Global Development

Current situation in Post-Secondary Technical Education

Post-secondary education coverage in Chile accounts for 37% of the population between 18 and 24 years old, surpassing 700,000 students. Higher education of technicians is provided by the three institutional categories already mentioned (CFT, IP, and Universities). Percentages of students enrolled are distributed unevenly with a majority in the shorter programs at the technical training centers: Universities (14.1%); Professional Institutes (23.6%); and Technical Training Centers with 62.3% of the total enrollment. The total enrollment for short two year careers reaches 20% of the entire system.

Declining Enrollment in Technical Education, Post-Reform

Enrollment in programs leading to certification at this level has been highly variable. After a strong push in the 80’s representing 80% of the post-secondary system it plummeted to only 10% or so. However, after the year 2000 enrollment stabilized at 20.2% of the total for tertiary education in the country. One of the most relevant reason for this, is a cultural factor which has already been described in the early part of this work, with regards to the historical evolution of technical education in Chile. For decades Chilean society has considered academic (university) education as the most important and desirable type of education.

Policies Hindering Enrollment

The decline in post-secondary technical education enrollments is due to a cultural belief in the superiority of academic, university-type education. As a result, there exists a complete lack of promotional or public policy incentives to aid technical education. Several examples illustrate this point:

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  donations to technical training centers (unlike universities) are not tax deductible;
  
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  financing for students (who are typically from the lower economic strata) is provided primarily by private agents with some minor Government support available.
  
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  lack of articulation between technical education programs has hindered students’ possibilities to transfer and/or work toward further professional degrees
  

Some of the primary institutions specifically dedicated to technical training closed during the period. In part, a lack of institutional capacity explains the decline. When the main State public institutions refocused on university studies leaving the vocational sector, many small for-profit schools took on the burden of technical education. In fact, of the 117 CFT which are currently in operation, 47.7% of them do not surpass an enrollment of 250 students.

Definition Problems Hindering Enrollment

Another important weakness in Technical Training is the overlapping curricula with Middle School Professional Technical Education. The strong impetus of this type of secondary education, which educates 40% of students of middle-school age, contemplates a curriculum which is provided free and often boasts curricula and graduate profiles which are claimed to be superior to the next level of education and, in some cases, even higher than professional education levels. While it is improbable that middle school students in Chile are achieving skill levels beyond those offered at the post-secondary level, technical colleges have often responded by over-reaching and promising to fulfill ever higher academic and technical goals for their students. These goals are difficult to achieve in two year programs, and thus harm the reputation of the institutions.

Solutions Currently Being Tested

Recently, some measures still not validated by results, have been adopted in an attempt to at least halt the decline of enrollment seen in the late nineties.

MECESUP and the World Bank

World Bank financing is providing access to grants and funding through the MECESUP Program³³. Between the years 2000 and 2004, 69 projects for more than 23 million dollar were approved to support areas such as: improvement of the effectiveness, quality, and innovation in thematic areas of national importance or projects fostering effective improvements in productivity, such as teacher upgrading, curricula updating, use of modern management practices, etc³⁴. The government developed another program called “Chile Califica”, also with World Bank funding, focused on the creation of inter-institutional networks for the development of projects leading to comprehensive articulation between different levels of formal education and training programs. From the standpoint of financial student aid, the government has begun to award limited partial scholarships³⁵. In addition, a law has recently been passed establishing a new system for student aid with State guarantee for students attending Public and Private Universities, Professional Institutes, Technical Training Centers and the Armed Forces Schools Network. These scholarships are aimed at students with academic merit and economic necessity. The new student aid system will begin to operate in 2006.

However, it is important to highlight that the World Bank funded initiatives do not appear to have gone much further than wishful thinking. Evidence of this can be found in the conclusions arrived at by the commission in charge of evaluating the MECESUP program for the World Bank. It states, “…the articulation problem in higher education, or lack thereof, continues largely unchanged and MECESUP, even though in its initial objectives mentioned the intention to undertake the issue, in practice has done nothing (emphasis is ours) ³⁶.” At the end of the day, the lack of government intervention to make technical training a true priority supported by a public policy makes it highly unlikely that vocational and professional training soon will meet the demands of a globalize society.
Case Studies

INACAP and Duoc-UC – the largest public and private Technical Institutes in Chile

Two technical education institutions are worthy of some attention in this chapter on Chilean post-secondary technical education: one with public roots the other private. They are representative of the two emerging models which make up the new trends in the field of professional and technical education in Higher Education in Chile. These two institutions are INACAP and DuocUC.

