Evolution of Chilean Higher Education From the Governance Equalizer Perspective

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-2485564/v1

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Evolution of Chilean Higher Education From the Governance Equalizer Perspective

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2485564/v1

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This article examines how Chile's higher education system governance has evolved over the past 50 years. The New Public Management (NPM) narrative is used as our conceptual framework and the governance equalizer as our analytical model to study changes in different periods characterized by different political contexts. The results show that over the past 50 years, governance of the Chilean higher education system has transitioned from an academic self-governance regime to a hybrid scheme coordinated predominantly by means of state regulation, competition and managerial governance. The results of previous studies that used the governance equalizer lens applied to the higher education systems of Italy, Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, and Ethiopia are reviewed. We find there is a common trend towards hybrid governance models, and we note the limitations of the ideal governance regimes to represent the current complexity of national systems of higher education.

higher education

governance

equalizer

Chile

Over the past three decades, higher education systems (HE) around the world have undergone significant changes in their governance schemes (Shattock, 2014). It is well recognized that these transformations have been strongly influenced by New Public Management (NPM) principles (de Boer, Enders and Schimank, 2008; Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani, 2008). In effect, these changes have redefined the roles and relationships of the state, the market, and institutions of higher education (Facchini and Fia, 2022). There are clear global patterns related to less state control, greater institutional autonomy, and increasing competition for funding among institutions (Bleiklie et al., 2011; Ferlie et al., 2008; Krüger et al., 2018).

In any case, the implementation of HE system governance reforms has had different degrees of emphasis and scope depending on each country's political, economic, and social context and the particular features of its national systems (Frølich and Caspersen, 2015; Shattock, 2014). In Europe, there is a tension between transnational pressures for change in the governance of national systems and resistance of these systems to change as they try to maintain their own course and preserve their local identity (Martens and Wolf, 2006). In this sense, different studies reveal different governance models as a function of institutional autonomy (substantive or procedural), the orientation and instruments of public funding (for a particular purpose or results driven), and the private sector's level of involvement in the national system's political economy (Cappano and Pritoni, 2019; Dobbins and Knill, 2017).

In Latin America, the NPM ideology has been widely accepted, and during recent decades has had a strong influence on public policies related to higher education. However, unlike in Europe, reforms in Latin America have been aimed at introducing increased regulation, especially in the areas of quality control, transparency, and oversight. This is all taking place in a mixed (public and private) provision context with broad university autonomy and deregulation at the system level (Lemaitre and Zenteno, 2012; Levy, 2013). It has been noted that the differences between the governance schemes in the region are related to the relative balance between the forces of the state, relevant markets, civil society, and institutions (González-Ledesma and Álvarez-Mendiola, 2020).

The academic literature also reflects a growing interest in the study of changes in HE governance in various parts of the world. While we note the development of various conceptual approaches, these are basically subsequent extensions of Clark's (1983) triangle of coordination, which postulates three vertices of coordination between the state, the market, and the academic oligarchy (Donina and Jaworska, 2022). An early study by Schimank (2002) argues that the reforms inspired by NPM establish five mechanisms for coordinating governance: state regulation, competition, academic self-governance, managerial performance, and external guidance. Subsequently, the governance equalizer metaphor is developed based on these mechanisms and used as an analytical scheme both for studying changes in national systems' coordination mechanisms and for identifying gaps relative to the benchmarks established by policymakers in accordance with NPM guidelines (de Boer, Enders and Schimank, 2008; Hüther and Krücken, 2013). Additional research has delved into the characterization of the three ideal HE governance models — state, market, and academic governance — based on the five coordination mechanisms mentioned above (Dobbins and Knill, 2009, 2017; Leišyte, 2014).

In Chile's case, there have been few studies designed to examine changes in the governance of the HE system from a systemic perspective with a comparative approach to the international level. Notable among those that have been done is Brunner's (2015) study analyzing the transformations of HE governance throughout the second half of the twentieth century from the perspective of Clark's triangle and its successors. However, during the last decade numerous sector-specific analyses have been carried out focusing on HE public policies in democracy (Fernández Darraz, 2015); state regulation of HE (León, 2015); HE quality assurance policies (Lemaitre, 2015); public financing of HE (Brunner and Labraña, 2018); the governance of HE institutions (Alarcón, 2021; Bernasconi, 2015), and the evolution of the academic profession (Berríos, 2015), among others.

