Chile: State, markets and institutions in Higher Education
Presentación de base utilizada para la conferencia de despedida de la Cátedra Andrés Bello, Facultad de Letras, Leiden University, 19 marzo 2008
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Brief introduction
The topic I will address this afternoon is Higher Education. In particular, the organization and functioning of Chile’s Higher Education System and its changing relations with the State and markets; that is, how these different forces --institutions, state authority and the market determine, through their interaction, the way in which a Higher Education system is coordinated.
Higher Education, as we all know, is a vital component of societies, also in developing countries.
Not only does Higher Education create the advanced human capital needed for development --professionals, technicians and researchers across the different disciplines, but universities also produce knowledge in a multitude of fields and, in democratic societies, they provide a more or less protected social space for independent inquiry and for the free examination of the more contested public issues.
As you will immediately see, the focus of my presentation is on Higher Education systems, not individual universities, the academic profession or students.
First, I will briefly introduce some basic facts and trends of Chile’s HE system, highlighting its major changes during the last 25 years and most distinctive features when compared with other HE systems.
In the second part I will try to comparatively assess the relative performance and an outcome of Chile’s HE, looking at variables such as:
• the provision of learning opportunities and the equality or inequality in their social distribution
• the quality and efficiency of HE institutions, and
• the various modalities and instruments used by the Government to finance universities and support students.
Finally, and very shortly, I will mention some of the key policy challenges that our HE system must meet in order to fulfill its functions in the present stage of development of Chilean society.
Recursos asociados
Chile’s Higher Education System: a comparative political economy focus November 2007
El sistema de educación superior en Chile: un enfoque de economía política comparada, Noviembre 2007
Chilean Higher Education: Tradition, Control and Market, August 2005 [with A. Tillett]
Publicado por: jjbrunner