What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal policies to reform their higher education systems. This report compares the development and impact of those policies within three main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and business-like trends that private academia is experiencing and, finally, (3) it discusses how all this has created tensioning situations with assessment and accrediting agencies to ensure quality in their private higher education systems. This study shows that private higher education is facing the following challenges in both nations: (1) an uncritical implementation of neoliberal policies, (2) that there is a very unregulated legislation that has allowed many private institutions to profit within loopholes in the law, (3) that quality has become a central concern and some of the mechanisms applied to correct it have not been effective, showing a lack of a comprehensive system of quality assessment, and (4) that enrolment has grown but with several mismatches that challenge the initial goal of advancing economic development through human resources capacities. Alternative policies are discussed.

Keywords:

• Latin American higher education
• quality controls
• accreditation
• private higher education
• expenditures

Notes

1. It is generally assumed that neoliberalism policies have promoted the following principles: (1) private property a key factor for economic development, (2) minimum government intervention over economic and social issues and (3) reduction and control of public spending (the less, the better).

2. Traditionally, several Latin American public universities have had free and open enrolment working as a social equaliser.

3. These changes were a consequence of both neoliberal policies that the so-called ‘Chicago Boys’ (economists trained in the University of Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s) implemented from 1981, and the structural and post-structural strategies that the International Monetary Fund and the WB promoted in Chile (Espinoza 2002, 2008).

4. Before 1981, the Chilean government covered approximately 80.0% of institutional expenditure. The other institutional funds were generated through services and tuition fees.

5. Among the six privately controlled but publicly funded universities, two were run by the Catholic Church and the other four were run by non-profit and philanthropic organisations. All of them started receiving public funding after the 1966 reform led by former president Eduardo Frei Montalva. In the mid-1970s, the Chilean government opted for funding non-profit private institutions of good quality instead of creating its own universities as a way to supply the increasing demand for higher education.

6. Universities offer undergraduate and graduate programmes; professional institutes can only grant professional diplomas that do not need a previous academic qualification (academic degree); and technical training centers can only award degrees oriented to technical needs.

7. Direct Public Support represented the central component of the Chilean higher education financing policy until 1981 and continues to be a major source of revenue for publicly funded universities. This is a grant allocation provided by the State reserved exclusively for the 25 ‘traditional’ universities (currently this includes 16 public and 9 privately controlled but publicly funded institutions), which are part of CRUCH; they can spend these funds as they wish. The 1981 law, however, did allow private institutions to receive indirect public funds when recruiting students with the 27,500 highest scores in the University Selection Test (Prueba de Selección Universitaria, PSU).

8. Accrediting agency. See more details at: http://www.akredita.cl

9. According to Silas (2013) middle-profile institutions have at least one accreditation but not comprehensive policies to ensure quality at institutional level.

10. For instance, to finish a degree in journalism, on average, students may incur costs that can range from US$ 34,000 to US$ 52,000 (156 basic salaries), depending on the type of payment system and loan the student chooses. For medicine, they may pay between US$ 74,000 and US$ 120,000 (381 basic salaries) (Espinoza and Gonzalez 2011b).