The purpose of this article is to examine the evolution of governance of the Chilean HE system over the last 50 years, with special attention to the changes since 1990 and the recent reforms enacted starting in 2014. To this end, we use the governance equalizer model (de Boer, Enders and Schimank, 2008) and consider ideal typologies of HE governance regimes as a reference. Considering the increasing use of the equalizer model, the Chilean case can be examined in comparative terms using recent studies from Ethiopia (Woldegiyorgis, 2014), Italy (Donina, Meoli and Paleari, 2015), Hungary (Kováts et al., 2017), Ukraine (Hladchenko, Antonowicz and de Boer, 2017, Suprum and Furiv, 2018) and Poland (Donina and Jaworska, 2022; Hladchenko et al., 2017).

The article is organized into four sections. The first section presents the conceptual framework; in particular, the HE governance equalizer model used in this study. The second section describes the methodology used, including the data collection mechanism and the criteria used to divide the time periods analyzed. This is followed by a presentation of the results and findings. The final section presents a discussion of the results and the main conclusions.

New Public Management (NPM) and HE

NPM is a reform approach that promotes a set of assumptions and statements about how public sector organizations should be designed, organized, and managed (Diefenbach, 2009). The NPM postulates aim to transform public sector entities into organizations with a well-defined mission or identity, a hierarchical structure, and a more rational approach to their actions (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson, 2000). To achieve this, the NPM's main instruments are based on the generation of markets or quasi-markets (replacing central planning); the operation of robust management-information, monitoring and control systems; and management that is empowered and entrepreneurial instead of management by public officials acting jointly (Andresani and Ferlie, 2006). Ultimately, NPM seeks to create a smaller, more efficient, and results-oriented public sector (Austin and Jones, 2016). The NPM narrative originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, then quickly spread to countries including New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and eventually became a common trend in OECD countries (Ferlie et al., 2009; Kickert, 1997).

It is also assumed that the NPM represents an integrated approach towards a global reorientation of national HE systems (de Boer et al., 2005). There are three recognized fundamental pillars to this approach. The first is that the state should have less direct control over institutions and focus more on setting objectives. Within this context, there is a change in the relationship between the State and the universities. The shift is from a model of strong state control to one of regulation and supervision, which has shaped an emerging regime recognizable by such expressions as "evaluating state", "remote management" or "regulated autonomy" (Bleiklie et al., 2011; Enders et al., 2013; Krüger et al., 2018). Second is the use of market mechanisms to stimulate competition as a form of governance. In this context, institutions are expected to build their capacity to compete efficiently for scarce resources such as funding and prestige (Ferlie et al., 2008; Krücken, 2011; Musselin, 2010; Sporn, 2007). The third pillar is the promotion of managerial governance systems. These systems are based on executive leadership replacing democratic collegiality, in addition to the inclusion of different stakeholders in governance bodies, thus moving beyond the traditional dualism between state representatives and academic self-governance (Amaral et al., 2013; Ferlie et al., 2008; Krüger et al., 2018; Shattock, 2014).

It is thus argued that under the postulates of NPM, HE public policies have been oriented towards increasing the level of competition among institutions, reducing public resources, placing greater emphasis on institutional performance, incorporating assessment mechanisms based on results, and strengthening executive leadership at the expense of traditional academic collegiality (Bleiklie et al., 2011; Dill, 2014). While the changes in HE systems have been global in scope, cutting across the different university models — Humboldtian, Napoleonic, Japanese, Anglo-Saxon and North American (Shattock, 2014) — it is also the case that the influence of NPM has been greatest in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Japan; tending to moderate in Norway and Portugal; and lower in Italy, France and Germany where implementation of the changes has been slower (Oba, 2014; Veiga et al., 2015).

In turn, the reforms introduced in the different national HE systems over the last few years have produced a redistribution in the power relations between the three vertices of Clark's triangle —State, market and academic oligarchies — with different results depending on the degree of NPM institutionalization and the different styles of implementation adopted by the countries (Austin and Jones, 2016). These changes have prompted several studies to examine the effects on HE governance in various contexts and to explore new analytical models such as the governance equalizer.

The HE governance equalizer

The governance equalizer proposed by de Boer, Enders and Schimank (2008) is an analytical model for characterizing the governance of national HE systems based on five dimensions or coordinating mechanisms: state regulation, external guidance, competition, academic self-governance, and managerial governance. The authors define these dimensions as follows:

State regulation refers to the top-down authority exercised by the State to establish rules and regulations by which it sets out detailed behaviors.

