically, Latin American universities have been connected to their countries’ political and social development processes, sometimes as social catalysts. A series of shared characteristics and traits have been highlighted, identifying the prominent higher education institutions (HEIs) in the region as Macro-Universities. All these factors resulted in the creation of the Latin American and the Caribbean Public Macro-Universities Network, created in 2002 following an initiative by UNAM and the Central University of Venezuela, as a space for regional integration where universities promote collaboration by contributing experiences and solutions to common challenges.

The five characteristics outlined in its Statutes (which can be found at http://www.redmacro.unam.mx/antecedentes.html) are discussed below to understand the reasons behind the Network and its designation as Macro-Universities.¹

They are the most representative institutions in their country regarding the social demand they address
Although they are considered the most significant because of their number of students, the concept of macro-university is not limited to the size of the enrollment because, above all, the number of enrolled students indicates that they are the primary source of access to higher education. Given the economic conditions in the region, many people would only be able to access a degree or undergraduate studies through this model of public universities. What also happens a posteriori is that these universities are a main factor in social mobility.

THE CONCEPT OF MACRO-UNIVERSITY IS NOT LIMITED TO ENROLLMEN, BUT ALSO THAT THEY ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION

They cover all areas of knowledge in science and technology, social sciences and humanities, arts, culture, and history, and they lead these areas
They stand out because, among their substantive functions and tasks, they include the dissemination and promotion of culture and the arts. Previously, it was perceived that macro-universities were known for their emphasis on social sciences and humanities, but the reality is that they have always been training professionals in the so-called “hard sciences”. It is important to note that, in the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, innovations that have emerged from the laboratories of these universities’ biomedical and technological disciplines have been made known.

They develop their research and postgraduate tasks in most national and regional scientific activities
Public universities have distinguished themselves as the main seedbeds for training research professionals, which is also a natural consequence of macro-universities’ well-established graduate and post-graduate systems. As a result, these universities carry out the most significant percentage of national research. Consequently, their countries governments entrust them with the operation and hosting of several national research systems, as in the case of UNAM, which is in charge of Mexico’s National Seismological Service, the National Astronomical Observatory, the National Botanical Garden, the National Library, the National Newspaper Archive, the National Tide Charting Network, the National Herbarium, three ecological reserves, the monitoring of the Popocatepetl volcano and 40 national laboratories recognized by the National Council of Humanities, Science, and Technology (CONAHCYT).

They concentrate the most significant percentage of the national budgets for higher education
Their primary funding comes from the budgetary allocation that the governments of each country issue to the public education system (in the Mexican case, three percent of the national GDP was issued in 2023). In this sense, two readings are considered; on the one hand, access to higher education is covered by taxes paid by citizens, who then see their contribution reflected in the training of future professionals and researchers and all teaching and cultural dissemination activities carried out by universities. On the other hand, it is essential to consider how small this percentage is, considering the importance and resonance of the actions that take place every day in the classrooms and laboratories of these education institutions. For this reason, it is crucial to address the limitations that need to be remedied in the region’s universities and also very important not to normalize the fact that a lot can be done with little economic support.

MACRO-UNIVERSITIES SHARE INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION PLATFORMS, REGARDING BOTH VIRTUAL AND HYBRID MODALITIES

They protect and develop an essential historical and cultural heritage
By training —and therefore having— experts and qualified people in the conservation and restoration of assets considered historical and cultural heritage, macro-universities also play the role of guardians of the historical memory that accounts for the social processes that each country has undergone and that shape the cultural identity of each nation. Without the advice and intervention of these specialists, we would lose those windows to past times where our imagination can have a glimpse that helps reconstruct the social contexts that each country has passed through in its different historical stages and thus be able to better recognize ourselves as part of a specific society with our customs and traditions.

Based on these common characteristics, 37 universities from 20 Latin American countries currently comprise the Macro-Universities Network, which aims to encourage “cooperation between universities to create shared academic programs that contribute to the education of postgraduate students and to identify collaborative research areas directly linked to the region’s social context and specific issues”. The participation of university communities has been encouraged “through the Postgraduate Mobility Program, which seeks to support the internationalization of the network’s members, strengthening the academic capacities of the most important universities across Latin America” (Red de Macrouniversidades, 2021).

