Neoliberalism and the Impact of Student Demonstrations in Chile: Pushing the Bounds of the Post-Pinochet Education Project?

• Author: Rodrigo Torres
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221082985
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221082985

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 244, Vol. 49 No. 3, May 2022, 146–161

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221082985

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

146

Neoliberalism and the Impact of Student Demonstrations

in Chile

Pushing the Bounds of the Post-Pinochet Education Project?

by

Rodrigo Torres

Translated by

Victoria Furio

The free-market educational model implemented in Chile after Pinochet involved

steady privatization and the resulting inequality and discrimination in access to univer-

sity education. This educational neoliberalism was hotly contested by massive student

demonstrations. In Bachelet's second government (2014–2018), the political impact and

ramifications of the 2011 student movement initiated a series of educational and political

changes, among them free university education, tax reform focused on improvements in

income distribution, and the end of the binominal system of congressional elections. At

the same time, many of the principles of market education continued. Since the effects of

free-market education became a social and political problem, the students’ demands went

beyond the limits of the educational sector itself to become a central part of debate on the

structural inequalities produced by the post-Pinochet neoliberal model, a conflict that

exploded in Chile in October 2019.

El modelo educativo de libre mercado implementado en Chile después de Pinochet

implicó una constante privatización y la consiguiente desigualdad y discriminación en el

acceso a la educación universitaria. Este neoliberalismo educativo fue fuertemente con-

testado por masivas manifestaciones estudiantiles. En el segundo gobierno de Bachelet

(2014–2018), el impacto político y las ramificaciones del movimiento estudiantil de 2011

dieron pie a una serie de cambios educativos y políticos, entre ellos la educación universi-

taria gratuita, una reforma tributaria enfocada en mejorar la distribución del ingreso y el

fin del sistema binominal de elecciones parlamentarias. Al mismo tiempo, se mantuvieron

muchos de los principios de la educación de mercado. Desde que los efectos de la educación

de libre mercado se convirtieron en un problema social y político, las demandas de los

estudiantes han rebasado los límites del propio sector educativo para convertirse en una

parte central del debate sobre las desigualdades estructurales producidas por el modelo

neoliberal post-Pinochet, un conflicto que estalló en Chile en octubre de 2019.

Keywords: Educational policies, Social movements, Social conflict, Youth, Inequality

Rodrigo Torres is a professor and researcher at the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales y

Juventud of the Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez. This article was written as part of Fondecyt

Project no. 3170570, funded by the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico–

Comisión Nacional de Investigación Cientifíca y Tecnológica (CONICYT). Victoria Furio is a

translator and conference interpreter located in Yonkers, NY.

1082985LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221082985Latin American PerspectivesTorres/Neoliberalism and Student Demonstrations in Chile

research-article2022

Torres/NEOLIBERALISM AND STUDENT DEMONSTRATIONS IN CHILE 147

Chile can be seen as an emblematic case in the implementation of reforms

aimed at privatization of the educational model (Bellei, 2015; Kubal and Fisher,

2016). During the 1980s, the Pinochet dictatorship employed a set of neoliberal

principles to reform the economy in various sectors. Education became one of

its primary examples by implementing the neoliberal orthodoxy of the Chilean

economists dubbed the “Chicago Boys”1 (Austin, 2004; Pitton, 2007). Among

their measures were a drive toward privatization of the educational system

through public subsidies, minimizing the state’s authority in the oversight and

regulation of education, the freedom of private administrators to create univer-

sities and schools, the decentralization of public schools, and the reduction of

their public funding (Aedo-Richmond, 2000; Bellei, 2015; Austin, 2004).

This approach to education was affirmed on March 7, 1990, the final day of

the Pinochet regime, with the passage of a neoliberal-based code that regulated

the Chilean educational system until 2009. The law provided broad opportuni-

ties for businesses and private organizations—such as transnational educa-

tional corporations like Laureate International Universities and religious

congregations—to create and manage educational establishments at all levels

(preschool, K-12, and higher education) either through state subsidies or by

charging students’ families. Meanwhile, the state was left with limited tools to

regulate the educational system and control the quality of the instruction pro-

vided by these institutions.

The coming to power of Concertación2 administrations in 1990 did not repre-

sent a change in these neoliberal principles in education; rather, there was an

attempt to control their effects through policies for remedying educational

inequalities, the low quality of learning, and the adverse material conditions of

lower-income students (Picazo, 2010).3 Using the argument of expanding educa-

tional coverage as a means of reducing inequalities, competition was promoted

between public and private institutions. The increase in coverage revolved around

incentives to participation by the private sector, resulting in a steady reduction of

the public sector in education. For example, although Concertación governments

stressed the gradual increase in the number of students with access to higher

education, for many of these students this was accomplished by taking out expen-

sive bank loans. In the face of this rhetoric, demonstrations took place expressing

student dissatisfaction with the market policies implemented in secondary and

university education and their effects on inequality in the educational system

(Kubal and Fisher, 2016; Grugel and Nem Singh, 2015; Torres, 2012).

The educational problem had already appeared on academic and political

agendas in the early 2000s, when various studies indicated atypically low pub-

lic sector participation in the Chilean educational system and marked inequal-

ity and segregation of institutions by socioeconomic group (OECD, 2004; 2009).

Starting in 2006—the point at which a massive movement of secondary school

students decried the inequality of the educational model—the effects of neolib-

eralism in education emerged as a public problem. The “Penguins’ Revolution”

denounced the principles of the dictatorship’s education system and its con-

solidation in the educational reforms of the Concertación (Ruiz, 2012; Torres,

2014; Kubal and Fisher, 2016).

This social reaction to free-market education intensified during 2011, when for

more than six months a new mobilization of university and secondary school