External guidance is based on the establishment of general objectives and goals by stakeholders external to the institutions of HE. These guidelines can be delegated or agreed upon by the stakeholders. External guidance may be provided by the State, intermediate institutions, or other actors outside the academy. It is understood that institutions of higher education have the freedom to define how to achieve the established objectives and goals.

Competition refers to the contest that arises between HE institutions for the acquisition of scarce resources such as public funds, students, academic staff, and prestige, in market or quasi-market contexts.

Academic self-governance relates to the power exercised by academic communities both within the system and in the HE institutions themselves. Such influence is exercised through traditional academic mechanisms such as the generation of consensus, reputation-based authority, and peer review. Within the institutions, academic self-governance generally manifests through collegiate bodies responsible for decision making. Externally, it is expressed through the participation of academic oligarchies in decisions concerning regulation and distribution of public funding for research, among others.

Managerial governance is related to the influence of hierarchies that function as organizations within the HE institutions. It refers to the leadership influence exercised by senior management working through the rectors and middle management through the deans in establishment of objectives, internal regulations and decision making.

The governance regimes proposed by Leišyte (2014) based on the Dobbins and Knill (2009) study is used as our starting point. These authors recognize three ideal types of governance regimes: the state model; the academic self-governance model; the market model. To these we add a fourth model, the NPM model. In fact, it is argued that countries that have a strong NPM influence tend to gravitate towards a fourth model that can be added to the three classical types originated in Clark's triangle (Clark, 1983). Table 1 shows the equalization of each type based on the five dimensions or coordinating mechanisms.

Table 1

Types of HE governance
	State model	Academic self-governance model	Market model	NPM model
Competition	Low	Low	High	High
State regulation	High	Low/Medium	Low	Low/Medium
Managerial governance	Medium	Low/Medium	High	High
Academic governance	Low	High	Low	Low
External guidance	Medium	Medium	High	High
Source: Adapted from Leišyte (2014)

According to the authors supporting this premise, under the influence of NPM, HE governance systems are characterized by high levels of competition, external guidance and managerial governance, and concurrently by low levels of state regulation and academic self-governance (de Boer, Enders and Schimank, 2008; Donina and Jaworska, 2022; Hladchenko et al., 2017). It is likely that if the Latin American experience were also considered here, as we will see later in the Chilean case, the level of state regulation would move from low to medium. See Table 1.

This study was carried out using documentary research of secondary sources. We reviewed legislative acts, reports, books, and peer-reviewed scientific articles with relevant and pertinent information for the purposes of this study. Documents containing information and analysis of the Chilean HE system spanning the last 50 years were also reviewed.

Five successive periods were defined. Each was based on discontinuities marked by consequential political and legislative events that led to relevant changes in the trajectory of the HE system. Changes of a more incremental nature are described within each of these periods. The periods are the following:

Prior to 1973. This includes the 1967/1968 University Reform and Chile’s strongly politicized environment during the governments of Revolución en Libertad and Revolución Socialista.

Between 1973 and 1980. This covers the initial period of the military dictatorship under General Pinochet, where universities are taken over by the military junta and kept under strict surveillance. In 1980, Decree Law No. 3541 empowers the head of state to restructure the university system and regulate the creation of higher education corporations.

Between 1980 and 1990. This includes the period in which the dictatorship's so-called neoliberal modernizations are implemented with reforms to higher education by means of Decrees with Force of Law (DFL). The most noteworthy of these include the Ministry of Education DFL 1/03 of January 1981 (Ed.) establishing rules for the creation of private universities; DFL 5/16 of February 1981 (Ed.) and DFL 24/16 of April 1981 (Ed.) regulating the creation, supervision and dissolution of Professional Institutes and Technical Training Centers, respectively; and DFL 4/14 of January 1981 establishing a new model of HE funding.

Between 1990 and 2014. The country returns to democracy and a phase of gradual and increasing public regulation of the HE sector along with a sustained increase in access begins.

As of 2014. The second government of President Michelle Bachelet (2014–2018) begins, preceded by strong student mobilizations and the commitment to deploy a new HE public policy agenda. This promise is implemented with the Law on Higher Education (No. 20.091) and the Law on State Universities (No. 21.094), both enacted in May 2018.

