Bringing Politics and Power to Understanding Student Protest: The Chilean Student Movement for Free Education

• In Event: Education and Activism Redux I

Proposal

Introduction
In keeping with the conference theme, in this paper we turn attention to the role of power and political contest in the student mobilizations and protests over access, affordability and equity in high education in Chile over the past two decades. We present a case study that addresses the specifics of over a decade of student mobilization and protest in Chile and the array of significant factors shaping that contest, including Chilean political history and the development of higher education (Agüero, 1987; Duran Migliardi, 2012) as well as such meta-forces as neo-colonialism (Whyte, 2016), massification (Trow, 2006), violent regime change (Oppenheim, 2007), structural adjustment and inequality (Fischman, 1998; Laing, Sherwood & Cambero, 2019), privatization (Carnoy, 1998; Carrasco & Gunter, 2018; Marginson, 2007), and academic capitalism (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). We find that at the center of the Chilean contest are rights claims for equity, access and affordability, which are contextualized within a broader struggle over the legitimate state purposes for higher education. We present the historical and contemporary efforts to shape those purposes through the exercise of various forms of power and political mobilization by an array of actors and formations within and beyond the Chilean national context.

Conceptual Framework
As we draw upon an array of literature on student activism in Latin America (Archila, 2012; Brunner, 1990; Bonavena & Califa, 2018; Della Porta, Cini, & Guzman-Concha, 2020; Levy, 2005; Lloyd, 2019; Meyer, 2008; Ordorika, 2021; Vera, 2013), we analyze this case through a model of “forces in contest” (Pusser, 2018). We argue that universities should be understood as political institutions of the state, shaped by political contest. Postsecondary institutions are central state institutions that are empowered to meet various national goals for education. To maintain legitimacy, state policies and postsecondary institutions themselves must provide, or be making progress toward, equity, access, opportunity and affordability as part of the mission of the state educational project (Carnoy & Levin, 1985; Ordorika & Pusser, 2007). The degree to which a state postsecondary educational project supports these goals is determined by political contest (Pusser, 2018; Ordorika & Lloyd, 2015) and exercises of power (Lukes, 2021). We argue that this contest should be understood as a set of “forces in contest,” in which elements of the state, the civil society, postsecondary institutions, and actors beyond those central formations compete for control over various aspects of the state postsecondary project. In various national contexts at different points in time, these forces have been key to understanding a true politics of higher education, one that fully recognizes power and contest within each state context.
We augment this model by applying Steven Lukes’s (2021) three-dimensional model of power to understanding student protest. Lukes’s attention to visible contest, as well as the mobilization of symbols, memes and cultural referents in political contest, and his attention to the potentials for overcoming deeply instantiated norms, are particularly applicable to the Chilean case.

Methodology
Collectively the authors have produced considerable research and scholarship on the politics of universities and student movements in Latin America and, and also have direct experience in Chile. The data collection for this paper is based on document analysis, historical accounts, site visits, observations and conversations with students, administrators, faculty and legislators in Latin America and in Chile over the past decade.

The Case of Student Activism in Chile
We present the case of student activism in Chile as a significant contemporary example of the role of power and politics in higher education, one deeply shaped by the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet introduced one of the most highly privatized and expensive systems of higher education in the world. Although the dictatorship ended more than 30 years ago, the legacy of that model remains. Average university tuition in Chile was US$7,200 per year in 2022, even at the public universities, which derive most of their funding from student fees. In 2017, Chile was the only member of the OECD in which tuition at public universities exceeded that of the private sector: US$7,654 versus US$7,156; only the United States had more expensive tuitions—an average of US$8,202 (EFE, 2017). Former President Ricardo Lagos, the first center-left leader since the 1970s, created the government-backed student loan program, the Crédit con Aval del Estado, in 2005, to expand access to higher education. But the system soon became a major burden for Chilean families, and was one of the main triggers of student protests in 2011 and again in 2019.

In response to massive student protests from 2011 to 2013, the government began overhauling the financing system for higher education, introducing free tuition for the poorest 60% of the population as of 2016 (Bernasconi, 2019). In 2013, Michelle Bachelet, a member of the progressive Concertación coalition, won the presidential election by a significant margin after campaigning on a promise to introduce free tuition for a large segment of the population (Lloyd, 2013). While the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera, who regained power in 2018, continued to pay lip service to free higher education, as president from 2018 to 2022, Piñera failed to expand the system, contributing to the left´s return to power in 2022 through the election of Gabriel Boric, a former leader of the University of Chile Student Federation.

Conclusion
Our analysis turns particular attention to the prevalence of the concepts of legitimacy and state purposes for higher education, equity and access to affordable higher education for all, and the ways in which multiple exercises of power were employed by various actors and formations to shape the contest throughout the student mobilizations in Chile. Our findings offer significant utility for the study of student activism in Chile, in Latin American and more broader moving forward.

Authors

• Brian Pusser, University of VirginiaSchool of Education

• Marion Lloyd, National Autonomous University of Mexico

• Imanol Ordorika, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico