Chile

In Chile, and according to the Undersecretary of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC, 2022), the higher education system is understood as tertiary education, consisting of four types of institutions:

​

a) Universities;

b) Professional Institutes;

c) Technical Training Centers and;

d) Higher Education Institutions of the Armed Forces.

​

These institutions are the only ones authorized to offer higher-level technical degrees, professional titles and academic titles, forming, as a whole, a system that has approximately 1.2 million students.

​

In general, it can be said that the higher education system is organized through highly differentiated paths. Thus, while universities are the institutions that can grant professional degrees and all types of academic degrees, especially bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, they are also the only institutions that can grant professional degrees for which it is necessary to have previously obtained a bachelor's degree (with the exception of the title of lawyer, granted by the Supreme Court), Professional Institutes can only grant professional diplomas in careers that do not require a bachelor's degree, as well as higher-level technical diplomas. Finally, Technical Training Centers can only grant higher-level technical diplomas and do not have the right to grant academic degrees. In this way, the system is structured through these three channels which, although they have certain communication and linking channels, are generally conceived as parallel channels (Salazar and Rifo, 2021). In 2022, there were 50 Technical Training Centers in operation, with 131,758 students. Of these, 13 are accredited, representing 86.0% of total CFT enrollments. Of these, 15 CFTs are state-owned with academic activities with an enrollment of more than 8,700 people. Regarding professional institutes, there are 32 institutions with an enrollment of 397,705 students. Finally, there are 58 universities (40 private) with an enrollment of 772,462 people, representing more than 40% of total enrollment in higher education.

​

In terms of institutional and organizational processes, the higher education system in Chile has undergone three main transformations during the last five decades. Firstly, it is a system that has experienced constant growth, going from an elitist system that served less than 5% of students to a highly mass system, which incorporates more than 60% of students who complete secondary education. (Kuzmanic, et al., 2023), placing Chile as one of the OECD countries with the highest enrollment rate in higher education (Guzmán-Valenzuela and Rojas-Murphy, 2024). Secondly, the country's tertiary education system is experiencing a process of privatization and commercialization of Higher Education. This process began with structural reform promoted by the military dictatorship at the beginning of the eighties of the last century. This gave rise to a competitive market for educational institutions and favored an increase in private investment in higher education, to the detriment of a decrease in public spending (Quaresma, et al., 2022), configuring a system that currently has a private enrollment which exceeds 80% of total enrollment in higher education. Finally, the Chilean higher education system, although it has reduced access gaps by socioeconomic level, has registered a strong heterogenization of its offer, which has given rise to a dual system of higher education, in which students' experiences vary significantly in function of their social origin and the institutions they access (Quaresma and Villalobos, 2022).

​

In this way, the Chilean educational system presents a vertical stratification, reflected in the differentiated prestige of different types of institutions. Finally, the exponential growth of private higher education has led to an increase in its economic benefits, mainly through fees and payments imposed on students. In this model oriented towards the market economy, students become responsible for financing their own education (Quaresma, 2023). Thus, as a result of educational policies that favor market deregulation, the higher education system in Chile has caused families to have greater expenses for their children's education (Bellei and Villalobos, 2023).