Peru

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SPES has seen notable expansion since the mid-1990s, both in terms of the number of educational institutions and enrollments, due to growth in demand and a very varied supply of private, for-profit and non-profit educational institutions, such as result of the implementation of regulations designed to attract private investment in education. This growth occurred in the absence of an institutional framework that would guarantee the academic quality of these institutions. This process was particularly accelerated in the first decades of the 21st century.

The institutions that provide higher education are publicly and privately managed, the latter in its associative (non-profit) and corporate (for-profit) forms. Higher education is free in public institutions.

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From the creation of the National University of San Marcos, in the 16th century, until the 19th century, there were 6 public universities in Peru throughout the country. In the first 70 years of the 20th century, 24 universities were created, 14 public and 10 private. The State promoted the expansion of private universities in response to the growth of the urban country, the State apparatus and the middle class in this period. Between 1970 and 1990, 21 universities were created, 8 public and 13 private. In the last 10 years of the 20th century (1990-2000), 22 universities were created: 5 public and 17 private. Subsequently, while private institutions increased, state investment in higher education decreased, in a continuous process of reducing annual expenditure per student. From the 1990s to the present, there has been a rapid expansion in the provision of higher education, both public and private: while at the beginning of 1990 there were 49 universities, in 2015 there were 132, of which 42 were public universities and 90 private universities (50 for-profit and 40 non-profit). Of the 80 universities created between 1990 and 2015, 83% are private.

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In the last two decades, SPES has seen the greatest growth, consisting of 94 Universities, 834 Technological Institutes, 184 Pedagogical Institutes, 32 Artistic Training Schools and 1803 Productive Technical Education Centers; These four constitute the non-university productive technical higher education sector. In 2020, 2.1 million people were registered with SPES. The annual number of applicants to universities increased from 381 thousand in 2000 to 805 thousand in 2015. Universities (public and private) are responsible for around 66% of enrollments; technological and pedagogical institutes by around 21% and CETPROs by 11%. Teacher training for pre-school, primary and secondary education is carried out at teacher training institutes (ISP) and universities' faculties of education.

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SPES is a system differentiated by the type of management of institutions (public and private), by its organization, financing, governance and professional development of teachers, among other aspects. The accelerated process of expansion of higher education in the last 30 years is based on a set of public and private institutions, most of them recently created, which constitute a very heterogeneous and concentrated educational offer in terms of geography and undergraduate courses, in the case of universities. There is a diversification within the university system that may be generating, in the opinion of experts, greater differentiation between social groups; and, in terms of the links between the university and the labor market, a process of reproduction of social inequalities may be underway.