At a Crossroads Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean

In the pursuit of growth and equity, no country can afford to ignore higher education. this study, the authors research three important aspects of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean: quality, variety, and equity. A good higher education system offers quality, variety, and equity to maximize students’ potential given their innate ability, interests, motivation, and academic readiness at the end of high school. In addition, this study focuses mostly on the private returns to higher education. Although higher education yields returns to society as a whole, for data-related and technical reasons the authors restrict the scope to private returns.