Addressing the Needs of Chile's University System

By Judith Adler

In 1999, the World Bank and the government of Chile committed $240 million to support the Chilean university system. The new program, known as Mejoramiento de la Calidad y Equidad de la Educación Superior (MECESUP), is designed to improve the quality and equity of Chilean higher education and represents one of the first in a new generation of World Bank efforts to contribute to global development by increasing the capacity of universities to innovate and to educate.

MECESUP has three main areas of focus:

• development and implementation of an accreditation system
  
• enhanced links with national development and qualitative improvement in educational programs at the technical, undergraduate, and graduate levels
  
• improvement in the administration of the university system, both centrally and at the local level

One noteworthy aspect of the program is that universities compete for funding by presenting proposals to MECESUP for projects that support their own development priorities. These projects generally have several components, such as the creation and improvement of infrastructure, purchase of equipment, and degree and non-degree training and research support for faculty members. To date, over 100 projects have been approved in the first two rounds of selection.

Many of the intended projects are designed to develop or improve the quality of graduate programs in Chile, especially at the doctoral level. To meet this goal, Chile needs to ensure that more faculty obtain doctoral degrees. Given LASPAU and the Fulbright Program’s long history of support for faculty development in Latin America and the Caribbean, LASPAU approached MECESUP and the Chilean Fulbright Commission in July 1999 to propose a collaborative effort between the three organizations.

Over much of 2000, the Fulbright Commission, LASPAU, and MECESUP developed a strategy for a joint program, resulting in a cooperative agreement between the Commission and MECESUP. Through this agreement, signed in October 2000, faculty members and graduate students who are involved in approved MECESUP projects can apply to the Fulbright Program and, if they are selected, will be considered Fulbright grantees. LASPAU will provide to these individuals the same placement and monitoring services that are currently provided to grantees participating in the Fulbright Faculty Development Program.

The joint program officially began in December 2000 with a series of regional workshops designed to address potential questions from participating universities. Representatives from MECESUP, the Fulbright Commission, LASPAU, and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) traveled to three cities—Antofagasta in the north, Concepción in the south, and Valparaíso in the central region—to explain to universities how they can access the Fulbright Program in order to send faculty to the United States for graduate degrees and nondegree research programs. In Antofagasta, the representatives were able to see firsthand a positive result of MECESUP funding at the Universidad Católica del Norte, where a new building with state-of-the-art equipment has been built to house the marine biology department.

The first Fulbright-MECESUP grantee, Patricio Parada Salgado, who is currently a research and teaching assistant at the Universidad de Chile, is now in the final stages of the university admission process. Parada has an outstanding academic record and will pursue a doctoral degree in electrical engineering this fall. It is expected that the faculty development component of MECESUP will expand considerably in the coming year. There have already been a number of inquiries about the initiative, and LASPAU and the Fulbright Commission had another opportunity to promote the MECESUP-Fulbright program to a group of university representatives in Santiago in late April.

These university officials were gathered in Santiago to participate in LASPAU’s fifth information technology (IT) seminar, Strategic Use of New Technologies in Higher Education. Winthrop Carty, formerly of LASPAU and currently at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, worked with Ricardo Reich, general coordinator of MECESUP, to tailor the seminar to the needs of MECESUP participants. The format was similar to previous IT workshops, with a three-week online course followed by a three-day seminar in Santiago led by Carty and Kennedy School Professor Jerry Mechling.

Each university that was awarded a MECESUP project in 2000 was invited to send a team of three participants to the seminar. Teams consisted of the university’s MECESUP representative, a representative of the university’s IT staff, and either the president or vice-president of the university. One component of the seminar required participants to propose an IT project for their universities using the knowledge they gained in the course. Given the participation of officials with decision-making responsibilities, it is expected that some interesting projects will grow out of the workshop.