State Roles in Higher Education Governance: Latin American Insights for the Global South

ABSTRACT Higher education governance in the Global South develops unevenly, yet how states manage diverse market‐driven systems remains poorly understood. This article examines how five Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico—have redefined the state's roles, based on a comparative analysis of documents and a framework highlighting five key functions: system design, promotion, regulation, evaluation and financing. The research finds that governance pathways are shaped more by how these functions are connected than by their mere presence. The resulting configurations vary significantly, reflecting different government policy‐making abilities and diverse historical paths. These patterns are seen as signs of structural hybridity—where state guidance, market growth and institutional autonomy coexist—a phenomenon that, as public policy literature shows, extends beyond higher education. The study provides a transferable analytical framework for examining state guidance across the Global South.