10 ms·

Chile is introducing free higher education

221 points by rememberlenny 11y ago

hackuser 11y ago
If many in the U.S. continue to obstruct education (by defunding or by arguing against the value of college) and other countries continue to increase college education, it's not hard to see which countries will have the most educated populations with all the benefits that entails, including attracting and creating the highest skilled jobs.
- cjensen 11y ago
  This has the same problem as most seemingly-good ideas: unintended consequences. If you give every US citizen who attends a US college $20K/year, think about what happens to popular universities with fixed numbers of slots like Stanford or UC Berkeley. They have every incentive to raise their fees by $20K/year. It would still improve the financial situation of students: the universities would probably use some of the extra funding to ensure they don't price out people who can't afford it. It just wouldn't improve it as much as you might anticipate. Second, consider who you are giving this money to: college graduates are the top earners in the US. Giving subsidies to those who will be richest is a deeply unfair idea. (Needs-based subsidies to help poorer families afford college and provide an opportunity to join the richer classes, by contrast, does make sense) Free community college is the way to go. Give everyone an opportunity to see if they can make it in college, and do it at a reasonable cost without promising a fully free ride. Just don't fund it the way the President proposed by raiding the money I saved away for my children's tuition.
  - digikata 11y ago
    Part of 'funding' college for everybody isn't just giving them the money to go to college, it's making sure public institutions have enough capacity to handle those students. Instead of increasing grants, I think directly lowering tuition cost for public universities would force private universities to become more efficient and lower their tuition costs too... non-zero tuition makes for an interesting tension where public and private can compete in different ways (possibly making the system as a whole better than one with only, or mostly, free public colleges)
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > Free community college is the way to go. Give everyone an opportunity to see if they can make it in college I might have agreed, but it turns out that such a path doesn't work well: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-masses.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-mas...
- stephengillie 11y ago
  One challenge that other nations face is the Community College system. In China, there's incredible competition to get into 4-year universities...mostly because the only other option is to have no tertiary education. In the USA we have low-cost options, including the 2-year degree and the transfer degree (2 years in CC, 2 at a Uni). We give people the option to only gain a small amount of education, where the burden on them is reduced. Also, I'm not sure what are the college enrollment rates for people above 40 in China. In the USA, reeducation is as simple as paying tuition.
- pkaye 11y ago
  There is the community college followed by state university combo. This can be quite affordable and help students adjust up to the university system if they were ill prepared in high school.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > There is the community college followed by state university combo. This can be quite affordable and help students adjust up to the university system if they were ill prepared in high school. I had thought the same, but read recently that it doesn't work out well in reality: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-masses.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-mas...
nazgul 11y ago
People don't get that when you make college free, you also take away a lot of the choice that goes into college. German colleges are free but the kids who are chosen to go to them are often selected by the third grade. Lowering the cost of public universities while increasing the quality will pressure private universities to do the same, and thus make college more affordable and accessible for everyone -- it's a much better use of funds.
- random_coder 11y ago
  German colleges are free but the kids who are chosen to go to them are often selected by the third grade. Could you explain more?
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Not sure about the details of the German system In France tuition in Public universities is free Of course it depends on your scores on the Bac and on the Prep school that follows it (to get ready for the exams) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_pr%C3%A9paratoire_aux_grandes_%C3%A9coles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_pr%C3%A9paratoire_aux_gr...
    - masklinn 11y ago
      Prep schools are not for university, they're for "great schools" which is a separate system and pretty much unique to the country. Neither prep schools nor the bac are relevant to universities (outside of having the bac), universities are free-ish and anyone can attend (at least the first year, there's no entrance test)
      - S4M 11y ago
        Prep schools in France can be damn selective as well. And prep schools tend to have contracts with universities so drop out from prep schools can be admitted to universities (they might or might not have to pass an exam for that). Prep schools are somewhat equivalent to the first two years of university, with a bit of literature/philosophy and foreign language classes, but prep schools are much intense and exams are harder (disclaimer: I did prep school and a "Grande Ecole", and and also have an Msc from a University).
crudbug 11y ago
Make 20% flat tax for everybody, no questions asked !
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
I don't think free college works without some sort of strings attached work. It exists in Austria and the quality of students and colleges is terrible. Everybody and their dog go to colleges now dropping the quality to abysmal levels. There is no proper selection happening.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  >There is no proper selection. Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair. Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money. Free higher education is not some imaginary ideal that doesn't exist yet. Take a look at universities in Sweden. If you're a citizen can attend great universities for free, No Strings Attached.
  - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
    > Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair. You can have tuitions and financing options for poor people. As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that. > Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money. More than intelligence and capability it should be motivation. Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them.
    - mburns 11y ago
      >As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that. Harvard is one of the richest non-corporate entities in the world, currently holding a ~$30 billion endowment. Saying "well, Harvard manages to do it" is not useful when talking about higher education on the whole, particularly public education. >Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them. Even in for-pay schools, intro classes are full of idiots. People willing to sign up inherently have the motivation. If they don't also have the intelligence they should fail and not get to take subsequent classes. If your complaint is that dumb people are allowed to take classes, I don't think that's a problem, unless schools are somehow forced to grade on a curve or otherwise pad the work of students who are not performing well enough.
jkot 11y ago
There is other side of this. State will only pay for education it finds useful. So there will be lot of engineers and doctors. But some narrow fields might might accept only 0.01% of applicants. Not saying it is good or bad. Humanities are mostly affected, I guess we only need 3 sociologist per 1 million people. But also entire Germany in 2006 had only 20 graduates who knew howto control atomic reactors.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  There is the joke that those with psychology degrees learn to ask the important questions, like "Do you want fries with that?"
hippich 11y ago
i had idea, which lines up with basic income ideas, of treating college attendance just like any other 8-5 job. I.e. tough interview, raises based on performance, annual performance evaluations, firing for not performing well. And "salary" paid by taxes. I get that this is highly unlikely today, but may be when basic income ideas will be more acceptable, something like this could be proposed too.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  I don't see how what you describe lines up with basic income.
sb057 11y ago
"Free" higher education. Somebody is paying for it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kasbah 11y ago