The status of the five coordinating mechanisms is analyzed for each of these periods based on the secondary information collected. Subsequently, each author separately reviewed the content of this analysis and established the equalizer level for each dimension and period. In cases of disagreement, a final consensus was reached among the authors after an exchange of ideas and points of view.

Analysis Of The He Governance Equalizer

Pre-1973 period

During this period, there was a low level of state regulation. A small mixed-regime institutional apparatus was in place for the provision of HE, comprising 8 relatively homogeneous universities (2 state and 6 private) that were highly selective regarding both students and professors (Brunner, 2011; Lemaitre, 2015). Quality assurance was in the hands of the universities themselves. The state was not considered to be an actor whose duty it was to manage the university system, and the quality of tertiary education was not a matter of debate or dispute (Scharager, 2017).

Towards the end of this highly politicized period in Chile, the universities became strategic pieces for the national government because of their political-intellectual weight and ability to socially mobilize the street. Another factor was their ability to administer the kinds of opportunities that were increasingly valued by the middle classes (Brunner, 2015). In addition, there was a low degree of competition among institutions. Markets were considered beyond the horizon of public policy. Similarly, there was scant competition for students given the significant increase in vacancies and the existence of a national selection process for entry. In terms of funding, universities did not compete for access to resources, but rather negotiated politically with government authorities who acted as benevolent patrons (Brunner, 1994).

This period was also characterized by the absence of managerial forms of government. Given this context, the predominant scheme was one of internal stakeholder representation, especially for full-time academics. However, during the university reform of 1967 and 1968 there was a decline of academic oligarchies and a redistribution of internal governance power in universities. In effect, a tripartite internal government emerged between academics, students, and staff. The faculties as intermediate structures within the universities retained their power and consolidated themselves as the main intermediaries of authority and influence (Brunner, 2015). Most universities reorganized their academic structures from a chairs-based system to a model of organization by departments following the US scheme (Brunner, 1984).

Period between 1973 and 1980

The military coup of 1973 marked the beginning of a challenging period for Chilean universities. The military junta took control of these institutions through delegate-rectors vested with special powers. In addition to the loss of autonomy, academic freedom was further restricted with a significant number of faculty members being dismissed, many of the research centers created after the University Reform were eliminated, and public funding for the institutions was significantly reduced (Brunner, 1984). Quality assurance was not a policy concern. The military junta was focused on ensuring the ideological subservience of the academy, and the idea of the university as a heavily surveilled ivory tower prevailed.

This scenario included the very strong influence of a closed circle of highly partisan, ideologically motivated, external civil-military parties that advised the delegate-rectors. There was also a low level of competition between institutions during this period. The military junta’s policy focused on maintaining control of the universities without increasing enrollment or allowing expansion on other fronts. Public funding allotments were decided by the government without negotiation with the institutions.

There were no managerial arrangements in place for the internal governance of the universities. In effect, circles of academic personnel and operators linked to external stakeholders were created around the delegate-rectors and deans. The faculty, on the other hand, lost influence in matters of governance and institutional management. Academic departments considered ideologically hostile to the regime were closed, and faculty groups and student federations were banned. In short, individual and collective educational freedom was tolerated only to the extent that it did not upset the authorities.

Period between 1980 and 1990

Starting in 1980, inspired by the neoliberal doctrine, the regime introduced significant privatizing reforms to the higher education system. These reforms rested on three fundamental pillars. The first was centered on the fragmentation of state universities, by transforming their regional campuses into new universities, professional institutes or pedagogical academies. This brought about a decrease in the social and political influence of the state sector (Lemaitre, 2015; Lemaitre and Lavados, 1985). The second pillar was legislation designed to diversify the system both horizontally and vertically with the creation of new private institutions: universities, professional institutes and technical training centers (Fernandez, 2008). The third pillar was focused on reducing state contributions while increasing institutional dependence on private sources of financing (Paredes, 2015) to promote competition and markets. In terms of regulation, the new public policies assumed that the quality of higher education would be self-regulating via competition among the institutions themselves and the freedom of students as sovereign consumers to choose or reject among a wide range of institutions and programs (Brunner, 2011).

During this period there was a significant decline in the influence of non-governmental external stakeholders, including the Catholic Church, Freemasons, and local and regional organizations. The privatization reforms fostered by the 1980 legislation favored competition among institutions for the recruitment of students and established a fledgling market for academic positions. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of universities grew from 8 to nearly 60. In addition, 80 professional institutes and 161 technical training centers were created. Total student enrollment increased from 113,000 to 245,408 during the same period (Lemaitre, 2015). In 1983, part-time professors made up 28% of the total number of faculty in the university system, compared to 51% in 1967 (Brunner, 1984).

