Higher education policies in Chile in the 90s

Pergamon

Hi,qhrr Education Policy, Vol. 9, No. 1. pp. 2943, 1996 Copyright 1; 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain, All rights reserved 095228733196 $15.00+0.00

Higher education policies in Chile in the 908 Cristian Cox* Fmultad

Latinoamericana

de Ciencias Sociales,

Santiqo

de Chile, Chile

INTRODUCTION Higher education in Chile experienced a deep-seated reform during the past decade as a result of measures enacted by the military government at the beginning of the eighties that altered the structure of the system, its coordination, and finance. From state control to open market was the direction of the sea-changes effected by what was in fact an authoritarian regime. Having an unprecedented concentration of power and a decade for implementation, the Government succeeded in redrawing the boundaries and inner principles of the system according to what nowadays is the neoliberal agenda of reform in higher education.? Notwithstanding the authoritarian features of the origins of the reform, its ruling principles and the structure it established have not been opposed by the democratic governments of the present decade. These, however, have introduced significant financial changes and attempted, unsuccessfully so far, to improve the coordination structure of the system, counterbalancing the weight of market forces with a state proactive stance regarding academic quality and equity in their social distribution features. The purpose of this article is to characterize the Reform of the 1980s and its effects upon the structure, governance and finance of the system; describe changes introduced in the higher education system during the 1990s as a result of the democratic governments’ policies; and refer briefly to what here is considered to be the main issue of the present: the policy and legal framework for the system as a whole.

THE Until 1980, Chile’s comprising two state res0urces.t Financing enrollment in 1980 of with only four of these entirely on the public

1980 REFORM

higher education system consisted of one tier and one sector and six private universities which were funded by public of this small and relatively homogeneous system (with an 116,000) of universities which imparted teaching in all areas, undertaking most of the research of the country, rested almost treasury. Its modality of allocation was based on incremental

*My thanks to Beatrice Avalos, Maria Jose Lemaitre and Raul Allard, who gave precious time to help me clarify ideas and language. The results are my sole responsability. ‘tThe 1980 Reform of Chile is profusely quoted as an exemplary case by the recent World Bank document Higher Education. The Lessons ofExperience (The World Bank, 1994) :Levy has noted that up to 1980, the Chilean HES was the only system in Latin America which had not experienced ‘privatization waves’, and where the public/private divide between universities had meant symbolic rather than institutional, financial or academic differences between the sectors Levy (1986). 29

30

Cristian

Cox

funding based on previous budget allocations and a distribution formula arranged according to tradition, institutional size, enrollments and additional costs originated by research and postgraduate programs. A tuition free higher education system was the norm and the system worked through selective admission based on the compound results of student scores on a national standardized academic test and their secondary school performance (Brunner and Briones, 1992). The gross enrollment rate in 1980 was 10.8% (Table 4). The 1980 Reform, implemented by central edict and bureaucratic rule, was successful in effecting the following five major changes:* 1. Deregulation in the establishment of new State-sanctioned higher education institutions. Minimal requirements for the establishment of private institutions substituted the former stringent and protracted legal procedures for the creation of universities. And it was further decided that growth in higher education enrollment would have to be taken care mostly by new private institutions. As a result of these policies, a new sector of private institutions rapidly evolved. 2. Diversification of institutions in the higher education system. A three-tiered system, vertically arranged according to the functional hierarchy of their type of awards was established: l Universities: expected to focus on long cycle undergraduate programs (5 years) leading to licenciuturas. They are the only institutions that may offer postgraduate programs and award academic degrees. l Professional Institutes (PIs): restricted to four year programs leading to professional qualifications defined as not requiring the licenciatura l Technical Training Centers (TTCs): restricted to short cycle (2 year) vocational programs leading to technical certificates. Introduction of substantial tuition fees in publicly supported institutions, thus partially transferring the costs of teaching to students and/or their families; and forcing all public institutions to diversify their funding sources. of institutional autonomy to the 14 regional centers of both the main 3. Granting state universities, thus significantly decreasing the size of these. 4. Establishment of a new financing system, based both on direct grants to institutions and on the competition between them for students and research projects. The new system distinguished between a direct, institutional allocation (aporte,fisL.ulclire~to), limited to those institutions in existence before the 1980 reform (8 universities and the 14 new ones established from the former branches of the two national state universities), and an indirect funding program (uportefimzl indirecto), linked to a “best students formula”. This formula was based on the number of top scorers in the previous year’s university entrance test (from a total of 20,000 later broadened to 27,500) who were enrolled in each institution. Different factors were associated with each of five groups of subsidy-carrying students, ranked according to their scores in the referred test: thus, a student belonging to the highest ranking group, “carries” to the institution that enrolls him or her a subsidy 12 times that of a student belonging to the lowest ranking group. In addition,

two new mechanisms

were established:

a Government

financed

*My account of the 1980 Reform closely follows what to my view is the best available and Briones, 1992; also in Brunner, 1993a).

