Economic returns and the cost of studying higher education in chile: Reflections for discussion

Abstract

The Chilean higher education system has responded to its growing enrolment and massification, especially among students from lower socioeconomic strata, through a significant increase in scholarships and loans from the State. This last financing instrument has made it possible to increase the number of graduates from Chilean universities, enabling them to obtain their university degree and enter the labor market. In this context, the objective of this work is to contribute to the theoretical discussion on the problem of profitability and cost of studying higher education in Chile, in order to obtain lessons for new public policies. To this end, a documentary approach is used. It is evident that Chile has one of the highest rates of return on higher education among OECD countries. However, there is a heterogeneous profitability of careers, which leads to different realities in the income of graduates. But the high cost of career prices is even more questionable, as well as the high indebtedness of several generations of students as a result of the State policy that liberalized the forms of financing with the presence of private banks and with an important cost for the State apparatus that injected resources into the system to guarantee the risk of non-payment.