Elizabeth Balbachevsky is an associate professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), in the Department of Political Science and a scientific coordinator in the Centre for Public Policy Research (NUPP) at USP. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of São Paulo (1995). She is associated to the Higher Education Group (University of Tampere, Finland), and a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Master's Programme in Research and Innovation in Higher Education (MARIHE) and Professor of Systems in Transition. She is the regional editor for Latin America of the new Encyclopaedia of Higher Education (Dordrecht, Springer). Between 2005 and 2006, she was a Fulbright Scholar in the New Century Scholars Program, conducting a comparative study on the impact of globalisation on higher education policies in emerging countries.
Javier Botero Álvarez is Lead Education Specialist for Latin America at the World Bank. Before joining the World Bank, he served in several leadership positions in education in Colombia. He started the Research and Special Studies Centre at the Escuela Colombiana de Ingeniería, where he served as provost and president. He was Vice-Minister of Education in 2002. He was also the country’s first Vice-Minister for Higher Education from 2002- 2007 and 2010-2012. Prior to his time in public service, he held several academic and research positions including at the University of Freiburg in Germany, Escuela Colombiana de Ingeniería in Bogotá, the University of Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Atomic and Molecular Data Unit at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and the University of Ulm in Germany. He gained a PhD in Physics from Louisiana State University in 1986.
Pablo Landoni-Couture is a Uruguayan researcher of higher education, Dean of the Instituto Universitario Asociación Cristiana de Jóvenes (YMCA University Institute - Uruguay) and a Professor at the Catholic University of Uruguay. He obtained a Master’s in Public Administration from Cornell University and a Doctorate in Law and Social Sciences from the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). He is an affiliated scholar of the Program for Research on Private Higher Education (PROPHE) - Department of Education Administration and Policy Studies - State University of New York at Albany. Pablo's most recent research focuses on higher education system governance and the role of the state in private sector higher education. He was a Fulbright New Century Scholar in Higher Education for the years 2005 - 2006 and is currently a member of the Board of Alumni Uruguay.
Thomas Weko is a senior analyst at the OECD specialising in higher education. He coordinated the review. He worked on OECD’s Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society in 2005-2006, and subsequently served in the US Department of Education, first as Associate Commissioner for Postsecondary, Adult, and Career Education at the National Center for Education Statistics, and then as Director of the Policy and Program Studies Service. He previously worked at the Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board, at the US Government Accountability Office, and as a university professor.
Simon Roy is an analyst at the OECD, with a background in international higher education policy. He joined the OECD in 2017 from the European Commission, where he was a policy officer in DG Education and Culture's higher education policy team. During his time at the Commission, Simon worked on analysis and policy co-operation activities involving EU Member States and partner countries, including in the fields of higher education funding, performance measurement and graduate skills and employability. He coordinated preparation of the Commission's most recent Communication on higher education, focused on EU cooperation in the field and published in May 2017.