Article
What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education
(2016)
Abstract
Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal
policies to reform their higher education systems. This report
compares the development and impact of those policies within three
main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of
the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and
business-like trends that private academia is experiencing and, finally,
(3) it discusses how all this has created tensioning situations with
assessment and accrediting agencies to ensure quality in their private
higher education systems. This study shows that private higher education
is facing the following challenges in both nations: (1) an uncritical
implementation of neoliberal policies, (2) that there is a very unregulated
legislation that has allowed many private institutions to profit
within loopholes in the law, (3) that quality has become a central concern
and some of the mechanisms applied to correct it have not been
effective, showing a lack of a comprehensive system of quality assessment,
and (4) that enrolment has grown but with several mismatches
that challenge the initial goal of advancing economic development
through human resources capacities. Alternative policies are discussed.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2016
DOI
10.1080/03057925.2014.916605
Citation Information
Gus Gregorutti, Oscar Espinoza, Luis Eduardo Gonzalez and Javier Loyola. "What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico" Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education Vol. 46 Iss. 1 (2016) p. 136 - 158 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gus_gregorutti/35/