Derecho y política de la educación Superior Chilena: evolución, Crisis y reforma

The current debate on public education policy in Chile is focused on the idea of education as a social right. This has increasingly led to the rejection of the market model, imposed during the military dictatorship (1973-1990). The programme of President Michelle Bachelet’s government (2014-2018) put the aims of free and inclusive education, the end of profiting from educational establishments and the strengthening of state education at the centre of its agenda. For many –politicians, academics and students– the idea was to bring back the ‘Teaching State’ that inspired the Republic’s educational policies up to the military coup. Much has been written in the last few years about the problems of Chilean higher education from a market point of view; the influence of neoliberal ideology on educational segregation and even the interference of economic interests and aiming to profit from the governance and management of higher education institutions. However, a history of Chilean higher education from an institutional point of view –showing the breakdown and continuity of the system’s regulations and state policy and including the public and private sector, through different constitutional cycles up to the present day– has not been written. This thesis aims to fill that gap.