analysis

student-

(Brunner

Higher Table 1: Chilean BEFORE

education

Higher

Education

before and after the 1980 Reform

1980

AFTER

1. One tier, one sector: low institutional differentiation 2. No tuition fees but selective access according to school performance and achievement in national standardized academic test 3. State financing on the basis of incremental funding 4. System coordination provided by State authority and institutional oligarchies

Source: Adapted

from Brunner

loan scheme

and a publicly

Desarrollo

Cient$ico

31

policies in Chile in the 90s

1980

1. Three tiers, two sectors: high institutional differentiation 2. Tuition fees are charged by all institutions. Selective access is maintained in the subsector with institutional public funding. In the private institutions: open access limited by family income 3. Reduced level of state financing and establishment of multiple competitive sources of funding 4. System coordination provided by market and state-policy regulations

and Briones (1992).

financed

y Tecnolbgico,

National Research Fund (Fond0 National de FONDECYT) providing competitive research

funds under peer-review control. The level of state funding to eligible universities and PIs (both state and private which pre-dated 1980),* was drastically reduced, forcing them to supplement their core funding through tuition fees, competition for research funds, and contract funding. No public funding was established for new private institutions until 1989, when the Government allowed them to compete for subsidy-carrying students or aportejscal indirecto.

In 1990, at the time of transition to democracy, both the system level and the institutional and operational effects of the Reform were distinct and all embracing. Table 1 summarizes the changes established by governmental decree-laws at the end of 1980, and then consolidated throughout the following decade, as well as the resulting system coordination

EFFECTS

OF THE

1980 REFORM

AND

POST-1990

POLICIES

During the decade of the eighties, at the system level, major changes took place covering higher education’s structural, financial, and coordination features. As from 1990, when democratic politics resume, new policies, working within frameworks established by the eighties reform but with new directions and emphases, impact upon the higher education system. Three domains of policies and change will be analyzed in their evolution during the 80s and the present decade. A d$fkrentiated

and expanded structure

In a decade, Chile’s higher education went from an eight universities’ based system to a ‘differentiated public plus private system’ (The World Bank, 1994) of 270 institutions and just over 327,000 students in 199.5. As mentioned, the differentiation was both vertical, through the establishment of three levels of functionally diverse institutions, and horizontal, as a sector of new private institutions rapidly evolved, structuring, for the first time in Chile, a higher education system with marked differences along the public/private divide.

*According

to the Decree Laws of 1980. no Technical

Training

Center can have public funding

32

Cristian

Cox

Two situations explain the expansion in number of the higher education institutions that took place during the 1980s. The first of these was the governmental decision in 198 1 to reorganize the Unizjersidud de Chile and the Unkersidud Tecnica de1 Estadoand grant institutional autonomy to its regional centers. Seen from the perspective of the government, this was an attempt to reduce the power of the big universities, and from the perspective of military strategy, it was a means of reducing the risk of nationwide student or university faculty mobilization processes. This process, initiated in 198 1, gave origin to 14 institutions, all of which became universities before 1992. The private sector, provided the second source for the institution-creation. In a context characterized by a permissive licensing system and excess demand, the private sector established forty universities and more than two hundred non-university tertiary institutions. Table 2 portrays the evolution in the number of institutions in the different tiers and sectors of the system between 1980 and 1995.” E,xpansion qf educational opportunities. The largest and most direct effect of changes in the structure of Chilean higher education was the drastic increase in educational opportunities, as enrollments more than doubled between 1980 and 1990. The growth figures speak for themselves: from an enrollment of 116,962 in 1980 to 249,482 in 1990 (113.3% growth). Between 1990 and 1994 the system has expanded 3 1.1%, reaching just over 327,000 students, as shown in Table 3. Expansion in the 1980s was almost entirely accomplished by the non-university private sector, at no cost to the public purse. After 1990, when the political regime changed, growth in enrollments moved exclusively to the university tier, meaning that both the public and the private sector grew, although at very different rates: the universities with public funding, and academically selective, expanded their enrollments 35% between 1990 and 1994, whereas the new, non-selective, private ones, expanded 207.5% in the same period. Increase of enrollments in the publicly funded university tier, for the first time since 1975, may be associated with more assertive state policies regarding loans and scholarships to talented poor students. But more directly, it was due to the institutions’ decision to increase their vacancies in areas

Table 2: Chile: development Institutions Universities With public funding New private, no public funding Professional Institutes With public funding New private, no public funding Technical Training Centers With public funding New private, no public funding Total Source: Division

de Education

Superior

of HE institutions,

1980-1995

1980

1985

1990

1995

8 8

21 18 3 25 6 19 102

60 20 40 82 2 80 168

70 25 45 73 73 127

102 148

168 310

127 270

8 (MINEDUC,

1995)

*Until 1987 there were political restrictions which allowed the creation of only three new private universities. Thus. the leap from 8 to 21 universities between 1980 and 1985, is explained by the creation of IO new public universities which resulted from the reorganization of the two state universities and 3 new private ones. Then, when the change of political regime was a certainty, all restrictions were raised and between 1989 and the first two months of 1990,35 universities were authorized to start programs.