  Would you not want to spend your money on social mobility, equality and education?
bcheung 11y ago
The Internet introduced free higher education a long time ago. ;)
- wordbank 11y ago
  In Spanish? Because here in Chile most people don't have enough education to study in English. Vicious cycle.
- contingencies 11y ago
  It's a shame your good point was downvoted.
- MrGando 11y ago
  Yeah, and quite a bit of opium for the uneducated mass. You need to either be very smart or lucky to come from an uneducated background and probably also have a family that shows virtually no support to 'educate yourself' using the internet.
rpalmaotero 11y ago
I'd like to add that right now an even more important discussion in Chile is about the quality of higher education. After the educational laws were modified in the 1980s in order to allow the existence of private universities and technical institutes, many for-profit institutions appeared, even though educational profit is forbidden (institutes found obscure ways to achieve this). A direct consequence of those for-profit institutions was a constant decrease in the quality of higher education, at expenses of overcrowding classrooms or hiring bad professors. People against this new reform argues that government's money should be expended first by fixing the bad-quality the educational system has, and after that is solved, to fund higher education students.
- nico 11y ago
  It doesn't really make sense to forbid profit in education (at least the way the Chilean government does it). The best universities in the world make a lot of money (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Stanford). Opening the educational market should create competition and drive quality up. Of course the market should be regulated, but forbidding profit is not really the way to go.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    There is a huge difference between "universities with a lot of money" like Harvard and for-profit universities like Corinthian College.
    - nico 11y ago
      You are totally right. And universities like Harvard would not be allowed to exist/operate under Chilean law.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    There's a fundamental mismatch between the claim you're making and the evidence you're presenting in support of that claim.
  - MrGando 11y ago
nico 11y ago
Many problems with the article: 1) There's no way Chilean education is the most expensive in the world. Tuition for an engineering degree at the best universities in Chile is around USD 5k/year, which is way cheaper than pretty much any university in the US. (edit: in fact here's a ranking, and Chile is not even mentioned on it http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-australia-is-the-most-expensive-country-in-the-world-to-get-an-education-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-australia-is-the-most-ex...) 2) The tax hike was a bust and it generated only around USD 2B, a fourth of what it was expected to bring in. Now they are saying they'll tax people for having a degree!! 3) There is no clear plan to actually implement free higher education. They increased taxes hoping to collect additional money from taxpayers (which didn't work), without knowing how they are going to use the funds. 4) Those students leaders that are now part of congress, deceived the people that supported them and are now supporting completely different things than what they said they would when they were leading the people that got them elected. They basically sold out. 5) The article is from February. Only 2 days ago, the president of Chile announced she was asking for the resignation of all of her ministers. No one knows what will happen next. 6) Even though education in Chile is not the most expensive in the world, it has the highest paid congress people in the world, and they just approved an increase of seats!! Talk about inequality (they make around USD 300k/year, when the average salary in Chile is less than USD 5k/year)! I'm all up for free education for everyone, but the way the Chilean government is doing it is definitely not the way to go. PS: all discussions about educational reform in Chile are so short sighted that no one has even touched on the subject of online/virtual education and making education cheaper and more efficient.
- pdelsol 11y ago
  True.
- wordbank 11y ago
  It's the most expensive compared to the average salary in the country. In response to your other points: Chilean government fails a lot and the president has 25% rating. So at least they're trying to reset the government. Also you're looking at "virtual" education from NA/EU perspective but Chile is digitized very poorly compared to "on the edge" countries. Online services are like 2001-2003 US ones.
xname 11y ago
Is it fair to people who do not go to college?
- the_af 11y ago
  Yes, it's fair. Just like a lot of public works and services are funded by taxes even if you in particular don't use them. More importantly, fairness is a trade-off. Granting free universal access to certain things benefits the poor and those with lower incomes, even if it's not particularly beneficial for people with higher incomes. That's a good trade-off in my opinion, and in the opinion of progressive governments.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    My main gripe with the language of progressive politics is the redefinition of words like "fair." Intellectual honesty demands that you call things what they are. Marketing demands you redefine things to make people feel the right warm-and-fuzzies. What you did is the latter.
    - iamcurious 11y ago
      I'm curious. What is the definition of fairness and how does it not apply in that comment?
    - the_af 11y ago
      How so? It is fair to the country that a greater number of people have access to good quality education. The lesser unfairness that this causes in the people who don't care about public education is acceptable. Same as the lesser unfairness that public roads cause to people who don't use roads is also acceptable. This is the greater good we are talking about.
    - nmrm2 11y ago
      "What is justice/fairness?" is one of those philosophical questions that will never be closed. Claiming that there exists some ground truth definition of fair is, frankly, naive. Terms like "just" and "fair" are over-loaded and refer to an ephemeral concept for which there are multiple, competing explanations and theories. No consensus or ground truth exists, so it's always fair game to introduce new explanations and theories. This has been the case for at least thousands of years. Progressive politics didn't "redefine" fairness in any meaningful sense. Whose definition of "fair" isn't a "redefinition"? Rawls? Plato?
pdelsol 11y ago
As a Chilean living in Chile I can tell you this article not accurate and outdated. There has been enormous troubles trying to implement this reform, last news I had about the current version of the reform was that this "free higher education" was a form of government loan you pay off your job paychecks. If you read Chilean news, as of yesterday, all the ministers (including the cited interior, education and economy) where asked to step down by the president who faced 70% disproval for a number of other scandals including not holding to this reform original promises. There is a political crisis happening right now and its very unlikely that the education reform launches any soon. To read about real free higher education ~100 years old, I'd recommend our neighbors of Argentina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Argentina#Higher_Education_in_Argentina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Argentina#Higher_E... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_university_reform_of_1918 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_university_reform_of_... PD. Sorry to "jacket" the article (Chilean expression)
DanDanDanDan 11y ago
What this article doesn't mention, and which hasn't been mentioned below, is that Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, is a socialist. I am 100% in favor of eliminating fees for public universities by increasing state and federal funding. But this means voting for people who have socialist views. You won't get this from the democrats or the republicans, who are both in the pockets of the wealthy, who do not want to be taxed to pay for education for the middle and lower classes. Unless you're willing to say, "I believe in socialist principles, and I believe education should be without direct fees as a matter of principle or human rights, and it should be payed for through progressive income taxes", you won't see this reality in the US. We are far too neoliberal/laissez faire/anti-welfare state to collectively support an initiative like this, and that is a problem, IMO. Reagan slashed the top marginal income tax rate, we tax capital at a higher rate than labor, and the wealthy have numerous mechanisms for reducing their tax burden through loopholes in the code. Until this is changed, there are a number of policies that sound nice, but which we can't pay for. But at present, the republicans won't go for it, and the democrats won't fight for it.
