El mercado de créditos para la educación superior

Pensar México desde Chile

Abstract

This work is presented as a response to the dialog invitation extended by Mexico’s Minister of Education to those who disagree with the model of education credits for higher education. In order to justify our disagreement, in this article we evaluate the Chile’s higher education model which promoted public-universities’ self-financing. This model was initiated during Pinochet regime and is still used today. Its neoliberal approach to higher education has caused privatization of public institutions, which generate themselves 60% of their income, and the strengthening of private institutions. In this process the “state” universities have lost their identity and meaning and meanwhile the public has been debating in the streets for many years confronting an education project that represents a nation’s project. Some of the public university’s principal sources of income in Chile are tuition fees and taxes: Chile designed a system of education credits to raise those funds, but it collapsed. In spite of the intervention of the Treasury Department of the Republic of Chile the number of people who owe student credits is still rising and this causes financial deficit, deterioration of life quality of debtors and their families, and a profound social crisis that is endangering the President Michelle Bachelet stability. We hope that the experience of Chile will allow us to analyze the possible social repercussions that could take place in Mexico if we adopt the model of education credits.