At the institutional governance level, the influence of professional management remained low, but an incipient process of management and administrative professionalization was underway. The Organic Constitutional Education Law (LOCE 1989) set up a managerial type of governance scheme for state universities comprising a board of directors composed of internal and external members. The rector was elected by the President of the Republic from a shortlist of three candidates proposed by the Board of Directors. An advisory academic council and the deans were appointed by the rector from a list of names proposed by a committee of academics although the rector had the prerogative to include other candidates (Bernasconi, 2015). Moreover, the influence of faculty members on governance and management issues at the institutional level remained minimal.

Period between 1990 and 2014

With the return to democracy, governance based on the core principle of university autonomy was restored to the HE system, the mixed system of provision and financing was consolidated and modulated by the State's guiding policies, and competition was stimulated in the various markets relevant to HE.

During this period, the mixed provision and financing matrix of the HE political economy regime was maintained. However, there was evidence of adjustments to the system through public policies focused on student support (scholarships and loans), quality improvement programs, and more information to internal and external stakeholders (Brunner, 2015). In this regard, we recognize that a regulatory and evaluative state has been in place since 1990, albeit at an initially moderate level (Bernasconi, 2015). During that decade, the Higher Council of Education (a public and autonomous body) oversaw new private institutions that applied for licensing. In 1999, the Ministry of Education created the National Commission for Undergraduate Accreditation (CNAP) and the National Commission for Postgraduate Accreditation (CONAP), for the purpose of experimentally promoting quality assurance through a voluntary process of accreditation of degrees and programs at all the institutions in the system.

In 2006, the National Quality Assurance System (SINAC) comprising the Higher Council of Education (CSE), the National Accreditation Commission (CNA) and the Higher Education Division of the Ministry of Education was created. Under this new institutional framework, the CNA was responsible for three types of accreditations. It carried out voluntary institutional accreditation and accredited doctoral programs, also on a voluntary basis. It also authorized and supervised private quality agencies, responsible for accrediting undergraduate programs that voluntarily opted for this examination. The only exceptions were medical and pedagogy programs, both of which were legally required to be accredited. During these years, institutional accreditation was also introduced as a requirement for access to the public funding intended to subsidize demand.

This was a period with a moderate level of guidance from external stakeholders. The national government increased its influence on university management mainly through public financing. Objectives and results were negotiated through performance agreements aimed at generating greater alignment between institutional objectives and priorities of national interest (Cáceres, 2008). Between 2010 and 2013, 64 performance agreements were entered into for seven areas of improvement, including state, traditional private and new private universities, as well as non-university institutions of higher education. Performance based block grants (fondos basales) were created in 2012 for the purpose of allocating resources to universities belonging to the Council of Rectors (CRUCH). These grants were allocated to the universities based on the number of accredited doctoral programs and the number of publications they produced, and by the institutional results achieved on a set of performance indicators associated with each category (Fernández, 2015). Furthermore, accreditation processes — of both institution and programs — promoted greater, albeit incipient, linkages with the productive sectors and employers (Brunner, 2015).

In 2011, intense student protests were unleashed calling into question the ideological basis of HE public policies, considered to be neoliberal by the students. These protests also installed the demand for tuition-free quality education for all squarely in the center of the public agenda (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2017). The student protests continued at varying levels of intensity and with high levels of public support over the following years. HE was a key issue in the 2013 presidential campaign that led to Bachelet's second term in office (2014–2018). Once elected, she set out to fulfill her promise of introducing HE regulation and financing reform. In sum, student protests during this period exerted a strong influence on the course of HE governance and public policies.

During this period there was also a significant increase in competition as a coordinating mechanism of the HE system. In this vein, there was an increase in the use of quasi-market modalities or market-type mechanisms for allocating public funding to institutions through demand-side subsidies, competitive research grants, and supply-side subsidies through performance agreements. Market forces thus remained influential in determining how higher education was organized and in increasing the universities’ competitive attributes (Brunner, 2015).

During the transition from mass to universal access to HE, managerial self-governance in public universities also intensified (Rodríguez et al., 2011). Although formal governance structures remained unchanged, universities incentivized the emergence of administrative structures and management practices (such as strategic plans, self-evaluation, and institutional analysis) that stimulated a more professional and systematic management, generally in response to quality assurance policy guidelines (Bernasconi, 2015).