MCRed 11y ago
I lived in Chile for several years. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons. First off, one of the things that makes Chile great is that its education system is independant of the government. It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans. (While there one of the things I did was work with high school and college students and of course got to know a lot of chileans.) Their schools are all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them. There is a real effect where the person paying the bills calls the shots. When government is paying the bills, turning out good citizens is the goal. This is why the football players are the heroes of most schools and the computer nerds are beat up. This is why schools are enacting absurd zero tolerance policies. This is why standardized tests and teachers tenure and unions are so bad. There really is something to the market incentive to provide a better experience at lower cost... The socialists are in power in chile right now but I don't think that will last long, and the reality is the Chilean constitution is pretty well protecting capitalism. Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services and mostly stays out of peoples way... and Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.
- illumen 11y ago
  Is this good for the poor people who can not afford it? Will it make a difference? Certainly. Will this result in a more highly skilled, and a more highly educated population? Yes. People should still be able to afford private schools if they can now. The American idea that you can't mix socialism and capitalism is absurd! (urg, just saying these words makes me feel like I'm using outdated old ideas from the 1800's!) Societies much better than USA are mixing them well with great effect. Selling out your young people with debt is really silly. Having 45% illiteracy in the USA only benefits the people currently in power.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    America is a mix of socialism and capitalism, and everywhere that socialism has touched it's been a bad experience. You give a good example in your response: %45 illiteracy only benefits the people who are currently in power. That's your statement, and who is in power? Who controls the schools? The government. How do they benefit? They have a populace which is sheeplike and easily controlled. That's the power dynamic I'd like to break. Home schooled kids do better than public schooled kids and by a wide margin. But instead of burdening every family with having to be a complete school to themselves,s why can't several families band together and take turns? If one parent is an engineer, then they can take a day off or on a saturday teach engineering topics to the groups kids. This would lower the burden and provide higher variety-- this would be a makeshift school at very low cost. Even poor people could do it... but of course that would threaten the government's schooling system and so it's not allowed.
jasonmp85 11y ago
My first thought was "only 27%? The US has a 35% corporate rate and can't afford this". My second thought was "oh, right, the US effective rate is around 12%". How will they actually guarantee they collect this rate, as opposed to just scaring off corporations or having them offshore/tax-haven their way to maintaining profits?
- nico 11y ago
  How will they actually guarantee they collect this rate, as opposed to just scaring off corporations or having them offshore/tax-haven their way to maintaining profits? Exactly, they can't, and it already didn't work. Now they are looking to create additional taxes to collect more money.
- adventured 11y ago
  The US effective corporate tax rate is over 25%, and it's also worth focusing on the median corporate tax rates. That famous 12% rate leaves out a lot of things and is not valid. For example it only included profitable corporations with at least $10 million in assets, and it ignores state and local taxes. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/eric-bolling/does-us-have-highest-corporate-tax-rate-free-world/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/... http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/15/analysis-are-us-corporate-taxes-really-the-highest-in-the-world/ http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/15/analysis-are-us-corporate-... "Tannenbaum cites a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report showing that, “the effective U.S. corporate tax rate is 27.7 percent, versus 22.6 percent for OECD countries excluding the United States.” However, he fails to note that those numbers were compiled for the period from 2006 to 2009." "A more recent PwC report, conducted in conjunction with the World Bank, listed the effective U.S. corporate tax rate at 27.9 percent for 2014, while the OECD average was only 15.9 percent."
lfottaviano 11y ago
Here in Argentina, We have since 1821 the University of Buenos Aires, free of charge. There are many public and free of charge universities across the country. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Buenos_Aires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Buenos_Aires
- nico 11y ago
  It would be interesting to know the impact this has in the country. Do you know if Argentina has better equality and social mobility because of this? Or if the economy does better as a result? Are there private universities in Argentina? What percentage of the population go to college? and out of those who do, what percentage goes to public/free universities? How does the quality of education at those schools compare to private schools (if there are any)? Thank you!
  - molmalo 11y ago
    Yes, there are several private universities in Argentina. While some of them have a very good level, some are pretty much just a means to buy a diploma. That, and especially the fact that they are much older, is why some of the public ones are much more respected (UBA - Universidad de Buenos Aires, UTN - Universidad Tecnologica Nacional - Universidad Nacional de Cordoba) than the private ones. The main problem with public and free higher education is that at least the first two years, there are A LOT of people assisting who will eventually drop out. And students coming from poorer families are the most vulnerable, and tend to drop out in a much higher percentage, some of the reasons being: - they have to work to help their families. - they have children at a younger age. - lack the money to take the bus or train everyday (no campus to live in). - they lack of a solid high school education. In the end, only the ones who can persist and really have the will to finish their studies will get the diploma. But if they can get it, they will surely have a much better life (economically speaking) than their parents.
    - conanbatt 11y ago
      Depends on the degree though: Medicine at UBA is a disaster, and other subjects like Accounting and Law don't have much prestige(maybe because it doesn't matter to those degrees). UBA has its own problems with budget managing, building decay and internal governability issues. Not to mention that is not only free for Argentinians, but free for anyone, which presents extra strains on its budget. Im all up for free college education tho, it would change the landscape in the US forever if colleges were non-profit oriented.
raimille1 11y ago
What the hell? I'm chilean, born and raised. I've been in the US for about 9 years and this depicts the problem the US has interpreting latin american news. Did you guys know Bachelet announced in an INTERVIEW she had asked for the resignations of all her ministers and in the coming days would work on building a new team? Whatever the single quoted person on this article saying Chile will have free higher education by March 2016 is looking for a job right now. This government is so full of shit not even the president could stand her own ministers! World: please do your reading first before posting about something you have absolutely NO idea. All this does is give more power to the socialists running these countries for their own power agenda and wealth. Chile's economy is where it is thanks to Sebastian Pinera, go research it. Like the saying says ... Socialism is a great thing! Until you run out of other people's money.
simpleblend 11y ago
No matter what Governments try to tell you, nothing is this world is free -- especially education. There's a general rule in Economics that says whatever the government touches turns to shit. Even if you think that the higher education will be "free", it'll be completely inferior compared to free-market education. In addition, you now have to combat against Socialist propaganda on a daily basis. It's time for humanity to learn how to solve social problems without a gun to the head.
- germanier 11y ago