Higher

education

Table 3: Chile: HE enrollment

Universities With public funding New private, no public funding Professional Institutes With public funding New private, no public funding Tech. Training Centers With public funding New private, no public funding Total Source: Division

de Education

33

policies in Chile in the 90s by tiers and sectors

1980

%

1985

%

1990

%

1994

%

116,962 116,962

100.0

118,079 113,128 4951 32,636 18,07 1 14,565 50,425

58.7

52.8

64.7

16.0

211,564 151,570 59,994 38,262

25.1

131,702 112,193 19,509 40,006 6472 33,534 77,774

3 1.2

38,262 77,258

23.6

50,425 201,140

100.0

71,774 249,482

77,258 327,084

100.0

116,962

Superior

100.0

(MINEDUC,

16.2

100.0

11.7

1991).

with more demand and to compete with the private universities for the less select groups of students. At the same time, it is apparent that growth of the non-university levels of the system has stalled in absolute terms, and is receding in terms of its proportional weight in the system. In 1990 it was 47.2% of the higher education system, whereas the enrollments figures of 1994 put it at 35.3% of the system. The expansion of enrollments has meant that the gross enrollment ratio for the university system in 1994 is at 17.2%, that is over the 15% threshold which defines a semi-elitist system; for the higher education system as a whole this figure is 26.6%, as Table 4 shows. However, from an equity viewpoint, data from 1990 show that strong social inequalities prevailed. Though that year the average net participation in higher education for the 18-24years old group was 15.8%, only 5.6% of the population belonged to the lowest income group while 41.0% belonged to the upper income quintile (Waiser, 1992). Concern about this situation has formed the basis of a key differentiating principle in the recent governments’ policies for higher education: funding the poorer and able students through substantially expanded and more flexible loan schemes and scholarships. D~ffeerentiation and segmentation. There is little doubt that the differentiated structure of higher education in Chile nowadays is better than before the 1980 Reform; not only because it offers greater educational opportunities but also because it is able to respond more relevantly to the complex functional requirements of society. However, this structure is differentiated not only functionally, but also and very sharply, in socio-economic terms. Within each of the broad formal categories established by the 1980 Reform, and under the common label of ‘university’ and a ‘university certificate’ very different types of opportunities are open to their bearers. From

Table 4: Gross

Universities HES

enrollment

ratios*

universities

and HE system centages)

2&24years

old group

1980-1994

1980

1985

1990

1994

10.8 10.8

9.8 16.7

10.6 20.1

17.2 26.6

(per-

*Ratio of total enrolled-regardless of age-to the total population of the 20-24 age cohort. Source: Enrollment figures: Division de Education Superior, (Mineduc, 1995). Population figures for years 1980. 1985 (INE, 1988); for years 1990-1994 (CELADE, 1995).

34

Cristian Cox

this viewpoint, the higher education system now appears as a set of stratified circuits, formally homogeneous, but very heterogeneous with respect to the actual nature of their educational offer. The levels of knowledge acquired by graduates and their associated opportunities systematically differ according to the type of institution attended. More directly amenable to policy influence than the referred feature of social segmentation, however, is the strong institutional divide between the three tiers of the system. Despite explicit statements to the contrary of the 1980 Reform, transfer between the different insitutional levels is not possible, thus blocking the aspirations of learners and consolidating the negative effects of a segmented system. The new private, market oriented institutions. The new private sector institutions in higher education predominantly have the features defined in the literature as typical of an “excess demand driven private sector”. The universities in particular concentrate on providing undergraduate courses in areas with low requirements in terms of capital investment (law, administration, education, psychology, journalism), but for which high private returns are expected; their staff are mainly hired on a hourly basis, and the student/instructor ratio is comparatively high. Libraries and students’ facilities are very poor; staff have lower academic qualifications and students are academically less select than is the case in public institutions. On another level, the ethos of the new institutions tends to be managerial and market-oriented with less emphasis on the corporate autonomy of its academics, their freedom to teach and do research. Academic staff behave more as professionals active in their respective labor markets than as academics; they are more concerned with the standard application of disciplinary knowledge than the exploration of its limits (Bernasconi, 1995). Despite contrasts that can be drawn between the new private and the traditional universities of the country, they cannot be judged solely from the standpoint of fully formed research universities. The realities of the sub-sector are both varied and highly dynamic. There is a new public institution, the Corrsejo Superior de Educacidn, that supervises and assists the new institutions in their own development towards fully formed higher education institutions. From a systemic point of view, there can be no question about the value of the new institutions for the country, despite their often observed distance from the ethos of the traditional higher learning institutions. Diz;ers$ation qf,fimding and incentives to pe$ormance schemes and new competitivejiinds in the 90s