At the system level, the academic oligarchies lost influence on funding policies and quality regulations (Fernandez, 2015; Lemaitre, 2015). But professional self-governance continued in the selection of research projects, through peer reviewers in the institutional and program accreditation processes, and through control of knowledge communication within the respective disciplines (Brunner and Ganga, 2016). All in all, the academic profession was strengthened at the universities, essentially because of a growing commitment to the research-university model, the implementation of public policies aimed at training PhDs and scientific production, and also as a result of increased academic salaries (Berríos, 2015).

Institutional governance was also in a process of change with a 1994 legal modification (Law Nº19.305) providing that rectors of state universities would be elected by the faculty (members of the three highest categories) by direct voting. However, the General Education Law (2009), which replaced the LOCE did not modify the restrictions on student and staff participation in the governance of state universities. Nevertheless, at some state and private institutions they were invited to participate with the right to speak and/or vote in intermediate and higher councils (Bernasconi, 2015). In general terms, during this stage state and private universities belonging to the CRUCH tended to converge insofar as their forms of governance. They were strongly based on the institutional autonomy and academic collegiality model, with only a limited presence of elements related to the stakeholder model, and governance was increasingly exercised in a managerial management framework. At some private universities created following the 1980 reform, some variation of the entrepreneurial model predominates. The model is characterized by the existence of an owner who delegates the administration of the institution by mandate to appointed and not elected authorities and, with a few exceptions, there is little participation by faculty (Bernasconi, 2015).

Period starting in 2014

With the 2014 election of a social democratic government promising important HE reforms, a new period is now recognized to have begun (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2017). Michelle Bachelet's government's HE policy agenda (2014–2018) sought to define tuition-free access to tertiary education as a social right and to create a new legislative and regulatory framework for institutions at this level.

During this stage, the evaluative and regulatory state that was moderately implemented between 1990 and 2010 was strengthened (Brunner, 2015). Under the new Higher Education Law (No. 20.091 of 2018), the state's influence increased through greater public regulations and an increase in state funding. Notably, state regulations were increased by central mandates: a undersecretariat of higher education was created to operate in conjunction with two public agencies: a superintendence and a renewed accreditation council (Brunner and Ganga, 2016). The new regulatory framework established the missions of universities, professional institutes, and technical training centers. In effect, this requires universities to conduct research. As a result, the North American ideal of a research university was imposed in Chile by law. This contrasts with previous periods when RandD activities were fostered through incentive policies. The new law also enhances the National Accreditation Commission's role in defining institutional criteria, standards, and instruments for quality management, while also establishing new and increased requirements. The regulations specifically provide for an integrated and mandatory institutional accreditation that includes the evaluation of all functions, campuses and levels of training programs through a selection of undergraduate and graduate programs. The accreditation of undergraduate programs leading to medical and educational degrees remains mandatory. In addition, PhD programs offered by institutions are required to be accredited (Alarcón, 2020).

During these years, the State has also taken on a greater role in funding access to tertiary education (Brunner et al., 2021) by ensuring tuition-free education for students from the 60% of the population with the lowest income. With this new regulatory framework, institutions lost degrees of decision-making autonomy regarding the size and growth of undergraduate enrollment, increased their dependence on state funding, were subject to compliance with more demanding quality standards, and faced growing public accountability obligations regarding their operation and use of fiscal resources (Alarcón, 2020).

It has also been argued that the 2018 reform failed to adequately address the involvement of external stakeholders in the governance of the HE system (Brunner and Ganga, 2016, 2018). The state universities continue to have representatives from the President of the Republic and other external members on their boards of directors, though they participated rather passively (Alarcón, 2021). For the private institutions, there is greater involvement from external stakeholders who make up the majority or entirety of their boards of directors. Overall, the system's institutions increased their level of interaction with the productive sector, businesses, and surrounding communities to better calibrate, review and validate their undergraduate and graduate program profiles given the increasing quality requirement demanded by the accrediting body (Lemaitre, 2015).