  > No matter what Governments try to tell you, nothing is this world is free -- especially education. Education is a net-positive investment. That's the reason many people go to university at all. That means that you also will pay more taxes and effectively finance your education in the future. Note that this is no different to government-sponsered student loans, just without the indirection of loans. > There's a general rule in Economics that says whatever the government touches turns to shit. No there isn't. That's a political view of some people (more in the US than probably anywhere else in the world) but that's not a hard scientific fact that you make it seem. > In addition, you now have to combat against Socialist propaganda on a daily basis. What if I tell you that even in "socialist" Germany there are libertarian professors teaching in universities. > Even if you think that the higher education will be "free", it'll be completely inferior compared to free-market education Says who? Also, even universities that are completely paid for by the tax-payer can compete against each other. In fact they do in many countries. > It's time for humanity to learn how to solve social problems without a gun to the head. You certainly mean the gun of decade long student loan repayments.
  - simpleblend 11y ago
    The idea that education is a net-positive investment is completely wrong. Could it be for certain people? Absolutely. Is it for a lot of people? Ask the English majors in the States bar-tending full-time. Education can be a great thing for certain people. However The idea that everyone should go to college is totalitarian in ideology. You're trying to mold society to what you "think" it should be. Publicly funded entities by definition cannot compete since the profit loss mechanism doesn't exist. Governments can try to artificially "recreate" the free-market by passing laws, but at the end of the day favoritism exists. It's akin to the mafia allowing the different family bosses to compete for cities -- ultimately there is no competition. The decision to take on student loan debt is completely voluntarily. Comparing that to a gun to the head is ridiculous. You know what is a fair comparison though? Governments forcing their subjects to pay for other people's student loan debt.
vpeters25 11y ago
I think the article's author got lost in translation: the word "colegio" stands for school, not college. From what I understand by reading the official government bullet points about this law (http://reformaeducacional.gob.cl http://reformaeducacional.gob.cl), it: - dissolves all charter schools making them public schools with free admission. - private schools must reform as non-profits - forbids any school, private or otherwise, from filtering students with admission tests. Free college education was a campaign promise by Bachelet's administration but it was not included on this law. Edit: grammar and formatting
dataker 11y ago
In Brazil, such experience was just terrible. Although public universities are the best in the country, secondary education is terrible and most of their students don't go to college. As most public universities are very selective, most of their students went to private schools and are richer than average.
- MrGando 11y ago
  Your third point is the current case in Chile, but you still have to pay to study in those "public" Universities (U. Chile, U. Católica, U of Santiago, Concepción, etc.)
viggity 11y ago
"Education is a human right" No, no it isn't. Internet isn't a human right. Human Rights to not require any transaction or service. Human Rights are inherent in personhood, they are observed and respected not provided for. I have the Human Right to speak my mind, it costs you nothing. I have the Human Right to defend myself, it costs you nothing. I have the Human Right to own property, it costs you nothing. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
- atorralb 11y ago
  Here in Mexico, it is declared in our constitution that it is a human right to have a decent salary... yet most of us Mexicans dont' have it. My point is, anybody can say what are human rights, and I think Chile has the whole right to say education is a human right.
- tim333 11y ago
  the UN declaration you link to reads, in part: >Article 26. >(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Rights can be whatever society agrees to
leke 11y ago
Here in Finland, our education is also free (even for foreigners), but we are now starting to put limits on certain things, like the number of tuition free degrees you can have. There is now talks of charging foreigners and even introducing basic fees for citizens. Education is important here because the labour market salaries are strictly based on your qualifications and experience, not your experience or ability alone. This is why I hope Finland never starts to charge for tuition fees, unless they do away with the qualification based pay scale. In the future, I think free online education could replace paid education as long as the government recognised the achievements of so called 'self-taught' students. I realise you couldn't do this in full for just any profession though.
fiatjaf 11y ago
Worst thing ever. Socialism is coming.
MrGando 11y ago
I am Chilean. This year I came to live to Bay Area and now I work in a Startup. There are several misconceptions and thoughts that I want to express. 1. Getting a 'low tax student loan in Chile is easy' That's BS. If you're in a good 'public' University, it applies. You can get -more or less from the Government- (which behind the camera acts as an intermediare with a Bank) what we call "Crédito Universitario". That is indeed low tax. However, most of Chileans don't go to the top 'Public Schools', it's hard to get in because you have to do well in what we have as a Standardized Test to apply for the University called PSU (University Selection Test). Most of the people in Chile end-up going to private Schools and to get a loan -as far as I know- you have to go directly to a Bank, and believe me, it's not low tax. I've know people having to pay up to 50% more than what their studies costed. 2. There's no class mobility in Chile. This is true. It's virtually non-existent. The reasons are quite complex, but let me elaborate on one of the factors. The Universitary Selection Test is a test much like SAT. There's Math, Language, Sciences (including social sciences), etc. When you apply to a university your presentation score is calculated from a ponderation between those tests and high school grades (9th-12th grade). In my case for example, for my Engineering School, it was something like 50% math test, 25% school, 25% Language test. Since the School education in Chile is incredibly segregated, and there's only some decent schools, guess who are the majority of people who are doing well at this test? Yep, you guessed right, people that come from wealthier families that could afford to put their children in, more expensive and better quality schools. That people is who get the best scores at PSU, fill up most of the capacity of the top Universities high-paying degrees. And this is why in Chile, the best careers in the best universities are full of people who are already in a very strong economic position (and from more or less higher class strata). Yes, you will see some very smart guys with a University Credit here and there studying Medicine/Engineering in the top Universities, but they are more in the exceptional spectrum. 3. It's so bad that there's a market for studying for the PSU. To take on this opportunity, in Chile we have private 'pre-universitarios' which are basically institutes that can charge even 4k a year, to better prepare you for PSU. People often go to them to improve their scores on their last year of School (after school)... again, guess who can pay them? Personal Opinion: We need a good educational reform in Chile. Sadly, the actual government is the worst we've had at executing on anything specific in a long time. They tried tackling a lot of very difficult challenges at the same time, and from what I've seen they have failed miserably. The educational reform that will come out of this, will, most probably, be very watered down. People should pay, what they can pay for their education, that would fix part of the problems that the article correctly linked with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. My father was born low-class and at his time, he could afford an education in a top university (costed him 0, then he had to work in the public sector to pay the state for his education). This is a reality, that simply doesn't exist anymore, at least not like in pre dictatorship. But remember that this is not only a money problem, even if it's free... the PSU is still there acting as a filter, and without excellent and cheaper public schools things are not going to get incredibly better. PS: For the ones suggesting that free internet and e-learning as a possible fix, I won't enter that debate but no, I don't think that can fix for any of this issues in Chile.