INACAP

In 1960, SERCOTEC (Technical Cooperation Service)³⁷ was established as a Professional Training Department of the State and charged with improving the level of the Chilean labor force. By 1966, the importance given to workforce development by this department led to the creation of an autonomous organization. Renamed INACAP in 1973, training centers were established in Santiago and the regions with the cooperation of the governments of France, Germany, Denmark, England, Belgium, and Switzerland.. However, the educational reforms of 1980 discontinued funding, forcing INACAP to begin financing its own professional education and training. In 1981, at the same time as the above mentioned reform, INACAP was granted formal recognition as a Technical Training Center, by which it could deliver Technical Diplomas in Higher Education, and in the Professional Institute Professional Diplomas of four year programs. INACAP currently has more than 60,000 students in 26 branches between Arica and Punta Arenas.

DuocUC

DuocUC was born in 1968 with the challenge of extending university work into the agricultural and workforce sectors. From within the Catholic University, a group of students, supported by faculty and union/labor groups, began organizing in the labor community. Their goal was to provide access to higher education for the average citizen in Chile. The University embraced this goal by making it one of the principles in its Mission Statement.

The initiative was called Departamento Universitario Obrero Campesino (DUOC) and it began to offer educational programs for administrative assistants, handicrafts, gardening, electrical installations, community development and other similar activities. Without much formal structure, DuocUC took hold quickly and enrollment boomed. This accelerated development inspired the university to grant it special autonomous status to meet its specific mission more effectively, as well as obtain its own financial resources without having to rely on the University budget.

In the reforms of 1980, The DuocUC Foundation adapted its academic structure to new regulations, creating the “Professional Institute DuocUC” and the “Technical Training Center DuocUC” receiving official recognition for both in 1982 and 1983 respectively. Nowadays DuocUC is one of the most important institutions in Higher Education in the country with a total of 42,000 full time students, and more than 40 programs at the technical level (2 year programs) and 30 at the professional level (4 year programs).

Academic programs are oriented to develop specific competencies required by industry and labor markets, supported by a competency based curricula model. Furthermore, these academic programs incorporate five broad core competencies: Ethics, Math Skills, Communication in Spanish and Critical Thinking, Computer Literacy, Entrepreneurship, and Functional English Fluency

Since approximately the year 2000 the DuocUC institutional response in Vocational Training has focused on IT (Information Technologies) and Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. DuocUC currently has the largest TEFL program in higher education in Chile, if not South America, with over 20,000 fulltime EFL students, with all careers having English as a mandatory requirement for graduation.

On line course programs are another expression of this challenge offering blended learning and complete on line virtual campus alternatives. These on line platforms are perceived as a competitive resource for international partner institutions looking to provide academic alternatives at lower costs as part of international academic exchange programs. In addition, a comprehensive Ethics Program provides students with a high behavior standard educational model.

How These Institutions Have Survived and Thrived in Chile

Both institutions have developed rather similar strategies to assure their continuous growth and development: in spite of unfavorable governmental policies for the vocational sector, enrollments have thrived.

1. They are non-profit private institutions. Even though this condition does not entail receiving any special treatment from the State, or any special legal status, it allows these entities to allocate profits, earned through highly efficient operations, to finance development projects. Both institutions place special emphasis on maintaining an excellent infrastructure and procuring and maintaining state-of-the-art technological equipment.

2. The operational size of these institutions also works to their advantage. If INACAP is the biggest institution in higher technical education in the country in terms of enrollment, DuocUC is the biggest in the three geographical regions in which it operates. In the professional institutes category both institutions concentrate over 60% of all enrollment in the segment. Given the weakness of many smaller institutions which have not reached a critical level of development, these two private institutions have an important advantage due to their size. ³⁸

3. Development of an integrated operational model to simultaneously act as CFT (technical) and IP (professional) and grant certificates of both kinds. Representing both institutional categories, they make use of the same infrastructure, resources, and staff to develop curricula for each level according to homogeneous standards. However, this means more than taking advantage of economies of scale. Where the lack of articulation with other educational levels has been a weakness of the CFTs, INACAP as well as DuocUC, have developed curricula that allows for direct articulation between professional and technical levels, assuring students from short study programs the possibility to continue studying in the higher levels.

DuocUC and INACAP have followed different paths in their strategy of articulation towards the college level. While INACAP has recently acquired a private university, integrating in one organization the three levels admitted in the system³⁹, DuocUC has undertaken a strategy to reach articulation agreements with some of the most renowned universities of the country. However, both are achieving success through implementation of their models.

4. Strict Internal mechanisms are in place to assure homogeneous standards of quality. This feature is similar between institutions in the sense they both operate a multi-site system distributed over a wide geographic area. However, they each apply the principle of internal control in different ways. In DuocUC, each site (or campus) serves on average 4,000 students and all campuses are located in the most populated cities. Each site purposefully focuses its academic offerings to a specific industrial area, thus concentrating resources. INACAP, having smaller centers, focuses its strategy on a wider geographical coverage distributed in all regions of the country. In spite of their differences, both institutions devote most of their efforts to establishing programs and control mechanisms which enable each center to express the same educational attributes regardless of location and size. The sites operate independently from one another but are centrally managed as part of a hierarchical system, which is in permanent communication with the sites.
5. Providing adequate financing for their student bodies is another strategy that ensures long term growth and survival for both DuocUC and INACAP. By instituting strict observance of quality and operational controls, they are able to offer programs with tuitions averaging lower than half the cost of other prestigious universities.⁴⁰ Furthermore, both institutions have developed their own scholarship programs and financing agreements with banks. They have also obtained direct support from companies for the partial financing of their workers and families studies. This has enabled access to higher education for lower income social groups historically excluded from traditional institutions, but which today constitutes the segment of general population with the highest expansion within the system. The importance of this factor will become more apparent in the next section.
These strategies, guided by the principle of consistently providing high quality, have earned both institutions a prominent status and a high level of credibility within the system in Chile. Recently, both institutions have been granted institutional accreditation for six years, over a maximum of seven by the Comisión Nacional de Acreditación - CNAP, the public agency responsible for the quality assurance process in the country.⁴¹

It is through an examination of these somewhat different, public (INACAP) and private (DuocUC) institutions that one finds the possibility for survival within a policy environment that remains unfavorable, and even hostile, toward post-secondary technical education. But beyond the success story behind the institutional experience, there still remains the pressing need for expanded access by lower income groups. While many in these groups are willing to make great personal and financial sacrifices, technical education remains out of reach for far too many.

Challenge and opportunities for Technical Education in Chile

In spite of declining enrollments in the vocational sector, Chile has experienced a strong increase in higher education coverage, in general, in terms of percentage of population. Nevertheless, this coverage varies significantly depending on the socio economic level of the population. There are evident differences among the quintiles of population. In 2003, the high income bracket (V quintile) boasted a 73.7% enrollment in higher education of youth ages 18-25. This exceeds enrollment levels in many more advanced countries. Yet, in lower income levels (I Quintile), a minority of 14.5% was enrolled.⁴²

In coming years, the increase in enrollment in post-secondary technical education is anticipated to be 45% (by 2010). The expected student population of some 800,000 necessarily will be based on increased enrollment from the lower income quintiles. This will bring an increase in pressures for socioeconomic assistance than is currently planned. Likewise, we anticipate an increase in need for remedial offerings as more low income students enter for training. As evidenced in U.S. post-secondary education, we also expect to see the use of additional student services, including those aimed at retaining those at risk for attrition.

Employer demand for skilled workers is rising around the globe. It is our conviction that implementation of public policies in Chile that specifically focus on the development of technical education is urgently needed. We must meet demands for human capital to enable the economy to be competitive with the most advanced countries. Likewise, there should be increased opportunities for upward social mobility, assuring levels of fairness in accordance with a modern and politically stable country.