The intensity of competition among institutions for students, professors and university administrators remains high and became even more pronounced in relation to research and doctoral programs, initiatives linked to the community environment, as well as placement in national and international rankings. At the same time, there is evidence of stronger "invisible" competition by institutional areas that are externally evaluated and related to years of accreditation, and also among state universities, directly subsidized private universities, and private universities with no direct state subsidy (Brunner and Ganga, 2016). In 2022, total HE enrollment was 1.3 million students, with 59% attending 58 universities (18 of them state universities), 31% attending 34 Professional Institutes and 10% attending 50 Technical Training Centers (Mineduc, 2022). The gross participation rate is 93%, which is 16 percentage points higher than the average for OECD member countries (World Bank, 2022).

Institutional governance shows a strong NPM influence, embraced by managers at both state and private universities. This influence can be seen in the internal management and organizational culture, mainly with the use of strategic plans, the professionalization of roles and teams, and the use of performance indicators (Labraña and Brunner, 2022). It can be concluded that during this last period, managerial forms of governance and the use of performance instruments have achieved their highest level of development in Chilean institutions of higher education.

The academic profession’s participation in system governance is evident in advisory, coordination, self-regulation and strategic foresight bodies (Brunner and Ganga, 2016). At the institutional level, the changes in the governance of state universities brought about by Law No. 21.094 On State Universities in 2018 have strengthened faculty participation in the central decision-making bodies. Thus, these recent changes point in the opposite direction to some of the international trends registered in the literature over the previous three decades (Labraña and Brunner, 2022). The new law effectively reduces the participation of external stakeholders in the board of directors of state universities while consolidating democratic election as the primary mechanism for the appointment of unipersonal academic authorities and the nomination of representatives to collegiate bodies (Alarcón, 2020).

This article [paper] explores the evolution of governance in the Chilean HE system during the last half century based on the equalizer model. The results of the analysis contribute to the international academic debate on the changes experienced regarding the governance of national systems and the degree of influence that both global currents and local factors have had on the changes that have taken place in recent decades.

Under the lens of the governance equalizer, it is apparent that the Chilean HE system has adopted a variety of different approaches over the last 50 years. These transformations have taken place amid a political environment marked by drastic gyrations with four successive paradigmatic transformations of different stripes (Brunner, 2015). The first was the revolution in freedom (1964–1970) guided by the modernizing principles of the Alliance for Progress during the Cold War. This was followed by President Allende's democratic socialist revolution that ended abruptly with the military coup in 1973, which unleashed a broad and intense repressive crackdown. The predominance of academic self-government in the HE governance regime was evident until the last year before the coup. The regime comprised a small group of elite universities with a primary teaching orientation that was heavily influenced by the Napoleonic model of the university.

The authoritarian-military counterrevolution of 1973 to 1980 brought about a shift towards a state-centric regime. Here, the power of the academic oligarchies was replaced by strong state intervention in the internal governance of the universities. These interventions in the work of political control of both state and private institutions involved significant participation by outsiders sympathetic to the military government. Subsequently, with the neoliberal capitalist revolution promoted by the military government from 1980 onwards, a State-centered governance regime was maintained. Nevertheless, there was also a higher level of competition given the inclusion of the private sector in both the provision and financing of the system, accompanied by a lower degree of external stakeholder participation, and the implementation of managerial type arrangements in the governance of the institutions. Table 2 shows the changes in HE governance over the last 50 years.

Table 2

Evolution of governance of the Chilean HE system
	Prior to 1973	Between 1973 and 1980	Between 1980 and 1990	Between 1990 and 2014	After 2014
Competition	Low	Low	Medium	High	High
State regulation	Low	High	High	Medium	High
Managerial governance	Low	Low	Medium/Low	Medium/High	High
Academic governance	High	Low	Low	Low/Medium	Medium
External guidance	Low/Medium	High	Low	Medium	Medium
Source: Author created

Starting in 1990, the country moved towards a model of democratic capitalism and integration into the globalization process that remains in place today. During the following decades through 2014, a coordinating regime governed by competition in the HE markets was consolidated. This brought an increasing degree of state involvement that stimulated greater access, expanded support for students, especially through scholarships and loans, encouraged research and development, and fostered quality assurance. With the election of the Bachelet government in 2014 and the 2018 HE reform, while a high level of competition remained, the prominence and influence of the regulatory/evaluative state increased. At the same time, managerial governance arrangements strengthened within universities, and academia recovered levels of agency and positions of power through its role in the production of advanced knowledge. With respect to Clark's triangle, it can be argued that governance of the Chilean HE system has reached a new equilibrium that is equidistant between the state and the market and further away from the apex of the academic oligarchies. Put another way, academic capitalism has not eliminated either the state or the market, and it has replaced the absence of public policies with the national government's more active presence as regulator, evaluator, and funder (Brunner, Pedraja-Rejas and Labraña Vargas, 2020).