in the 80s; students

support

Three complementary policies that reshaped the funding relationships of Chilean higher education during the decade of the 80s have fed into the new mechanisms of governments in the present decade. The first one is a substantial reduction of public expenditure in the sector. In 1970, just before the political crisis years which coincide with inordinately high budgets to higher education, the higher education budget was 30.8% of the education sector budget and 1.16% of the GNP. In 1980, both figures had been slightly lowered to 28.9% and 1.05%, respectively. In 1990, a drastic cut of public expenditure in higher education left it at 19.5% of the education budget and 0.52% of the GNP. The second thrust of the government of the 80s was to get universities to transfer teaching costs to students or their families. By the end of the decade, tuition fees represented approximately one-third of the total national expenditure in higher education in 1990 (Brunner and Briones, 1992). The third change was to set up two mechanisms for allocating public resources on the basis of competition: the Indirect Funding Program (best students formula) referred to earlier,

Higher

education

policies in

Chile in the 90s

35

which made institutions compete for students, and a special fund to support research on the basis of annual competition of projects and peer evaluation (Fond0 de Desarrollo de Ciencia y Tecnoldgia-FONDECYT). The combined effect of the referred measures was a diversification of the sources of funding and strong pressure upon the institutions to become more efficient in their use of resources and more open and pro-active regarding their environment and actual and potential clienteles. The structure of expenditure in higher education in 1990 eloquently shows the extent of the changes. Thus, approximately only 30% sf tlze total-both public and private expenditures--,cas directly disbursed by the public treasury; 36% came from tuition fees and the other 34% from a mix of sale of services, international cooperation, borrowing, and private philanthropy (Brunner and Briones, 1992). The pressure to generate alternative sources of funding has meant a deep alteration of the development strategies of public higher education institutions. The new rules brought fundamental changes to their management and organizational culture, leading them to open to the world outside for the sale of services and attraction of private donations. They have had to organize themselves internally to compete for contractsboth public and private; to publicly promote their programs and values in the competition for students; and generally, to filter through financial criteria and become cost-conscious about their activities. This has meant putting into place positive rationalization processes but also jeopardizing activities that are not long term oriented or not immediately marketable (Lavados, 1994). It has made institutions more efficient but it has also threatened the deeper ethos of a university as being a community of scholars pursuing their discipline-related priorities (Bernasconi, 1995). In the case of the new private, ‘market universities’, their tensions are different with different implications. They are not related to market and organizational, managerial and cultural demands as these institutions were set up on these principles. Instead, they come from the State, via the Consejo Superior de Educaci~n with its mainly academic criteria and standards for accrediting new institutions, i. e. referred to knowledge-production and knowledge-transmission. Three weaknesses ascribable to the sweeping changes in the higher education sector that started in 198 1, have been the target of funding policies of the democratic governments of the 1990s. First, public funding of higher education is deemed to be below an acceptable level to cover the education and training needs of professional and higher level human resources required by the development strategy of the country. Secondly, there are no mechanisms for funding major institutional research projects, as opposed to individual or small team-based, that are linked to strategic sectors of the economy. And a final and most important weakness from the viewpoint both of the country’s development and social and political integration, is the lack of efficient and sufficient mechanisms to support low-income talented students in universities that on average charge annual tuition fees of US$1400. Regarding the first issue, public expenditure in the higher education system has increased on a yearly basis since 1991. The 1995 budget is 65.3% higher than the last budget of the military Government in 1990 (see Tables 5 and 6).* This increase was accomplished without significantly altering its share in the total education budget

*If the comparison is made against the average of the HE budgets of 1989 and 199&US$206.15 (see Table 5)-the increase represented by the 1995 budget is 48.6%.

millions

36

Cristian Table 5: HE Budget as percentage

%HE Budget/Ed. Budget %HE Budget/GNP Source: Arriagada

(1989); Lehman

Cox

of Education

Budget and GNP

1970-1994

1970

1980

1990

1992

1994

30.8 1.16

28.9 1.os

19.5 0.49

19.8 0.53

18.5 0.53

de Education

(MINEDUC.

(1993): Ministerio

Table 6: Public expenditure

Institutional (a) Direct funding (b) Indirect funding (c) Development fund (d) Other* Students Loans and Scholarships (a) Loans (b) Scholarships Research Funds (a) Individuals and teams (FONDECYT) (b) Institutional (FONDEF) Total

in HE. 198991995 (USS Millions,

1995).

1995)

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

172.8 120.1 35.3

138.6 104.8 33.x

165.7 123.2 34.9 7.6

187.0 135.6 34.9 16.4

17.4 36.6 36.6

29.4 29.4

17.5 17.5

17.4 17.4

43.8 39.1 4.7 19.6 19.6

226.9

185.4

229.1

45.2 35.4 9.8 32.8 19.6 13.2 265.0

195.2 137.1 34.6 14.4 9.1 51.8 37.3 14.5 40.7 21.2 19.5 287.7

195.9 141.5 34.1 13.1 7.2 51.0 31.4 19.6 47.4 21.7 25.7 294.3

209.3 153.0 35.2 17.4 3.7 56.2 36.0 20.2 41.0 28. 12.5 306.5

*In 1989, ‘Rationalization Fund‘ for supporting institutional development projects; 19931995, Law No. 19.200 for supporting retirement and pension schemes of universities’ staff. Kompetitive, via ‘best students formula’ or via research and/or institutional development projects. Source: Ley de P,v~supuc~fo of each year; Division de Education Superior (Ministerio de Education, 1995).

(19.5% in 1990; 18.5% in 1995) and therefore without threatening the funding levels of the school system. In relation to research and institutional development, two new funds were created in 199 1, both of competitive nature. The purpose of the Fondo de Foment0 a/ Desarrollo Cientzjico _v Tecnokiyico (FONDEF) is to enhance the R&D capacities of the country through the universities and other research institutions. It supports projects with potential application to production areas of strategic value for the export-driven Chilean economy: mining, forestry, manufacturing, agriculture and computing. The projects are comparatively large ones and they have more institutional than departamental character. The Fondo de Desarrollo Institutional was set up to allocate resources, also on a competitive basis, to institutional projects aimed at improving managerial and teaching practices, as well at strengthening the regional orientation of the non-metropolitan public universities. The amounts and evolution of both Funds can be seen in Table 6. Finally, with respect to students’ support, the students’ loan scheme set up by the 1980 Reform proved insufficient and inefficient. It barred from the university tier a difficult to estimate number of talented and poor students, and it had high default rates and high administrative costs. The 90s policies are three-pronged regarding this crucial aspect of a system which puts the onus of teaching costs on the students and believes in meritocratic rules of recruitment. First, the loan scheme was redefined, making repayments contingent upon future earnings of graduates and setting a ceiling of not more than 5% of yearly earnings for those payments and a maximum of 10 years, after which any remnant is written off. Secondly, a scholarship scheme for students from low income families was set up to cover partial or total payment of

Higher

education

policies in Chile in the 90s

31

tuition-fees. The numbers in this case are important: 8661 students were benefited in 1991, first year of application of this measure; 14,566 in 1992, 19,946 in 1993 and 28,300 in 1994. The evolution of public expenditure in higher education from the last two budgets of the Military Government (1989 and 1990) to 1995, are detailed in Table 6. The table shows: (i) general increase of public expenditure in the sector (65%); (ii) importance of the resources allocated to scholarships; (iii) relative weight of the two main funds created in the period (FONDEF and FONDECYT); (iv) importance of indirect, competitive and performance-related mechanisms for allocating resources. Comparatively speaking, in 1990 27.6% of public expenditure in the higher education system was allocated through these means; in 1995 it was 30.5%. System

coordination

and the role qfgocernment

Explicit or formal attempts by the State to coordinate the higher education system in Chile are of recent occurrence. Up to the 1980 Reform the system was regulated by “State-corporate coordination” (Brunner and Briones, 1992) meaning that its institutions enjoyed a privileged autonomy of State funding without State interference in their institutional policy. The 1980s meant coordination by market forces in a context designed to facilitate establishment of new institutions with minimal State control at the system level but with strong and much resisted intervention at institutional level. Universities, including those belonging to the Catholic Church, were directly ruled by military officers Within a decade, hundreds of institutions were established, in a system and a society that throughout the century had seen the creation of only six universities. The multiplication of institutions and programs, the majority of them visibly precarious, whose students were examined by the older ones, generated public and political concern about the quality of their impact on the production of professional human resources in the country. In a drastic redefinition of the deregulating principles of the 1980 Reform and the last day before ending its period in March 1990, the military government passed a law which set up more stringent and demanding rules for the licensing of higher education institutions. Equally important, it set up a new institution in charge of implementation of these rules: the Consejo Superior de Educacicin, with decisive accreditation functions. With this reform of the reform, the development of criteria and instruments for accreditation and evaluation of institutions became one of the focal points of the higher education policy proposals of the new democratic government. The overall purpose of the two governments in power after 1990 has been the introduction of a more balanced and richer coordination of the system, with state policies and academic hierarchies having the voice and influence that during the 1980s had disappeared in the luissezTfuirr of the market regulation. The Consqjo Superior de Educucidn. The Consqjo was created by the last constitutional law of the military regime in March 1990 as a public, autonomous (nongovernment) organism, formally chaired by the Minister of Education. Its members are scholars appointed by the public and private autonomous universities and professional institutes (3); the scientific community (3); the Supreme Court (1); the Armed Forces (I), plus a Secretary General, appointed by the Consqjo, who heads the technical staff. To prevent members from being subject to corporate pressures that could interfere with the regulatory functions of the Consejo, it is statutorily defined that they are appointed by, but not representatives from, the above institutions.