221 points by rememberlenny 11y ago

If many in the U.S. continue to obstruct education (by defunding or by arguing against the value of college) and other countries continue to increase college education, it's not hard to see which countries will have the most educated populations with all the benefits that entails, including attracting and creating the highest skilled jobs.

cjensen 11y ago
This has the same problem as most seemingly-good ideas: unintended consequences. If you give every US citizen who attends a US college $20K/year, think about what happens to popular universities with fixed numbers of slots like Stanford or UC Berkeley. They have every incentive to raise their fees by $20K/year. It would still improve the financial situation of students: the universities would probably use some of the extra funding to ensure they don't price out people who can't afford it. It just wouldn't improve it as much as you might anticipate. Second, consider who you are giving this money to: college graduates are the top earners in the US. Giving subsidies to those who will be richest is a deeply unfair idea. (Needs-based subsidies to help poorer families afford college and provide an opportunity to join the richer classes, by contrast, does make sense) Free community college is the way to go. Give everyone an opportunity to see if they can make it in college, and do it at a reasonable cost without promising a fully free ride. Just don't fund it the way the President proposed by raiding the money I saved away for my children's tuition.
- digikata 11y ago
  Part of 'funding' college for everybody isn't just giving them the money to go to college, it's making sure public institutions have enough capacity to handle those students. Instead of increasing grants, I think directly lowering tuition cost for public universities would force private universities to become more efficient and lower their tuition costs too... non-zero tuition makes for an interesting tension where public and private can compete in different ways (possibly making the system as a whole better than one with only, or mostly, free public colleges)
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Free community college is the way to go. Give everyone an opportunity to see if they can make it in college I might have agreed, but it turns out that such a path doesn't work well: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-masses.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-mas...
stephengillie 11y ago
One challenge that other nations face is the Community College system. In China, there's incredible competition to get into 4-year universities...mostly because the only other option is to have no tertiary education. In the USA we have low-cost options, including the 2-year degree and the transfer degree (2 years in CC, 2 at a Uni). We give people the option to only gain a small amount of education, where the burden on them is reduced. Also, I'm not sure what are the college enrollment rates for people above 40 in China. In the USA, reeducation is as simple as paying tuition.
pkaye 11y ago
There is the community college followed by state university combo. This can be quite affordable and help students adjust up to the university system if they were ill prepared in high school.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > There is the community college followed by state university combo. This can be quite affordable and help students adjust up to the university system if they were ill prepared in high school. I had thought the same, but read recently that it doesn't work out well in reality: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-masses.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-mas...

nazgul 11y ago

People don't get that when you make college free, you also take away a lot of the choice that goes into college. German colleges are free but the kids who are chosen to go to them are often selected by the third grade. Lowering the cost of public universities while increasing the quality will pressure private universities to do the same, and thus make college more affordable and accessible for everyone -- it's a much better use of funds.

random_coder 11y ago
German colleges are free but the kids who are chosen to go to them are often selected by the third grade. Could you explain more?
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Not sure about the details of the German system In France tuition in Public universities is free Of course it depends on your scores on the Bac and on the Prep school that follows it (to get ready for the exams) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_pr%C3%A9paratoire_aux_grandes_%C3%A9coles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_pr%C3%A9paratoire_aux_gr...
  - masklinn 11y ago
    Prep schools are not for university, they're for "great schools" which is a separate system and pretty much unique to the country. Neither prep schools nor the bac are relevant to universities (outside of having the bac), universities are free-ish and anyone can attend (at least the first year, there's no entrance test)
    - S4M 11y ago
      Prep schools in France can be damn selective as well. And prep schools tend to have contracts with universities so drop out from prep schools can be admitted to universities (they might or might not have to pass an exam for that). Prep schools are somewhat equivalent to the first two years of university, with a bit of literature/philosophy and foreign language classes, but prep schools are much intense and exams are harder (disclaimer: I did prep school and a "Grande Ecole", and and also have an Msc from a University).

crudbug 11y ago

Make 20% flat tax for everybody, no questions asked !

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

I don't think free college works without some sort of strings attached work. It exists in Austria and the quality of students and colleges is terrible. Everybody and their dog go to colleges now dropping the quality to abysmal levels. There is no proper selection happening.

crimsonalucard 11y ago
>There is no proper selection. Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair. Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money. Free higher education is not some imaginary ideal that doesn't exist yet. Take a look at universities in Sweden. If you're a citizen can attend great universities for free, No Strings Attached.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  > Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair. You can have tuitions and financing options for poor people. As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that. > Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money. More than intelligence and capability it should be motivation. Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them.
  - mburns 11y ago
    >As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that. Harvard is one of the richest non-corporate entities in the world, currently holding a ~$30 billion endowment. Saying "well, Harvard manages to do it" is not useful when talking about higher education on the whole, particularly public education. >Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them. Even in for-pay schools, intro classes are full of idiots. People willing to sign up inherently have the motivation. If they don't also have the intelligence they should fail and not get to take subsequent classes. If your complaint is that dumb people are allowed to take classes, I don't think that's a problem, unless schools are somehow forced to grade on a curve or otherwise pad the work of students who are not performing well enough.

jkot 11y ago

There is other side of this. State will only pay for education it finds useful. So there will be lot of engineers and doctors. But some narrow fields might might accept only 0.01% of applicants. Not saying it is good or bad. Humanities are mostly affected, I guess we only need 3 sociologist per 1 million people. But also entire Germany in 2006 had only 20 graduates who knew howto control atomic reactors.

bdcravens 11y ago
There is the joke that those with psychology degrees learn to ask the important questions, like "Do you want fries with that?"

hippich 11y ago

i had idea, which lines up with basic income ideas, of treating college attendance just like any other 8-5 job. I.e. tough interview, raises based on performance, annual performance evaluations, firing for not performing well. And "salary" paid by taxes. I get that this is highly unlikely today, but may be when basic income ideas will be more acceptable, something like this could be proposed too.

johnchristopher 11y ago
I don't see how what you describe lines up with basic income.

sb057 11y ago

"Free" higher education. Somebody is paying for it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kasbah 11y ago
Would you not want to spend your money on social mobility, equality and education?

bcheung 11y ago

The Internet introduced free higher education a long time ago. ;)

wordbank 11y ago
In Spanish? Because here in Chile most people don't have enough education to study in English. Vicious cycle.
contingencies 11y ago
It's a shame your good point was downvoted.
MrGando 11y ago
Yeah, and quite a bit of opium for the uneducated mass. You need to either be very smart or lucky to come from an uneducated background and probably also have a family that shows virtually no support to 'educate yourself' using the internet.

rpalmaotero 11y ago

I'd like to add that right now an even more important discussion in Chile is about the quality of higher education. After the educational laws were modified in the 1980s in order to allow the existence of private universities and technical institutes, many for-profit institutions appeared, even though educational profit is forbidden (institutes found obscure ways to achieve this). A direct consequence of those for-profit institutions was a constant decrease in the quality of higher education, at expenses of overcrowding classrooms or hiring bad professors. People against this new reform argues that government's money should be expended first by fixing the bad-quality the educational system has, and after that is solved, to fund higher education students.

nico 11y ago
It doesn't really make sense to forbid profit in education (at least the way the Chilean government does it). The best universities in the world make a lot of money (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Stanford). Opening the educational market should create competition and drive quality up. Of course the market should be regulated, but forbidding profit is not really the way to go.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  There is a huge difference between "universities with a lot of money" like Harvard and for-profit universities like Corinthian College.
  - nico 11y ago
    You are totally right. And universities like Harvard would not be allowed to exist/operate under Chilean law.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  There's a fundamental mismatch between the claim you're making and the evidence you're presenting in support of that claim.
- MrGando 11y ago

nico 11y ago

Many problems with the article: 1) There's no way Chilean education is the most expensive in the world. Tuition for an engineering degree at the best universities in Chile is around USD 5k/year, which is way cheaper than pretty much any university in the US. (edit: in fact here's a ranking, and Chile is not even mentioned on it http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-australia-is-the-most-expensive-country-in-the-world-to-get-an-education-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-australia-is-the-most-ex...) 2) The tax hike was a bust and it generated only around USD 2B, a fourth of what it was expected to bring in. Now they are saying they'll tax people for having a degree!! 3) There is no clear plan to actually implement free higher education. They increased taxes hoping to collect additional money from taxpayers (which didn't work), without knowing how they are going to use the funds. 4) Those students leaders that are now part of congress, deceived the people that supported them and are now supporting completely different things than what they said they would when they were leading the people that got them elected. They basically sold out. 5) The article is from February. Only 2 days ago, the president of Chile announced she was asking for the resignation of all of her ministers. No one knows what will happen next. 6) Even though education in Chile is not the most expensive in the world, it has the highest paid congress people in the world, and they just approved an increase of seats!! Talk about inequality (they make around USD 300k/year, when the average salary in Chile is less than USD 5k/year)! I'm all up for free education for everyone, but the way the Chilean government is doing it is definitely not the way to go. PS: all discussions about educational reform in Chile are so short sighted that no one has even touched on the subject of online/virtual education and making education cheaper and more efficient.

pdelsol 11y ago
True.
wordbank 11y ago
It's the most expensive compared to the average salary in the country. In response to your other points: Chilean government fails a lot and the president has 25% rating. So at least they're trying to reset the government. Also you're looking at "virtual" education from NA/EU perspective but Chile is digitized very poorly compared to "on the edge" countries. Online services are like 2001-2003 US ones.

xname 11y ago

Is it fair to people who do not go to college?

the_af 11y ago
Yes, it's fair. Just like a lot of public works and services are funded by taxes even if you in particular don't use them. More importantly, fairness is a trade-off. Granting free universal access to certain things benefits the poor and those with lower incomes, even if it's not particularly beneficial for people with higher incomes. That's a good trade-off in my opinion, and in the opinion of progressive governments.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  My main gripe with the language of progressive politics is the redefinition of words like "fair." Intellectual honesty demands that you call things what they are. Marketing demands you redefine things to make people feel the right warm-and-fuzzies. What you did is the latter.
  - iamcurious 11y ago
    I'm curious. What is the definition of fairness and how does it not apply in that comment?
  - the_af 11y ago
    How so? It is fair to the country that a greater number of people have access to good quality education. The lesser unfairness that this causes in the people who don't care about public education is acceptable. Same as the lesser unfairness that public roads cause to people who don't use roads is also acceptable. This is the greater good we are talking about.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    "What is justice/fairness?" is one of those philosophical questions that will never be closed. Claiming that there exists some ground truth definition of fair is, frankly, naive. Terms like "just" and "fair" are over-loaded and refer to an ephemeral concept for which there are multiple, competing explanations and theories. No consensus or ground truth exists, so it's always fair game to introduce new explanations and theories. This has been the case for at least thousands of years. Progressive politics didn't "redefine" fairness in any meaningful sense. Whose definition of "fair" isn't a "redefinition"? Rawls? Plato?

pdelsol 11y ago

As a Chilean living in Chile I can tell you this article not accurate and outdated. There has been enormous troubles trying to implement this reform, last news I had about the current version of the reform was that this "free higher education" was a form of government loan you pay off your job paychecks. If you read Chilean news, as of yesterday, all the ministers (including the cited interior, education and economy) where asked to step down by the president who faced 70% disproval for a number of other scandals including not holding to this reform original promises. There is a political crisis happening right now and its very unlikely that the education reform launches any soon. To read about real free higher education ~100 years old, I'd recommend our neighbors of Argentina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Argentina#Higher_Education_in_Argentina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Argentina#Higher_E... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_university_reform_of_1918 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_university_reform_of_... PD. Sorry to "jacket" the article (Chilean expression)

DanDanDanDan 11y ago

What this article doesn't mention, and which hasn't been mentioned below, is that Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, is a socialist. I am 100% in favor of eliminating fees for public universities by increasing state and federal funding. But this means voting for people who have socialist views. You won't get this from the democrats or the republicans, who are both in the pockets of the wealthy, who do not want to be taxed to pay for education for the middle and lower classes. Unless you're willing to say, "I believe in socialist principles, and I believe education should be without direct fees as a matter of principle or human rights, and it should be payed for through progressive income taxes", you won't see this reality in the US. We are far too neoliberal/laissez faire/anti-welfare state to collectively support an initiative like this, and that is a problem, IMO. Reagan slashed the top marginal income tax rate, we tax capital at a higher rate than labor, and the wealthy have numerous mechanisms for reducing their tax burden through loopholes in the code. Until this is changed, there are a number of policies that sound nice, but which we can't pay for. But at present, the republicans won't go for it, and the democrats won't fight for it.

