A vote on whether Chile will accept a radical new constitution that enshrines bold commitments to higher education reform is on knife-edge as a crucial general election approaches. Public universities become free-of-charge as part of the wide-ranging changes to the system, which currently boasts some of the highest tuition fees in South America.

A draft of the document was finalised by a constitutional assembly outside the formal political structure, but its acceptance is being inextricably linked to the fate of new president Gabriel Boric, one of the leaders of the 2011 student movement that called for the market-based education system installed by Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1980s to be dismantled. Critics say it’s far from clear how the changes would work in practice, or how the cost of the commitments could be met, particularly as the government has also promised to cancel student debt and to increase research funding from the current 0.4 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent.

Under the gratuidad programme set up by Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s last left-wing leader, the poorest 60 percent of society have their tuition fees paid by the government, whether they attend public or private institutions, and it is not clear which elements of this system will be retained. Other proposed changes include a commitment to set up at least one public university in every region of the country and a new state funding system under which money would be distributed to institutions via block grants rather than based on the number of students enrolled.

Maria Veronica Santelices, associate professor of education at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, says that if passed, the constitution will enshrine the idea of education as a right and give public institutions a stronger role than they have enjoyed in the past 30 years, when the expansion of Chile’s higher education sector was left mostly to private institutions.

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