Abstract:

This paper aims to present a reflection and discussion about the effects of expansion and massification of higher education in Chile, along with the challenges it has brought to the system and society, but particularly to the Universities. The relevance of addressing this problem lies in the fact that today higher education is the core of current societies [1]. Globalization, together with the evolution of a knowledge-based economy, have led to dramatic changes in the characteristics and functions of education, particularly in the higher education system. As a result, many emerging economies have begun to expand their higher education systems [2]. Considering this, the benefits of higher education and obtaining an academic degrees have been defined in economic terms, due to the fact that an increase in the financial resources is directly related to a good academic achievement [3]. In the case of Chile, the massification of higher education has led to the incorporation of students from the working class, enabling the transition to a society where intellectual work has become an important alternative for social mobility [4].

Similarly, higher education systems in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile have different systems of higher education, which differ in their origins and structures, but they share the elitist characteristic. However, during the last decades, it has been possible to observe massification processes supported by higher education policies. Where the greatest expansion of the Chilean higher education system began in the 1990s, until the year 2015 with a total of 54 Technical Training Centers, 42 Professional Institutes and 60 universities [5]. In this context, it is worth mentioning that there was a fragmentation of public higher education, going from 8 to 25 universities, while the new private sector in 2011 had 34 universities in operation [4]. Many countries experience a high enrollment in private higher education institutions, with a broad margin between the systems of Brazil and Chile [6]. Thus, in the period from 2008 to 2017, private universities experienced an increase in their undergraduate enrollment corresponding to 36.6%, while state universities presented an 8.8% increase in that period [7].
This phenomenon of massification of higher education exists in different countries of the world. In Colombia, for example, this trend has some unintended consequences or effects, such as dropout and length of the careers, as a result of the arrival of students from disadvantaged sectors of society [8]. In Chile, among the effects associated with this expansion of enrollments is the retention of first-year students, understood as the capability to remain as a student of the institution, which shows differences between private universities with 74.7% and the state universities with 77.9% in the year 2015 [9]. Therefore, Chilean universities have had to face changes in the higher education system, where the focus and attention given to students in these processes is extremely relevant.

Keywords:

Higher education, Chile, Massification.