Comment by nico | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nico | Hacker News Reader

Many problems with the article:

1) There's no way Chilean education is the most expensive in the world. Tuition for an engineering degree at the best universities in Chile is around USD 5k/year, which is way cheaper than pretty much any university in the US. (edit: in fact here's a ranking, and Chile is not even mentioned on it http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-australia-is-the-most-ex...)

2) The tax hike was a bust and it generated only around USD 2B, a fourth of what it was expected to bring in. Now they are saying they'll tax people for having a degree!!

3) There is no clear plan to actually implement free higher education. They increased taxes hoping to collect additional money from taxpayers (which didn't work), without knowing how they are going to use the funds.

4) Those students leaders that are now part of congress, deceived the people that supported them and are now supporting completely different things than what they said they would when they were leading the people that got them elected. They basically sold out.

5) The article is from February. Only 2 days ago, the president of Chile announced she was asking for the resignation of all of her ministers. No one knows what will happen next.

6) Even though education in Chile is not the most expensive in the world, it has the highest paid congress people in the world, and they just approved an increase of seats!! Talk about inequality (they make around USD 300k/year, when the average salary in Chile is less than USD 5k/year)!

I'm all up for free education for everyone, but the way the Chilean government is doing it is definitely not the way to go.

PS: all discussions about educational reform in Chile are so short sighted that no one has even touched on the subject of online/virtual education and making education cheaper and more efficient.

On point 1) if the average salary in Chile is less than $5k/year then it costs more than a years salary to pay for a years schooling. That is incredibly expensive.

By contrast in Australia it's around $10-12k/year for a local and the average full time wage is $75k/year!

If Chilean education was as cheap as Australia's then a good education would cost less than $1k/year.

You are right, my bad. Actual average salary is USD 10k/year. Also notice the USD 5k/year is tuition for an engineering degree (2nd most expensive - only to med school) at the best universities, so it's pretty much one of the most expensive degrees you can get in Chile.

Also, it is really easy to get a low-interest student loan (which a lot of people don't even pay).

My guess is that access to education in Australia is definitely better than in Chile, but I wouldn't say education in Chile is the most expensive in the world.

Access to education in Australia is definitely better - for most courses entry is egalitarian - students are ranked and preferences orders determine what courses you get offered (it's very different to the US system - you nominate the course you want to take, BS, BA, including the major area and while you can transfer later, relatively few do). Obviously art and music courses often have an audition requirement, and exceptionally high demand or courses deemed to have a desire for 'suitable' people (without getting into a debate about that), such as medicine may also have an interview requirement.

However, the general philosophy is the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. This is a fee that is largely flat, only paid on graduation, as an increased income tax requirement (a few percent more), if and only if your salary is above a threshold. Drop below that and you're no longer paying on your HECS debt. However, you can also voluntarily opt to pre-pay your debt for varying discounts. When I went to school (mid 90s), this fee was $1800/year. Any course at any university, from liberal arts at a country college to medicine or law at the most prestigious of institutions.

For the interest of those unfamiliar with the scheme, HECS-HELP is structured as an income-contingent loan, albeit one with an inflation-linked indexation rather than a real rate of interest.

There's no longer a discount for paying fees up front: http://studyassist.gov.au/sites/studyassist/news/pages/chang...

For the record:

According to NESI 2013

Working population salaries in Chile, according to NEST 2013 (http://www.fundacionsol.cl/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Verdad...): * 2k/year or less: 13,8% * 2k-3k/year: 5,2 % * 3k-4,2k/year: 14,1% * 4,2k-6k/year: 20,5 %

53,5% of working population get less than 5k/year.

These are the rates of universidad de chile, the principal state sponsored university in chile year 2015 (http://www.uchile.cl/portal/admision-y-matriculas/aranceles-...):

Medicine? 8k/year Architecture? 5,6k/year Biochemistry? 5.8k/year

I don't know if chilean education is the most expensive in the world. I just know the data delivered in these comments is wrong.

Tuition for an engineering degree at the best universities in Chile is not 5k/year but closer to 7k/year. PUC is $9355, UChile is $7964, Santa Maria is $6456, USACH is $6388, U. Concepción is between $5200 and $7000 depending on the type of engineering.

It does not sound like a lot compared to the tuitions in Ivy League schools but is a lot considering average income. It is also important to remember that we are not talking about full cost of attendance but only tuition and fees. I took a look at the tuition and fees in undergraduate engineering programs in the US, Berkeley is $13,878, Caltech is $44,000 (however 91% get financial aid), Stanford $14,728, MIT is $23,200 (30% go tuition free, 56% get need-based scholarships), Carnegie Mellon is $49,610, Georgia Tech is $32,000.

Using the Household net adjusted disposable income reported by the OECD the average US household would be 2.8 times richer than a Chilean one. Given that it doesn't look that it is more expensive than the US, I agree that Chile is not the most expensive but most likely among the most expensive. On another hand, given the particular income distribution in Chile using the average salary might give a wrong idea about how affordable is higher education.

It's the most expensive compared to the average salary in the country.

In response to your other points: Chilean government fails a lot and the president has 25% rating. So at least they're trying to reset the government.

Also you're looking at "virtual" education from NA/EU perspective but Chile is digitized very poorly compared to "on the edge" countries. Online services are like 2001-2003 US ones.

It's the most expensive compared to the average salary in the country.

Source please.

Chilean government fails a lot and the president has 25% rating

Exactly! so most likely the whole thing will fail before it even begins.

Chile is digitized very poorly compared to "on the edge" countries

Completely agree. So why not start with free Internet access for everyone instead (which should be way cheaper), and then negotiate with organizations like Coursera, MITx, KhanAcademy, Duolingo, Classroom.tv (Chilean), eClass (Chilean), etc to provide access to quality content, in spanish to all of Chile.

http://wenr.wes.org/2013/12/introduction-to-the-higher-educa...

"Chilean universities are among the most expensive in the world when measured against per capita income, which is no doubt a factor in the nation’s high dropout rate. It is estimated that Chilean families pay more than 75 percent of the costs associated with higher education, compared to 40 percent in the United States and just 5 percent on average in Scandinavian countries."

Re Point 1: Australia is very cheap to get an education - IF you're Australian or a resident. There is a large desirability (especially in conjunction with proximity to Asia and many Asians desire for a 'Western' education) that allows international student fees (which is what the article you quote refers to, NOT the cost of education for your average local student) to provide large subsidies to the cost of education.

I came in here to make exactly your points 2 and 3. They cannot be overstated: they haven't even gotten the budget math to work out yet.

Given unlimited resources, sure, who wouldn't want free universities. But making it work within our real-life constraints means something else is going to suffer for that, and in today's reality it's going to be really hard to make the case that this is a priority. (Especially when many high school graduates are still basically illiterate, so only elite graduates will make it in, which means we'll be further subsidizing the elite).

According to this site http://www.camara.cl/camara/transparencia_diputado.aspx?prmI... senate members make 10k dollars a month, how do you get to 300k?

How to pay congress is a problem in poorer countries since too low a salary might invite corruption, and too of a good one attracts the wrong people to the job.

True.

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