Conference Participant: Were the people in Mexico cognizant of the struggle? Was the network self-aware?

Mark Hillon: From reading through the experience of Mexico, it seems in the beginning they weren’t aware of the nature of the system. When you see what it took to get SEAM established in Mexico, you have to look at our own situation here to see whether we’ll encounter some of the same issues. The most obvious one that stands out in their experience is the culture of higher education. Fernandez Rubalcaba found an autocratic system with structures that actually blocked people from fulfilling their job obligations and the result in their case was waiting for something to happen to relieve that barrier. They also noted that one of the key competencies in short supply among the faculty was research methods, the ability to conduct this type of social science research. That is surprisingly what you see in a lot of programs here.