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| Presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet |
Presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet made an ardent appeal to Chileans fed up with the country’s ailing education system, saying if elected she will propose two new public universities in Rancagua and Aysén.
The former president has already endorsed calls for education reform and a free public university system, however this week’s announcement is Bachelet’s first concrete education policy since launching her bid for president two months ago.
Rancagua, about 60 miles south of Santiago, has a population of 237,000 and currently only one private university, forcing many students to commute around an hour and a half to Santiago.
“There are families who maybe have the resources, there are young people who want to move, and that’s fine, because it is voluntary — but it is different to move because there is no alternative near your house, ” said Bachelet in Rancagua on Wednesday, where she first announced her plan to open a public university in the city. “It makes no sense that in a region with such a strong identity and tradition that there is no local university,” she added.
Friday, Bachelet expanded on the pledge, saying that if elected, she will also advocate for a second public university in the Aysén Region in Patagonia. These would be the first public universities created in more than 30 years, she said in her address.
The pledge is significant as it addresses not only expanding free, public education, but the issue of the country’s centralized power structure, in which descions affecting regional areas are often made from Santiago. The Socialist Party (PS) candidate has made decentralization a theme of her campaign.
Centralism “increases inequality in Chile,” said Bachelet in April, in a speech promising the direct election of provincial superintendents as a priority of her presidency. Currently provincial superintendents are appointed by La Moneda.
“There is no reason to delay a decision that puts in the hands of citizens the choice of who represents the government in every part of our territory,” she said.
In her address on Friday, Bachelet also committed to making education free within six years, saying that by the end of her term, 70 percent of lower-income students would be funded by the government.
Calling for education to “shift from being a consumer good to becoming a social right” Bachelet said this change would rest on four pillars: ending for-profit schools, increasing quality, ending economic segregation and making progress toward free, universal education.
But while these broad strokes may be promising policy start for a country which has seen widespread education protests since 2006, some students remain skeptical.
“We don’t have great confidence in her comments,” Felipe Muñoz from the Movement of Private Higher Education Students (MESUP) told The Santiago Times.
“With these types of comments from presidential candidates — we agree with the government programs she is proposing, but we also take it with a grain of salt when she guarantees 100 percent free education,” he said.
Other student leaders were more outspoken in their critiques of Bachelet, who will also represent the Party for Democracy (PPD), the Christian Left (IC), the Communist Party (PC) and the Broad Social Movement (MAS) party in the left-leaning Concertación primaries.
“In an election year, the promises are abundant,” Andres Fielbaum, president of the Federation of Students at Universidad de Chile (FECH) told The Santiago Times.
“[This is] the same coalition that less than a year ago voted against approving the report of a commission in the Chamber of Deputies investigating the profits of universities,” he said.
“The coalition gives daily demonstrations of its commitment to the model that sees education as a business,” Fielbaum added.
Bachelet will be a participant in the upcoming June 30 primary election
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