• The president of Universidad de Santiago, Dr. Juan Manuel Zolezzi, signed the “Declaration of Santiago” (Declaración de Santiago, in Spanish), a landmark after three days of discussions and debates on the role of state universities. The “Latin American State Universities Conference” gathered together presidents and representatives of the main universities of the Region.
• “We want universities of high quality and excellence that get involved with society and with the projects related to the problems of the country. We want state universities to be committed to democracy and pluralism,” Dr. Zolezzi stressed.
• The document signed recognizes the contribution of non-profit private universities, but it explicitly questions “the sudden increase in the past few decades of private institutions with evident commercial interests that have directly or indirectly received government support for their expansion.”

The debate over public education in our country is in full swing and, in the following months, the Government is expected to present several initiatives to reform higher education. In this context, and for its 172^nd anniversary, Universidad de Chile invited presidents and representatives of universities of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile, among others, to the Latin American State Universities Conference for the purpose of discussing on the strategic role of these institutions.

The conference started on November 19^th and finished on November 21^st with the submission of the document “Las Universidades Estatales deben ser el eje de las políticas de educación superior en América Latina” (State Universities should be at the core of higher education policies in Latin America, in Spanish) - the “Declaration of Santiago”- in which the universities involved agreed on several issues that are essential to these institutions and demarcate their work in the public sphere.

The document was signed by 15 presidents and representatives of universities of all over the continent and it established, among other points, that “higher education is a social right, a human and individual right”; therefore, “the governments’ support for scientific research, technological innovation, artistic creation and the development of humanities is essential to build increasingly prosperous, democratic and fair societies

According to the President of Universidad de Santiago, Dr. Juan Manuel Zolezzi, the conference was held in a moment “close to a profound and philosophic debate, most probably in March, over the new regulations of the higher education reform. So we consider that it is very important for us to be present on behalf of Universidad de Santiago. It was also important to leave a mark with regard to what we understand as public universities in Latin America in our times.”

One of the points in the Declaration that President Zolezzi valued the most is the one that establishes that governments should “increase the resources for funding public higher education and prevent the funding systems from having incentives that may lead to inequity in the access (to higher education), in a sustained path to free education.”

“We want universities of high quality and excellence that get involved with society and with the projects related to the problems of the country. We want state universities to be committed to democracy and pluralism,” Dr. Zolezzi said. He valued the continental agreement because “we were able to standardize criteria by recognizing that public education has a sole origin: the State bodies. And, what is most important: the idea of free education was validated at a regional level.” 

Ennio Vivaldi, President of Universidad de Chile, the university that hosted the conference, also highlighted the activity, saying that through this, the continent commits to “the idea that the education provided by state universities should be free.”

He also acknowledged that, just like the document says, “the higher education system is diverse and we value the interaction with traditional private universities that contribute to the university system. But in turn, we are concerned that in this context, there are institutions that were conceived as business, something that is very sad sometimes, because they take money from poor people and provide in exchange a questionable no-quality product. We were very explicit regarding this point,” Vivaldi said.

In fact, the document states that “the sudden increase in the past few decades of private institutions with evident commercial interests or social biases undermines the idea of higher education as a social right.” Then, it states that “in some countries, these private institutions with commercial interests have directly or indirectly received government support for their expansion.” 

International views

One of the foreign representatives, María Andrea Marín of Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, said that although there are other opportunities in which Latin American universities gather together, like the Montevideo Group Association of Universities (AUGM, in Spanish) that groups together the Mercosur bloc universities, “these meetings organized with an specific purpose focus on an specific discussion: to establish the reason, the purpose and the extent to which we commit to as state universities. To establish what we intend as institutions and how we can contribute to strengthening the democratic states and the social development of our communities.”

Fernando Sempértegui, President of Universidad Central of Ecuador valued the fact that they “claimed the state’s constant attention to the needs of these universities, so that they can fulfil their mission: high quality scientific research work and professional training.”

He also highlighted the importance of state universities as “the leading agent in the approach to building equity.”

Education Reform

During the activity, Dr. Zolezzi, President of Universidad de Santiago and Executive Vice President of the Council of Presidents of Chilean Universities, also spoke about current events and commented on the pressures that the Christian Democratic Party allegedly put on the government to slow down the debate on the Education Reform, with the consequent delay in the deadlines.

“I would expect this time could be recovered in terms of a larger and better conversation, because up to know, there has not been a dialogue between the government and the universities, in general, or a dialogue with the state universities, in particular, about the development of this reform,” President Zolezzi said.  He added that he does not have any information regarding to what the government intends to implement or propose “in March, April or at any other time. I do not believe they have not done anything. I can scarcely imagine that in 8 months they have not made any progress.”

President Zolezzi finally said that he believes that the government should show itself “more convinced and that the president should be more present, to proceed with this.  Although President (Bachelet) has expressed her intention to do so, we expect the implementation of these policies become real, because in terms of budget, we did not see it.” 

Translated by Marcela Contreras