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Catherina

(35,568 posts)
Tue May 28, 2013, 08:20 PM May 2013

Secondary School Students also protesting education in Chile now

Chilean Police hinders progress, students insist

Carabineros Santiago, Chile, May 28 (Prensa Latina) The military police (Carabineros) prevented students from beginning their march along Avenida Alameda capital, demanding a new educational model in Chile.


Chilean students march against education model

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Last Wednesday Student Confederation of Chile (Confech) called radicalise the protests against the education system because "sees education as a commodity and not as a right."

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Chile is the country with the most expensive college in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Same data indicate that the State agency assumes only 18 percent of total enrollment, while families bear the cost of the remaining 82 percent, a rate that exceeds that of any other country on the planet.
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http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&idioma=1&id=1457051&Itemid=1


These protests have been going on for over 2 years now. Now even the Secondary School students are protesting. The government plans to impose a law banning ALL protests- worker, students, whatever...



May 17, 2013 12:51 PM
You Want to Know What Competition in Education Will Do? Look at Chile.
by Daniel Luzer


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Lili Loofbourow has a fascinating piece in the latest issue of Boston Review looking at Chile’s policy of privatizing education. It’s really pretty scary:

During the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, education, previously considered a public good, was commodified and repackaged as a private investment yielding purely private gains. But since student protests began in 2006, Chileans have been trying to get their education back.

Pinochet’s neoliberal dream was that the free market would optimize education and wean educational institutions off state support. Military “rectors” were appointed to the universities and charged with purging them of dissenting faculty and students. Over time, funding for public education was systematically slashed in order to create an educational vacuum that could be filled by private enterprise.

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And so what happened? First, Pinochet gutted the public university system. As one of his advisors explained “None of the existing eight universities find themselves subject to competitive challenges between themselves since they are assured financial support by the state budget.” Despite Pinochet stepping down in the 90s, his reform plan is still essentially in place.

Three decades later, Pinochet’s neoliberal model has gone mostly unchecked, and “indirect control” still aptly describes the relationship between the state and higher education in Chile. The government has delegated regulation and oversight to the market and minimized legal obstacles to the establishment of private universities. The country is now awash in universities, institutes, and centers for technical learning. Their number exploded from eight in 1980 to a peak of 310 in 1990. In 2012 there were 174.

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These institutions certainly compete for students’ money. Private universities advertise on television, in newspapers, on the subway, on billboards; their ads are as familiar as Coca-Cola’s. But the schools don’t compete in the way Guzmán envisioned. The institutions producing the best research and maintaining the highest academic standards continued to be Chile’s traditional universities, most of which are public and pre-date the neoliberal model.

Sound familiar? Adjusted for income Chile now has the most expensive higher education system in the world. We have the second most expensive system.

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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/you_want_to_know_what_competit.php
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Secondary School Students also protesting education in Chile now (Original Post) Catherina May 2013 OP
Good grief! This is one the people MUST win. Rec. n/t Judi Lynn May 2013 #1
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