We further note that during the first half of the period between 1990 and 2014, the governance of the Chilean HE system was closer to the ideal NPM regime as defined by de Boer, Enders and Schimank (2008); Donina and Jaworska (2022) and Hladchenko et al. (2017). Recently, however, there has been a shift away from the NPM model due to increasing state regulation. This has taken place over two phases: a moderate phase from 1990 to 2014, and another of active state participation as coordinator, announced in 2014 and implemented with the adoption of new regulations approved in 2018.

From 1990 to 2014, Chile also consolidated an integrated mixed public and private HE system which has achieved, as noted, one of the highest levels of coverage in the world. It is noteworthy that the Chilean experience has been studied with particular interest by countries such as Peru, Brazil and Paraguay that are seeking to consolidate mixed provision systems of higher education using public policies and intersectoral regulations (González-Ledesma and Álvarez, 2020). However, it is also the case that the 2018 Law on State Universities created special funding mechanisms for the state university sub-system that produce asymmetries in access to public resources. This goes against the integration that the tuition-free policy was designed to promote by benefitting eligible students regardless of the type of institution — state or non-state — they enroll in.

From a comparative international perspective, the current Chilean HE governance regime has similarities and differences with Italy ((Donina, Meoli and Paleari, 2015), Hungary (Kováts et al., 2017), Poland (Donina and Jaworska, 2022), Ethiopia (Woldegiyorgis, 2014) and Ukraine (Hladchenko, Antonowicz and de Boer, 2017; Suprum and Furiv, 2018), which have also been studied under the lens of the governance equalizer scheme.

In general terms, the HE reforms promoted by these countries during the last decade — with the sole exception of Poland’s turn towards deregulation in 2018 — have increased state regulation, just as Chile has. On the other hand, among the countries mentioned, only Chile and Poland have high levels of competition and a high degree of managerial government influence in their HE systems. It is also clear that only the systems in Poland, Italy, and Ethiopia (in the case of the older universities) exhibit high levels of academic empowerment through self-governance mechanisms. In particular, the cases of Italy and Poland demonstrate that academic self-governance has succeeded to maintain a high level of influence in their systems despite the successive reforms implemented since 1990 (Kwiek, 2014; Moscati, 2006), unlike in the Chilean case. Similarities are also noted among the systems in Poland, Italy, Ethiopia, and Chile (in the case of state universities) with respect to a moderate influence of external stakeholders in institutional governance and management.

The foregoing confirms that the governance configurations of national systems depend on the interaction between various factors at multiple levels. The case of Chile and the other countries reviewed show that changes in the trajectory of HE governance can be influenced by transnational policies, the ideology of the national governments in power regarding the role of the public sector in HE, the country’s financial situation, and the relationship between pressure groups that seek to influence public policies and regulation of the sector.

In sum, our findings provide evidence that the governance of the Chilean HE system over the last 50 years has moved from a regime of academic self-governance to a hybrid scheme, with a predominance of coordinating mechanisms in which state regulation and evaluation, competition in markets and quasi-markets, and managerial governance converge. Similarly, we found that the current HE governance regimes in Chile, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and Ethiopia do not conform to any of the four ideal models recognized in the literature (state, market, academic self-governance and NPM). As such, we conclude that these models, considered separately, have limitations and do not represent the current complex and diverse reality of national HE systems.

This study suggests that further investigation into HE governance should be undertaken to deepen our understanding of the changes taking place and consider new models that reflect the complexities of the current reality. We suggest that studying the national systems in Latin American countries through the lens of the equalizer model in the context of the political, economic and social changes experienced by the countries in the region would provide a fruitful opportunity to inquire into the similarities and differences that exist between the different systems and the ways in which these changes give rise to divergent or convergent narratives.

Conflict of interest: No potential conflict of interest is reported by the authors.

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Evolution of Chilean Higher Education From the Governance Equalizer Perspective

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Abstract

Introduction

Conceptual Framework

New Public Management (NPM) and HE

The HE governance equalizer

Method

Analysis Of The He Governance Equalizer

Pre-1973 period

Period between 1973 and 1980

Period between 1980 and 1990

Period between 1990 and 2014

Period starting in 2014

Discussion And Conclusions

Declarations

References

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