wollpulli asked: what do you think about the student protests in Chile?
Sorry for the delay! I haven’t been writing much lately, unfortunately. I ended up combining this with the answer to a similar question from someone else. Also, super scary answering this since you’re actually from Chile XD
It doesn’t seem like the protests in Chile have gotten a huge amount of press here in the States, so let me start by quoting a short summary of the situation from one of the links Mar cited:
With the explosion of students in recent years, new graduates – especially those from lower-quality private universities – found themselves with debts of up to $40,000, and not able to pay back their student loans.
And since their parents had guaranteed their loans, their whole families were in a bind – which helps explain the wide support for the student movement among Chilean grown-ups.
So far, the government of conservative President Sebastian Pinera has offered to inject more government funds to higher education, lower interest rates on student loans, and offer full scholarships to the poorest students. But student leaders, emboldened by their popular support, are pushing for more.
The “more,” it seems, mainly includes the establishment of additional, well-funded public schools which students can attend for free. That said, the protesters — who consist of just 5% of the student population in Chile — have rejected as “too vague” a deal which, among other provisions, included “two constitutional reforms that guarantee access to quality education as a right and prevent universities from making a profit off of education.”
If the next deal is more specific and heads in the same direction, whatever success Chile has had with its partially private education system to date will very possibly be undermined.
Nonetheless, even if the system is left as free as it currently is, we’re left with the question of whether the market can provide high quality, private education at a price affordable for the average Chilean.