38

Cristian

Cox

The Consejo was charged with developing and establishing a new evaluation system, using the few guidelines that the 1990 law provided (mainly taken from the North American accreditation model). Until the establishment of the Consejo newly established institutions were regulated by a scheme whereby for a period of 5years an accredited autonomous university examined their graduating students. This scheme was limited in its quality control effects in that it only affected the teaching programs. Also, the number of institutions and programs in need of examination far exceeded the capacity of the small number of examining institutions, it was inefficient in terms of positive supervision and very expensive for the new institutions. With the establishment of the Consejo and the new regulations on accreditation, the situation changed with some institutions being under “examination” and others being subjected to the ‘accreditation’ scheme defined by the 1990 Law. A double standard which, as we shall see, is still an issue. Soon after its first year of functioning the Cormjo realized that the supervising system by external evaluators instituted by the Law was limited in that it did not encourage practices of self-evaluation and institutional development. The Corzsejo thus decided to expand and reorient its role, moving the higher education system in the direction of self-regulation and conceiving itself as an agency not only of regulation but also of technical assistance to the new institutions and the system as a whole (Lemaitre, 1994) The Consejo thus established an accreditation scheme consisting of three stages: an approval or licensing stage, by which a new institution may initiate activities; an assessment stage, for a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 11 years, with yearly progress reviews on specific aspects of the institution, and comprehensive reviews every other 2 or 3 years, through peer review, audits, examination of students, and institutional self-evaluation reports. Both types of reviews are based on a set of twelve key criteria established by the Consejo;* a stage in which the Consejo makes a decision on institutional autonomy consisting in a judgment on the extent to which the institution has progressed in the implementation of its plans, in accordance to the Criteria of the Consejo. At this point, the Conxjo either grants full autonomy or extends accreditation for a period of up to 5years. At the end of this, the institution either gains its full autonomy or it is disestablished and closed down. The Criteria of the Consejo set out what is expected from the institutions during their accreditation period and represents a broad framework for both evaluation and peer visits. The Criteria are almost exclusively subjective and judgmental

in nature, a characteristic which permits them to be interpreted in a particular setting and against a particular set of institutional purposes and goals. (This) allows the institution to develop its own character and, within the genera1 expectations of a higher education institution, to be distinctive and not to be homogenized by the regulation scheme (Kells. 1993). It

is important

to stress

the comprehensiveness

and

substantive

nature

of the

*The Criteria cover 12 domains or ambits of evaluation: (1) Institutional integrity (clear-complete information to the public); (2) Institutional mission and goals: (3) Institutional administration, governance and self-regulation: (4) Students’ progression and achievement; (5) Student facilities; (6) Faculty: the process of teaching; (7) Degree programs; (8) Research and artistic creation; (9) Community services; (10) Teaching resources; (11) Financial administration and resources: (12)Physical infrastructure and facilities.

Higher

education

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Consejo’s approach to accreditation. It is oriented towards institution and system building and the development of a systematic culture of self-evaluation not only in the new private institutions, but in the Chilean higher education system as a whole. Through its form of requesting information from institutions and through its instructions to peer reviewers and student examiners on application of the Criteria, the Consejo expects that over time and at a realistic pace, the institutions will develop “the capability to conduct thorough, analytical and widely participatory self-evaluation processes” (Consejo, 1992). In 5years the Consejo has become a key institution for the regulation of Chilean higher education. It is recognized as having the authority and expertise to lead not only the new “market-oriented” institutions but the system as a whole. Its status as a public but governmentally autonomous body, the quality of its technical expertise, and its substantive, not only statutory, approach to the growth of the system, has enriched in a very significant way the system’s coordination. It is an irony of history that this ‘buffer’ institution of growing importance in Chilean higher education was established in the context of neo-liberal policies by the last law of the military government. Post-1990 attempts to establish a coherent policy framework. The functions of the Consejo Superior de EducacGn cover only a proportion of the new private institutions of the higher education system. The latter’s profound transformation in size and differentiation has not yet been accompanied by an equivalent transformation in its coordinating structures and principles. The change of political regime in 1990 meant an important change in the Government’s conceptions regarding the role of the State in higher education: from a minimal non-interventionist approach to a more proactive one which at the same time is non-directive, resorting to new tools of government such as information, evaluation and incentives (Cox, 1993). However, the Government’s efforts to pass through Parliament a new Law of Higher Education, embodying these new orientations and tackling the reality of a highly differentiated higher education system, have not been successful so far. Presidential commission of 1990 and the establishing qf a policy ,fLamebvork. The Higher Education policies of the first democratic government inaugurated in March 1990 included three major objectives: (a) to restore institutional autonomy to all publicly supported institutions, discontinuing government intervention and reinstating the right of academic staff to elect their authorities; (b) to increase public spending in the sector by broadening the student-loan scheme, creating a scholarship scheme and setting up new funds for institutional development and research in areas of strategic value for the economy; and (c) to change the legal framework of Higher Education. To further the third objective, a special Presidential Commission was set up to draft the law. The Commission was composed of 21 highly respected and representative academics of the major universities and key independent academic centers of the country, representing a wide political spectrum. The Presidential Commission produced both a law proposal and a policy paper containing the guidelines for the development of higher education during the 1990s (Comision de Estudio, 199 1). Regarding the governance of the higher education system, “the approach of the Commission’s proposal was to strengthen autonomy at the institutional and system self-regulation levels through a set of non-directive and non-bureaucratic information, accreditation and evaluation devices” (Brunner, 1993b). More specifically, the Commission proposed an accreditation scheme similar to the

