A brief history of the foundation of an emblematic university in the rain forest of Ecuador and an innovative approach to the design and planning of academic program curricula for Latin America

The marginal role of higher education in Latin America led to technological dependency, poor economic growth, and social inequity.  In the article, we discuss the challenging context in which higher education in Latin America developed and explain the motives behind the creation of a public university in the tropical rain forest of Ecuador. New and reformed higher education institutions in Latin America require innovative approaches to design academic programs and implement novel educational paradigms. We propose a quantitative and unorthodox method for analyzing the structure of program curricula in this historical and social context. This approach highlights the need for strategic academic planning and informed public policies. The inherent variation in program curricula across universities can be systematized in a presence-absence matrix, with courses and academic programs as columns and rows. By representing the patterns of variation in curricular structure across universities in the space provided by canonical axes, new perspectives arise which can lead to the development of further discussions towards optimal and innovative academic programs. The methods presented could be extended into the study of how academic disciplines, fields of study, and conceptual approaches to the design of program curricula vary and are structured across sociocultural contexts.