Winthrop Carty (1997) Challenges to Academic Networks in Latin America: The Case of Colombia's Red CETCOL

Resumen

Academic networks, the venues for electronically shared research and teaching for the higher education community, play a crucial role in the development of Information Infrastructures. These Information Infrastructures are becoming increasingly vital to a nation's economic and social well being. However, all sectors, from education to agriculture, are now vulnerable to obscurity and obsolescence by the global economy if they can't access and share in the dynamic developments crossing the global information highway.

Colombia, as with most countries in Latin America, has an effort underway to develop an extensive academic communications and research network, called Red CETCOL. The findings of this paper illustrate that CETCOL's use among the country's universities has been inconsistent; significant geographic and institutional disparities exist in the network's diffusion in Colombia. This paper will identify and analyze these disparities and, drawing from the broader Latin American experience with academic network and Information Infrastructure efforts, will define three barriers to successful academic networking in Latin America: 1. Crisis in Latin American higher education; 2. Public policy failure which pits PTTs (national communications utilities) against academic networks; 3. Centralization and the need to develop a culture of information.

Enlaces

URL: http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/devnat/nations/colombia/challenge/#

Wayback Machine:https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www4.csudh.edu/cbapp/index