La economía política de la regulación en el Perú: el caso del sistema universitario

The paper provides the main challenges that the regulatory Peruvian system of higher education is currently facing, within a context that features weakened public universities and rapidly expanding for-profit private institutions, which have developed strong links in the political arena. Evidence of poor performance of the system led to growing concerns and a new University Law was enacted in 2014. As a result, a new regulatory agency --the Superintendencia de Educación Superior Universitaria (SUNEDU) – was created, which is expected to require all the universities to comply with quality standards, as a condition to licensing.Our study also presents a brief summary of the literature on the functioning of markets in higher education, which underscores structural changes in financing as well as the nature and depth of market failures. We also analyze the development of the Peruvian university system, and provide a typology based on legal structure, governance and quality. We find that the market share of for-profit private universities in terms of enrollment is already higher than the share of public universities. Furthermore, we analyze the institutional design of SUNEDU, highlighting strengths and weaknesses, in order to assess its ability to cope with political pressures from interest groups. Finally, we show that the effectiveness of regulation is highly dependent on support from other governmental agencies, particularly from the Treasury and the Tax Collection Agency (SUNAT).