With support from the Santander bank, the Macro-Universities Network has released nine calls for applications for the Postgraduate Mobility Program, highlighting the significance of mobility among academic communities in our region. For the 10^th call, published in 2019, a new system was achieved where member universities finance the mobility stays of their own students, which ratifies the importance of the program for Latin American universities, as it provides a framework for collaboration for the training of professionals and researchers in the Macro-Universities.
STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONALIZATION
In November 2020, during the 10th Macro-Universities Network’s Rectors General Assembly, Enrique Graue Wiechers, UNAM’s Rector was elected president of the network until mid-September 2023. In that occasion he proposed to strengthen the cooperation for the internationalization of member universities.

Following the worldwide declaration of the health emergency due to COVID-19, the Postgraduate Mobility Program was severely affected. For this reason, the presidency’s main actions led by UNAM aimed to promote collaboration among researchers from member universities to take advantage of the situation and improve communication for exchanging knowledge and experiences on teaching and research, during —and especially— after the pandemic. Likewise, the possibility of sharing information on educational innovation platforms was promoted, contemplating virtual and hybrid modalities.

To strengthen cooperation between macrouniversities, from 2020 to 2022, five seminars and meetings were held with specialists in diverse knowledge areas and topics: ICTs in Universities of the Macro Network; Vaccination against COVID-19 in Latin America; Actions for Gender Equality in Latin American and the Caribbean Macro-Universities; Macro-Universities Central Libraries; Virtual Microscope Project.

Initially, holding these meetings allowed academic specialists in these topics to get to know each other, identify areas of interest, and see the joint efforts they are developing in their field of research. These meetings also allowed other universities to identify areas where they could implement systems, platforms, or work schemes to improve support for their faculty and students. Additionally, these meetings facilitated sharing resources, including openly available materials and those created by the participants.

As a result of the identification of common interests and efforts, three working groups were established, which have produced results from the projects as described below:

1. The Macro-Universities Network Libraries microsite (https://bibmacro.dgb.unam.mx/), was developed so that the university communities of the network can access open-access information resources available in member institutions’ libraries. Access to these resources is not limited to member universities because they are in the open-access model, which benefits any user who can find them through the Internet.
2. Macro-Training in Artificial Intelligence (MeIA) (https://www.taller-tic.redmacro.unam.mx/MeIA/). Derived from an ambitious 2021 study on the situation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the macro-universities (see Red de Macrouniversidades, 2022), as well as from the “Advances, Reflections and Prospects of ICT Cooperation in Macro-Universities” workshop held by the National University of Colombia in November 2022 (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2022), the ICTs and computer systems specialists group of the macro-universities developed teaching modules for the participation of workshop participants and students. Held in virtual modality, they allowed registration of 1500 macro-universities’ students to develop and perfect their skills in artificial intelligence for three weeks. Students must devise solutions to everyday problems, such as estimating the levels of sargassum on beaches through image analysis, classifying species from DNA sequences, or automatically identifying crime reports in social networks. Results were presented at the last Rectors General Assembly, where a project to select MeIA students to carry out a mobility stay under the research advising of another university of the network to broaden their learning was proposed.
3. The Virtual Microscopy Portal aims to access prepared microscope slide collections through digital resources. These are not simple low-resolution images, so a high-resolution prepared microscope slide scanner is required to obtain high-resolution images, which means that these uncompressed images can reach a size of tens of gigabytes. Even so, this is cheaper than purchasing and maintaining microscopes and generating and maintaining collections of preparations.

Each of these projects shows the exchange of research knowledge between universities and horizontal cooperation to solve identical problems in different societies and contexts.

37 UNIVERSITIES FROM 20 LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES COMPRISE THE MACROUNIVERSITIES NETWORK

LESSONS LEARNT
Within the framework of the Macro-Universities Network, the pandemic represented a turning point for the implementation of technological tools. Also, it highlighted the lags and differences between the different social realities that coexist in our own countries. However, one of the substantive lessons was that it was necessary to work together to overcome the challenges brought about by the pandemic.

In this sense, it was necessary to change the internationalization paradigm so that more focus was placed on developing international collaborative research programs. Contributions to the solution of global problems were privileged since it is increasingly understood that we are all impacted by global warming.

Finally, it is instructive to note the small turnaround experienced in the Macro-Universities Network under UNAM’s leadership during the recent pandemic. UNAM promoted the reflection on internationalization strategies; mainly understood by most of the network’s member as efforts that favor an individual approach as they were focused on student mobility (individuals) and left aside internationalization of the higher education system itself (HEIs), which requires to strengthen virtual internationalization. There is now a greater need for internationalization of the curriculum and joint research, mainly because contemporary studies and analyses are beginning to indicate that these strategies are precisely the ones with the most significant potential to transform higher education. Citing the study by Jocelyne Gacel-Ávila for the University of Guadalajara (2021):

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