Doctorate education in Chile: The race to increase the production of doctorate holders and the obsession of quantifying quality

ABSTRACT

The historical development of Chile’s doctoral education is closely tied to its semi-peripheral position in the world economy. Drawing from secondary data and historical sources on the development of doctoral education, we conducted a critical analysis of the different phases of doctoral education within the last 70 years, paying special attention to the reforms implemented in the last 15 years. Our analysis revealed that Chile’s doctoral education is going through a phase of rapid expansion of doctoral enrolment, internationalisation, and quantification of academic quality, responding to the paradigm of the knowledge economy. Particularly, we argue that the emphasis on quantifying the quality of doctoral education unintentionally undermines the potential of doctoral education to support the processes of scientific and technological knowledge creation that truly address the most pressing issues of Chilean society.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• Chile
• knowledge economy
• accreditation

Acknowledgments

The elaboration of his articles was supported by the projects ANID/FONDECYT 3210600, ANID/FONDECYT 11200429 and ANID/FONDAP 15130009.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The elaboration of this article was supported by the projects ANID/FONDECYT 3210600, ANID/FONDECYT 11200429 and ANID/FONDAP 15130009.

Notes on contributors

Roxana Chiappa

Roxana Chiappa is an assistant professor at the Universidad de Tarapacá; a research associate at Rhodes University; and an adjunct researcher at the Center for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion. Her research agenda examines how scientific and higher education systems (re)produce structural inequalities among countries, institutions, and societal groups.

Julio Labraña

Julio Labraña is an assistant professor at the Universidad de Tarapacá and the director of the office of quality and institutional research at the same institution. His research agenda analyzes the transformation of Chilean public universities in the context of increasing quantification. He also has written extensively about sociology of higher education, history of education, and organisational analysis.