In 2011, Chile experienced massive student protests against the marketization of education. During 2013, center-left President Michelle Bachelet proposed tuition-free higher education for Chile's families in the bottom 70th percentile of the income distribution, fueling controversy due to the uncertainty and unexpected consequences of the policy.…

Higher-education classroom practices in Chile have historically followed the Eurocentric model in which the student is an 'empty vessel' and the instructor the one who fills it. This has led to the perpetuation of a specific model of knowledge creation and transmission that has historically ignored both non-Western cultures and knowledges but has…

This study reviews the performance of the Improvement of Quality and Equity in Higher Education programme (MECESUP). MECESUP was executed in three stages between 1999 and 2016 by Chile's Ministry of Education and its directly state-subsidised university sector, with World Bank financing and advisory. The account explores achievements and failures…

Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), we explored how educational leaders and policymakers in Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Argentina address complex issues while responding to -- and in fact, developing -- broader understandings (discourses) on the role of higher education in Latin America. Fairclough's (1993) theory of discourse underscores that…

Neoliberal discourse has undergone substantial changes over the last years, taking a status as if it were a natural given. In this article we analyse the naturalisation of neoliberal discourse in higher education in post-dictatorship Chile. Based on discourse analysis of two Chilean higher education policy reports, we examine the reconfiguration…

The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP), implemented from 2001-2013, was an international fellowship program based on a uniquely inclusive higher education model. Founded on the principle that higher education is an essential long-term investment for addressing major social issues, IFP had two essential goals: ensuring…

The 2011 Chilean student protests were a powerful social movement aimed at transforming education and, with it, the social spaces and formations of daily life. This social movement was pedagogical because students transformed the city into a classroom to gain control over the production of space. In this vein, the student movement provided a…

Ethical competencies are included in all competency-based education models and are considered essential for the professional preparation of students, especially in terms of their professional conduct and workplace preparedness. As such, the Tuning Academy, along with incorporating ethical competencies in its group of generic competencies, also…

President Barack Obama recently announced a proposal to eliminate tuition charges at community colleges so that everyone can easily complete the first two years of a university education. At the same time, the administration is creating new regulations to curb the worst abuses of for-profit universities. This suggests that the country has reached…

This article shows part of the results of a research project: The Impact of Social Change in Higher Education Staff Professional Life and Work (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, SEJ2006-01876). The main aim of this project was to explore and understand how scholars establish a dialogue, resist, adapt themselves or adopt changes, in the…

Recently, Latin America has seen the advent of research activities to meet the call for research that long preceded them and of the full-time research faculty who engage in them. These developments have taken place as the region partakes in contemporary worldwide trends that have affected universities elsewhere: the consequences of the increased…

In recent decades, neoliberal reforms have spread across Latin America. Despite different accounts showing the adverse social impact of these reforms, what seems lacking are historical analyses of why and how neoliberal policies occurred in this region. For instance, there are only rare accounts of how dictatorships in the 1970s prepared the…

The evolution of Chilean assessment of higher education institutions is described and analysed. Focus is put on a systemic description of assessment subjects, so that different evaluation approaches can be compared. This paper stresses the relevance of the quality assurance approach, which has been taken as a model for the now oncoming…

Describes the history and role of human rights education in Latin America. Links these efforts with relevant political histories, cultural phenomena, and social movements. Maintains that occurrence human rights violations are a basic initial stimulus for human rights education. (CFR)

Asserts that incorporating human rights issues into the curriculum causes tensions, especially in nations with histories of military dictatorships. Describes human rights education in Chile and other Latin American nations. Discusses whether human rights should be a separate curriculum subject or integrated into all courses. (CFR)