Chilean Traditional Universities - Overview

Overview

It is not a very specific term since it reflects only the history of a given university and is not a valid description of the university itself or of the way that university is organized. For example, even though the Universidad Católica refers to itself as a "traditional university", it is more correctly described as a "private Catholic university" (e.g., the Catholic University of Leuven), as the government, and the people in extension, do not intervene in the governance of the university.

This distinction (which is not found in most countries) was needed because the Pinochet regime changed the higher education system, effectively dismembering public universities (like the Universidad de Chile or the Universidad Técnica del Estado) and Catholic universities. This decision, which can be seen as a punitive action against highly "unstable" institutions, or as a mean for better control, also included the opening of the education market, effectively allowing any private citizen to establish a higher education institution. Several small private universities arose after this, most of them directly linked to the dictatorship government members.

These "traditional" universities receive state financial support through many means -- even though many of these universities are not public -- receiving as they do most of the better students and making most of the research undertaken by Chilean universities.