The internationalization of higher education in the Americas is mostly talk with little action, concluded delegates at a joint congress in Mexico's second-largest city. More than 300 university administrators, professors, and education specialists from throughout the region and Europe met in Guadalajara last month to promote inter-American collaboration among universities. But most of the discussion centered on the obstacles to integration in a region with huge disparities, both within and among countries' higher-education systems. Participants at the Guadalajara conference noted that the biggest contrast in quality is between the two economic powerhouses, Canada and the United States, and the rest of the area. But there are also major differences between countries like Argentina and Mexico, where most students attend public universities, and the rest of Latin America, where private institutions--many of them so-called junk universities--account for a majority of higher-education enrollment. Latin America has the lowest rate of student mobility in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world's 30 most industrialized nations. The few students who do go abroad tend to head to Europe or north of the Rio Grande. Still, Latin Americans account for just 10 percent of the foreign college students in the United States each year. In the 2007-2008 academic year, about 624,000 foreign students attended college in the United States. While Latinos make up 15 percent of the U.S. population, they account for only 5 percent of the Americans who study abroad each year. About 242,000 Americans studied abroad in the 2006-2007 academic year. The amount of scholarly exchange and research collaboration in the Americas is also extremely low. However, there are some signs of progress. Some 80 universities and international agencies met in Panama last year to discuss creating a Latin American academic coalition, with unified accreditation and credit-exchange systems. The inter-American Organization for Higher Education, which is leading the effort, is now concentrating on bringing the region's education ministers on board.