Chile Will Vote on Free Tuition

[Judi Lynn]

Many details of the proposal are unclear. The plan has support from students and the left, but conservatives aren’t expected to back the plan.

Tom Williams for Times Higher Education
July 7, 2022

A vote on whether Chile will accept a radical new constitution that enshrines bold commitments to higher education reform is said to be on a knife’s edge as the crucial poll approaches.

The Times Higher Education logo, with a red T, a purple H and a blue E.Public universities would be made free as part of the wide-ranging changes to the system, which currently boasts some of the highest tuition rates in South America.

A draft of the document was finalized by a constitutional assembly outside the formal political structures, but its success is seen as being inextricably linked to the fate of new president Gabriel Boric, one of the leaders of the 2011 student movement that called for the market-based education system installed by Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1980s to be dismantled.

Critics said it was far from clear how the changes would work in practice or how the cost of the commitments could be met, particularly as the government has also promised to cancel student debt and to increase funding for research from the current 0.4 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent.

More:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/07/07/chileans-will-vote-free-tuition