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one enacted by the Consejo, and added that all institutions provide information (academic and financial) on a yearly basis to the Consejo, with the purpose of enhancing accountability on the part of the institutions. It also proposed a key innovation: institutional self-assessment carried out on a yearly basis and external evaluation procedures to be supplied through peer review and on site inspections within a 5 year cycle, and linked to incentives, enacted under guidelines established by the Consejo for those institutions, whether public or private, opting to participate in the referred evaluations. Such institutions would be eligible for public funding through an Institutional Development Fund for quality improvement projects and scholarships and loans for students. According to J. J. Brunner, the coordinator of the Presidential Commission, the overall purpose of the reforms proposed by the Commission (was) to perfect the present functioning of Higher Education, transferring more responsibilities to the institutions themselves, abandoning the traditional procedures of bureaucratic control and shifting the balance of system coordination from its present market-type emphasis to a more weighted relationship between policy instruments, professionalfaculty intervention and market devices (Brunner, 3993b). It is an interesting, if unanswered, question why the Government, having the consensus results of such a representative Presidential Commission, never sent the Law Project it produced to Parliament.* Four years later, under a new Government of the same political coalition, the principles and mechanisms established by the 1991 proposal, are being incorporated into a new Law project which tackles the still pending issue of regulation of the whole higher education system through information and self-evaluation and incentives schemes. Accreditation and evaluation processes for all institutions. The Government plans to send to Parliament during 1995 a law project establishing a common accreditation and evaluation scheme for university and professional institutes, in an attempt to order and optimize the double procedure presently at work for the licensing and accreditation of institutions--the examination process originated in 1981, and the accreditation process run by the Consejo since 1990. The purpose of the proposed law is double and repeats the orientations and rationale of the 1990 Presidential Commission and covers the whole of the higher education system, whether existing or new: (a) to establish an information system for all institutions, so as to insure market transparency and full information to the public; and (b) to keep the licensing procedure administered by the Cons
*It seems that a combination of overloading of the policy agenda of the Ministry of Education, at the time absorbed in a reform to the statute-law of the school teachers, and the perception that the project could trigger opposition from student groups which perceived it as pro-private universities and pro-market, made it a non-priority. (Interview with Ralil Allard, at the time Under-Secretary of Education.)

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A moreflexible legalframeworkfor state universities. A recent Government initiative is aimed at making the legal framework of the State universities more flexible, allowing them more autonomy and capacities to compete with the private ones. For some time, universities had been insisting on the need to alter their status as part of the State administration which makes them subject to norms, controls and procedural rules of the civil service and thereby unable to compete in equal conditions with the private sector institutions. As part of the State administration they are limited in their autonomy to offer courses and non-degree programs, the selling of services, the implementation of joint projects with business firms, etc. In response to these concerns in August 1995 the Government sent to Parliament a law project to modernize the State universities. The law project defines more flexibly the civil servant condition of university staff; it frees the institutions from ex-ante controls by the Controller General (Contraloria General de la Republica), but for three matters: the annual budget; the contracting of debts beyond certain limits; and norms for staff career development. Additionally, the project proposes the establishment of Higher Governing Board (Consejo Superior) with representation of the President of the Republic equivalent to one-third of its components. Lastly, the project includes the obligation for all 16 universities which receive direct funding from the state (both state and private pre-1980 institutions), to present to the Ministry of Education, a 5year development plan. This is an important step towards the establishment of accountability procedures, at present non-existent in the Chilean higher education system.

CONCLUSION Chilean higher education has entered a period of stable incremental growth and strengthening of its institutional framework that had not been known since the end of the decade of the 1960s when student movements and university politicization were followed by a long military intervention and the 1980 Reform that contributed to a radical transformation of the structure and regulation principles of the sector. Comparatively, what defines the present decade is the absence of conflict and the substitution of a spasmodic pattern of change by an incremental one, with the autonomy of the institutions being played out in a context where both state and market have key regulatory functions. Structurally, Chilean higher education has become a differentiated public plus private system, where, since the mid-eighties, the public/private divide means two higher-education institutional cultures at markedly different stages in their development; two bases for student selection and also two different, but from the system’s viewpoint, complementary directions of change and improvement. On the one hand, the state institutions are hard pressed to compete for students, funding of projects and the selling of services; to rationalize their management structures and practices; and to open up to their environment and its demands. On the other hand, the new private, market-oriented institutions are pressed by the Consejo Superior de Educacih, to improve their knowledge transmission functions and to advance in the direction of becoming fully-fledged institutions that are closer to the traditional ethos of a university. Thus the picture shows one sector being pushed by the market to renew itself by opening to the world outside and by changing its organizational culture in order to compete; and another sector, the new private one, under pressure from a state institution with its supervisory and evaluative criteria to become more academic and

