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The Council of Rectors highlighted its commitment to working on strategies that allow for timely graduation - defined as the formal duration plus one year - and a reduction in university dropout rates, while also noting that generating changes in the formal duration of degrees requires a national agreement.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Education, Harald Beyer, presented a new proposal for calculating the reference tuition fee and invited the Council of Rectors to work together on the issue.
The monthly plenary session of the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities (CRUCH) was held in Puerto Montt, where the agreed-upon exchange of documents with the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) took place. On one hand, the Council's Executive Vice President, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, explained the details of the report on the duration of degree programs, and on the other, the Minister of Education, Harald Beyer, presented the proposal for a new system of reference tuition fees.
Regarding the report on the duration of degree programs, CRUCH proposed two lines of work: one that has to do with deepening the timely graduation by concentrating on reducing dropout rates, and another line that relates to committing to the Ministry of Education to converge on a shortening line that would allow some degree programs to reach the standards established in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The Council proposed a 5-year roadmap to fulfill the proposal to shorten careers and in its study pointed out that it is essential to make the distinction that in some countries they talk about shorter careers but they do not talk about careers but about degrees which is very different from delivering a career that grants a qualifying professional title where the person goes directly to work and does not have to continue studying.
On this topic, the executive vice president of CRUCH added that "it would not necessarily be possible to reduce the duration of time in all careers, since it depends on whether what we want is for the person to finish with a professionally qualifying title or to finish with an academic degree and have to continue studying.".
Education Minister Harald Beyer said the ministry wanted quick results on this issue because it is a fundamental need for Chilean families. “We want to move quickly on this matter, within reasonable timeframes, but we want shorter degree programs so students can graduate promptly. We don't want programs to be prolonged because that affects their finances, their families' finances, and ultimately the State when it supports students,” he explained.
Reference tariffs
Regarding reference tuition fees, the minister presented a formula that allows students to determine the expected future cost of their degree and the value the program will provide them. Beyer indicated that the objective of reference tuition fees is to regulate the relevance of degree programs, to which Rector Zolezzi responded that it is "a matter of concern, but one that is not applicable to all programs.".
The CRUCH spokesperson indicated that the Council will “analyze the simulations that the ministry has done; we will request them if they exist, otherwise we will have to do them ourselves. The minister said there was no great rush on this issue; he was interested in moving forward but it wasn't necessarily an immediate priority.”
Finally, regarding the Superintendency of Higher Education, Rector Zolezzi pointed out that the project does not address the original aspiration to regulate profit-making in higher education. “We believe that the issue of quality should have been included, and since the project has not been approved, one concrete possibility is to improve it.”.
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