The beginning of free university education in Chile
The beginning of free university education in Chile
Alexis Cortés 18 April 2016
Free university education was a central demand of the Chilean student protests in 2011. Why was the student movement so successful and where does it go from here?
The “Chilean winter” in 2011 was the largest social mobilization in this country since the end of the dictatorship in 1990. In a time of global mobilization, the Chilean student movement attracted the attention of the world because they were challenging the commodification of education in a mature neoliberal society with little participation of social stakeholders.
The Chilean university system, despite its recent widespread growth, is known to be one of the most privatized and expensive in Latin America with high rates of student debt and a tendency to reproduce social inequality. As a result, the students’ claim of transformation of education from a private consumer good to a social right garnered important support in the Chilean society.
This changed the political agenda and influenced the presidential election of 2013, namely in the political project of Michelle Bachelet. Her government now aims to enact this promised program inspired by the claims of the 2011 student movement: public, free and quality education, starting the gradual elimination of university tuition.
Thus, since March of this year, 50% of the poorer students will access superior education without tax in the state universities and some private universities willing to accept the government’s conditions of public funding. At the end of this government’s term in 2018, the expectation of the Secretary of Education is that free education will be extended to 70% of students in the same institutions.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/alexis-cort-s/beginning-of-free-university-education-in-chile