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educationally oriented. This picture is not that symmetrical, however, as the selfevaluation and accreditation drives are intended to cover not only the new institutions but the system as a whole. Thus, the law initiatives being discussed at present simultaneously aim to lighten the bureaucratic grip over state universities and expand their coverage while increasing pressure on institution and program accreditation and evaluation. It is too early to pass a judgment on the eventual results of these changes. However, it is possible to see very clearly the complementary nature of the referred principles of transformation and their institutional and ideological basis. It is also plausible that they will have a potential positive impact upon the system as a whole in terms of its responsiveness and quality. A key problematic feature of the present structure is its sectionalized nature and the negative effects of this on meritocracy, social integration and development principles. Following Clark’s classic model of state, market and professional oligarchy as the key forces whose relationships regulate higher education, Chile presently has a mixed system in which the three have determinant roles (Clark, 1983). In fact, the history of higher education politics of the last quarter century can be seen as leading to the relatively balanced mixed system of today. As mentioned, a state-corporate coordination regulated the system up to 1980 when market forces were imposed as key regulators of the sector’s development. The policies of the present decade have been oriented to reestablishing the regulatory role of the state without curtailing the institutions’ autonomy nor the role of market exchanges. As can be expected, most higher education policy discussions in Chile revolve nowadays around the weight of these three principles of regulation and sites of control over the future of the system. The most interesting and promising feature of these discussions lies in the existing consensus on the need for state parameters that regulate the quality of institutions which otherwise are totally autonomous; and further, for these parameters to be operationalized and implemented by a public institution such as the Cons
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After a decade and a half of reform and consolidation of a new institutional framework, the key issue of higher education policies in Chile nowadays is quality. It is expected that information processes which further accountability and educate the demand, and of accreditation and self-evaluation processes linked to financial mechanisms, will move the institutions to define and pursue their own quality-producing trajectory. All this, however, points to what can be considered an unaddressed but central policy issue: the risk of overadaptation of the institutions to the demands of markets and economic interests and not to society as a whole; and the risk of responding solely to the demands of the present, while forfeiting those of the long run. REFERENCES Arriagada, P. (1989) Financiamiento de la Educacidn Superior en Chile, 196&1988, Santiago: Flacso. Bernasconi, A. (1995) La Uniarrsidud de Mercudo (mimeo), Santiago: Consejo Superior de Education. Santiago. Brunner, J. J. (1993a) Higher Education in Chile from 1980 to 1990, European Journal of Education, 28, No. 1. Brunner, J. J. (1993b) Chile’s Higher Education: Between Market and State, Higher Educution, 2.5. Brunner, J. J. and Briones, G. (1992) Higher Education in Chile: Effects of the 1980 Reform, in L. Wolff, and A. Douglas, Eds, Higher Education Reform in Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela, A View from LATHR. No. 34, Washington, D. C.: The World Bank. Bucher. L. and King, K. (Eds) (1995) Leurning.from E.xperience: Policy and Practice in Aid to Higher Education, The Hague: CESO Paperback No. 24. CELADE (1995) Boiefin DemograJco, No. 53. Clark, B. (1983) The Higher Education System, Berkeley: University of California Press. Comision de Estudio de la Education Superior (1991) Unu poiitica pura ei Desurroiio de la Educacick Superior en la Decadu de 10s Nooentu, Santiago. Consejo Superior de Educacihn (1992) Manual de hstruccion para la Prepurackin de1 Icforme Institucionai, Santiago. Cox. C. (1993) La Politique de I’Education du Gouvernement de Transition (199&1994), Probkmes d’Amerique Latine, No. 11. INE (1988) Pro.yecciones de Pobiacidn 1970-2,000;. Kells H. R. (1993) Auto~Reguluci~n de la Educacicin Superior en Chile, Santiago: Consejo Superior de Education. Lavados. J. (1994) La Universidad de Chile y el Estado, Speech at the Inauguration of the Academic Year of 1994, 14 April 1994. Lehman, C. (1993) Financiamiento de la Education Superior en Chile: Resultados de1 Period0 198221992, in Foro de la Education Superior, Icforme de la Educaci& Superior 1993. Lemaitre, M. J. (1994) Regulation of Higher Education. In Chile: the Role of the Consejo Superior de Educuc~idn, Santiago: Consejo Superior de Education. Levy, D. (1986) Higher Education and the State in Latin America, University of Chicago Press. Waiser, M. (1992) Indicadores de la Situation Educational, in Mideplan, PobiucGn, educuci6n. tGendu, s&d, empieo y pobrezu, CASEN 90, Santiago. The World Bank (1994) Higher Education: The Lessons ofExperience.