MCRed 11y ago

I lived in Chile for several years. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons. First off, one of the things that makes Chile great is that its education system is independant of the government. It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans. (While there one of the things I did was work with high school and college students and of course got to know a lot of chileans.) Their schools are all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them. There is a real effect where the person paying the bills calls the shots. When government is paying the bills, turning out good citizens is the goal. This is why the football players are the heroes of most schools and the computer nerds are beat up. This is why schools are enacting absurd zero tolerance policies. This is why standardized tests and teachers tenure and unions are so bad. There really is something to the market incentive to provide a better experience at lower cost... The socialists are in power in chile right now but I don't think that will last long, and the reality is the Chilean constitution is pretty well protecting capitalism. Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services and mostly stays out of peoples way... and Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.

illumen 11y ago
Is this good for the poor people who can not afford it? Will it make a difference? Certainly. Will this result in a more highly skilled, and a more highly educated population? Yes. People should still be able to afford private schools if they can now. The American idea that you can't mix socialism and capitalism is absurd! (urg, just saying these words makes me feel like I'm using outdated old ideas from the 1800's!) Societies much better than USA are mixing them well with great effect. Selling out your young people with debt is really silly. Having 45% illiteracy in the USA only benefits the people currently in power.
- MCRed 11y ago
  America is a mix of socialism and capitalism, and everywhere that socialism has touched it's been a bad experience. You give a good example in your response: %45 illiteracy only benefits the people who are currently in power. That's your statement, and who is in power? Who controls the schools? The government. How do they benefit? They have a populace which is sheeplike and easily controlled. That's the power dynamic I'd like to break. Home schooled kids do better than public schooled kids and by a wide margin. But instead of burdening every family with having to be a complete school to themselves,s why can't several families band together and take turns? If one parent is an engineer, then they can take a day off or on a saturday teach engineering topics to the groups kids. This would lower the burden and provide higher variety-- this would be a makeshift school at very low cost. Even poor people could do it... but of course that would threaten the government's schooling system and so it's not allowed.

jasonmp85 11y ago

My first thought was "only 27%? The US has a 35% corporate rate and can't afford this". My second thought was "oh, right, the US effective rate is around 12%". How will they actually guarantee they collect this rate, as opposed to just scaring off corporations or having them offshore/tax-haven their way to maintaining profits?

nico 11y ago
How will they actually guarantee they collect this rate, as opposed to just scaring off corporations or having them offshore/tax-haven their way to maintaining profits? Exactly, they can't, and it already didn't work. Now they are looking to create additional taxes to collect more money.
adventured 11y ago
The US effective corporate tax rate is over 25%, and it's also worth focusing on the median corporate tax rates. That famous 12% rate leaves out a lot of things and is not valid. For example it only included profitable corporations with at least $10 million in assets, and it ignores state and local taxes. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/eric-bolling/does-us-have-highest-corporate-tax-rate-free-world/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/... http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/15/analysis-are-us-corporate-taxes-really-the-highest-in-the-world/ http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/15/analysis-are-us-corporate-... "Tannenbaum cites a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report showing that, “the effective U.S. corporate tax rate is 27.7 percent, versus 22.6 percent for OECD countries excluding the United States.” However, he fails to note that those numbers were compiled for the period from 2006 to 2009." "A more recent PwC report, conducted in conjunction with the World Bank, listed the effective U.S. corporate tax rate at 27.9 percent for 2014, while the OECD average was only 15.9 percent."

lfottaviano 11y ago

Here in Argentina, We have since 1821 the University of Buenos Aires, free of charge. There are many public and free of charge universities across the country. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Buenos_Aires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Buenos_Aires

nico 11y ago
It would be interesting to know the impact this has in the country. Do you know if Argentina has better equality and social mobility because of this? Or if the economy does better as a result? Are there private universities in Argentina? What percentage of the population go to college? and out of those who do, what percentage goes to public/free universities? How does the quality of education at those schools compare to private schools (if there are any)? Thank you!
- molmalo 11y ago
  Yes, there are several private universities in Argentina. While some of them have a very good level, some are pretty much just a means to buy a diploma. That, and especially the fact that they are much older, is why some of the public ones are much more respected (UBA - Universidad de Buenos Aires, UTN - Universidad Tecnologica Nacional - Universidad Nacional de Cordoba) than the private ones. The main problem with public and free higher education is that at least the first two years, there are A LOT of people assisting who will eventually drop out. And students coming from poorer families are the most vulnerable, and tend to drop out in a much higher percentage, some of the reasons being: - they have to work to help their families. - they have children at a younger age. - lack the money to take the bus or train everyday (no campus to live in). - they lack of a solid high school education. In the end, only the ones who can persist and really have the will to finish their studies will get the diploma. But if they can get it, they will surely have a much better life (economically speaking) than their parents.
  - conanbatt 11y ago
    Depends on the degree though: Medicine at UBA is a disaster, and other subjects like Accounting and Law don't have much prestige(maybe because it doesn't matter to those degrees). UBA has its own problems with budget managing, building decay and internal governability issues. Not to mention that is not only free for Argentinians, but free for anyone, which presents extra strains on its budget. Im all up for free college education tho, it would change the landscape in the US forever if colleges were non-profit oriented.

raimille1 11y ago

What the hell? I'm chilean, born and raised. I've been in the US for about 9 years and this depicts the problem the US has interpreting latin american news. Did you guys know Bachelet announced in an INTERVIEW she had asked for the resignations of all her ministers and in the coming days would work on building a new team? Whatever the single quoted person on this article saying Chile will have free higher education by March 2016 is looking for a job right now. This government is so full of shit not even the president could stand her own ministers! World: please do your reading first before posting about something you have absolutely NO idea. All this does is give more power to the socialists running these countries for their own power agenda and wealth. Chile's economy is where it is thanks to Sebastian Pinera, go research it. Like the saying says ... Socialism is a great thing! Until you run out of other people's money.

simpleblend 11y ago

No matter what Governments try to tell you, nothing is this world is free -- especially education. There's a general rule in Economics that says whatever the government touches turns to shit. Even if you think that the higher education will be "free", it'll be completely inferior compared to free-market education. In addition, you now have to combat against Socialist propaganda on a daily basis. It's time for humanity to learn how to solve social problems without a gun to the head.

germanier 11y ago
> No matter what Governments try to tell you, nothing is this world is free -- especially education. Education is a net-positive investment. That's the reason many people go to university at all. That means that you also will pay more taxes and effectively finance your education in the future. Note that this is no different to government-sponsered student loans, just without the indirection of loans. > There's a general rule in Economics that says whatever the government touches turns to shit. No there isn't. That's a political view of some people (more in the US than probably anywhere else in the world) but that's not a hard scientific fact that you make it seem. > In addition, you now have to combat against Socialist propaganda on a daily basis. What if I tell you that even in "socialist" Germany there are libertarian professors teaching in universities. > Even if you think that the higher education will be "free", it'll be completely inferior compared to free-market education Says who? Also, even universities that are completely paid for by the tax-payer can compete against each other. In fact they do in many countries. > It's time for humanity to learn how to solve social problems without a gun to the head. You certainly mean the gun of decade long student loan repayments.
- simpleblend 11y ago
  The idea that education is a net-positive investment is completely wrong. Could it be for certain people? Absolutely. Is it for a lot of people? Ask the English majors in the States bar-tending full-time. Education can be a great thing for certain people. However The idea that everyone should go to college is totalitarian in ideology. You're trying to mold society to what you "think" it should be. Publicly funded entities by definition cannot compete since the profit loss mechanism doesn't exist. Governments can try to artificially "recreate" the free-market by passing laws, but at the end of the day favoritism exists. It's akin to the mafia allowing the different family bosses to compete for cities -- ultimately there is no competition. The decision to take on student loan debt is completely voluntarily. Comparing that to a gun to the head is ridiculous. You know what is a fair comparison though? Governments forcing their subjects to pay for other people's student loan debt.

vpeters25 11y ago

I think the article's author got lost in translation: the word "colegio" stands for school, not college. From what I understand by reading the official government bullet points about this law (http://reformaeducacional.gob.cl http://reformaeducacional.gob.cl), it: - dissolves all charter schools making them public schools with free admission. - private schools must reform as non-profits - forbids any school, private or otherwise, from filtering students with admission tests. Free college education was a campaign promise by Bachelet's administration but it was not included on this law. Edit: grammar and formatting

dataker 11y ago

In Brazil, such experience was just terrible. Although public universities are the best in the country, secondary education is terrible and most of their students don't go to college. As most public universities are very selective, most of their students went to private schools and are richer than average.

MrGando 11y ago
Your third point is the current case in Chile, but you still have to pay to study in those "public" Universities (U. Chile, U. Católica, U of Santiago, Concepción, etc.)

viggity 11y ago

"Education is a human right" No, no it isn't. Internet isn't a human right. Human Rights to not require any transaction or service. Human Rights are inherent in personhood, they are observed and respected not provided for. I have the Human Right to speak my mind, it costs you nothing. I have the Human Right to defend myself, it costs you nothing. I have the Human Right to own property, it costs you nothing. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

atorralb 11y ago
Here in Mexico, it is declared in our constitution that it is a human right to have a decent salary... yet most of us Mexicans dont' have it. My point is, anybody can say what are human rights, and I think Chile has the whole right to say education is a human right.
tim333 11y ago
the UN declaration you link to reads, in part: >Article 26. >(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Rights can be whatever society agrees to

leke 11y ago

Here in Finland, our education is also free (even for foreigners), but we are now starting to put limits on certain things, like the number of tuition free degrees you can have. There is now talks of charging foreigners and even introducing basic fees for citizens. Education is important here because the labour market salaries are strictly based on your qualifications and experience, not your experience or ability alone. This is why I hope Finland never starts to charge for tuition fees, unless they do away with the qualification based pay scale. In the future, I think free online education could replace paid education as long as the government recognised the achievements of so called 'self-taught' students. I realise you couldn't do this in full for just any profession though.

fiatjaf 11y ago

Worst thing ever. Socialism is coming.

MrGando 11y ago

I am Chilean. This year I came to live to Bay Area and now I work in a Startup. There are several misconceptions and thoughts that I want to express. 1. Getting a 'low tax student loan in Chile is easy' That's BS. If you're in a good 'public' University, it applies. You can get -more or less from the Government- (which behind the camera acts as an intermediare with a Bank) what we call "Crédito Universitario". That is indeed low tax. However, most of Chileans don't go to the top 'Public Schools', it's hard to get in because you have to do well in what we have as a Standardized Test to apply for the University called PSU (University Selection Test). Most of the people in Chile end-up going to private Schools and to get a loan -as far as I know- you have to go directly to a Bank, and believe me, it's not low tax. I've know people having to pay up to 50% more than what their studies costed. 2. There's no class mobility in Chile. This is true. It's virtually non-existent. The reasons are quite complex, but let me elaborate on one of the factors. The Universitary Selection Test is a test much like SAT. There's Math, Language, Sciences (including social sciences), etc. When you apply to a university your presentation score is calculated from a ponderation between those tests and high school grades (9th-12th grade). In my case for example, for my Engineering School, it was something like 50% math test, 25% school, 25% Language test. Since the School education in Chile is incredibly segregated, and there's only some decent schools, guess who are the majority of people who are doing well at this test? Yep, you guessed right, people that come from wealthier families that could afford to put their children in, more expensive and better quality schools. That people is who get the best scores at PSU, fill up most of the capacity of the top Universities high-paying degrees. And this is why in Chile, the best careers in the best universities are full of people who are already in a very strong economic position (and from more or less higher class strata). Yes, you will see some very smart guys with a University Credit here and there studying Medicine/Engineering in the top Universities, but they are more in the exceptional spectrum. 3. It's so bad that there's a market for studying for the PSU. To take on this opportunity, in Chile we have private 'pre-universitarios' which are basically institutes that can charge even 4k a year, to better prepare you for PSU. People often go to them to improve their scores on their last year of School (after school)... again, guess who can pay them? Personal Opinion: We need a good educational reform in Chile. Sadly, the actual government is the worst we've had at executing on anything specific in a long time. They tried tackling a lot of very difficult challenges at the same time, and from what I've seen they have failed miserably. The educational reform that will come out of this, will, most probably, be very watered down. People should pay, what they can pay for their education, that would fix part of the problems that the article correctly linked with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. My father was born low-class and at his time, he could afford an education in a top university (costed him 0, then he had to work in the public sector to pay the state for his education). This is a reality, that simply doesn't exist anymore, at least not like in pre dictatorship. But remember that this is not only a money problem, even if it's free... the PSU is still there acting as a filter, and without excellent and cheaper public schools things are not going to get incredibly better. PS: For the ones suggesting that free internet and e-learning as a possible fix, I won't enter that debate but no, I don't think that can fix for any of this issues in Chile.