In order to materialize such policies, the State must be effectively involved in higher technical education. It can certainly begin, as it has, by strengthening programs and initiatives launched by public universities. But this alone will not have a significant impact in the mid-term. Currently, the traditional academic institutions do not have adequate expertise to manage technical/vocational training models of education. Also, since their institutional priorities are oriented elsewhere, technical education will not receive the attention needed to develop and thrive.

A more effective means would be to make use of the institutions that for decades have been able to develop the sector in spite of difficulties. The strategy of institutional diversification seemed to give good results at the beginning of the reforms started in the 80’s, achieving the important development reached by the IPs and CFTs. There are many weak institutions, but others have been able to overcome obstacles and remain strong. Instead of creating new institutions, it would be interesting to consider the possibility of transferring the experience of the most successful entities to those with lower levels of consolidation.

The development of vocational higher education represents an important opportunity to overcome the persistent inequalities still present in Chilean society. Fostering the rapid education of high level technicians (2 year study courses) would help to decrease the deficit of trained labor force. At the same time, incrementing and improving financing policies to establish substantial incentives to enable the aforementioned (loans and scholarship policies) would result in a safer leverage instrument for smaller suppliers. Furthermore, it is a fact that societal benefits are greater when vocational/ higher education is offered to population levels which have a deficient secondary education and also lack the resources to reach university.

Chile is currently constrained by an academic degree and professional title structure that is inflexible. If articulation plans between the levels were developed, students who have discontinued university studies could acquire some demonstrable and profitable competence in the labor market. Likewise, those who have achieved technical degrees could seek further professional levels in the university. The establishment of official systems which grant formal recognition to different models and levels of certification for knowledge and labor competencies should be synchronized with formal education systems at all levels.

Finally, to increase quality and productivity in the higher education system, and put it at the level demanded by an economy based on the intensive use of knowledge, it is necessary to adapt Chilean systems to those validated internationally in the more advanced countries. It is also necessary to further develop the emerging internationally validated procedures for quality assessment and assurance, promote the transference of Best Practices and efficient management models, and increase relationships within the global higher education market.

Conclusions –Chilean Technical Education

The modern economy is based on knowledge, and the greatest wealth of nations is measured by their ability to produce and utilize this intangible commodity. Countries with a higher level of development have obtained an edge by focusing their policies on the increase of human social capital. A significant feature of a high level of national social capital is demonstrated first by high levels of literacy in the general population, and secondly by broad support of higher education. Chile, in spite of being a highly productive country, with relatively high levels of school enrollment and productivity, continues to show major deficiencies in higher education. In terms of quality and student access for all economic sectors, prevailing policies have worked more against than in favor of higher education in the area of technical education.

The history of post-secondary technical education has been mixed with a typical struggle between demands in the labor market for advanced technical skills versus cultural prejudices against vocationally oriented education. Both INACAP and Duoc-UC have created sustainable, high quality education despite the obstacles. Upcoming and current changes are promising, yet it remains to be seen if Chile will be willing to recognize the sources of expertise in implementing new policies. Hopefully, Chile will emerge as a globally recognized leader in the field of workforce development in the coming decades.

Community Colleges and Further Education

in China:
Gerard Postiglione

Don Watkins

Wang Liangjuan

China’s higher education sector has been experiencing a massive transformation. It has moved from one of the lowest participation rates to become the nation with the most students on earth in higher learning institutions. With 5.28 million students and a 4.5 percent participation rate in 1994, China’s higher education sector reached 20 million students, a 19 percent participation rate in 2004-05.

It is not surprising that massification has led to a major challenge – the capacity to meet the rising demand for higher education resulting from the successful popularization of nine year compulsory education and the demand for a highly skilled work force so as to satisfy national aspirations to become a global economic power. With only 30 percent of academic staff having a master’s degree or above and only 9 percent having a doctorate, maintaining quality becomes problematic. Moreover, an increasingly inequitable system continues to grow, with disparities across regions of the country and society. Furthermore, in its 21^st project, China’s push to develop 100 world class universities in the 21^st century has meant a massive infusion of funds for elite universities, while other institutions of higher education, including vocational-technical and community colleges, continue to struggle with funding.

Despite the massification of higher education, China has yet to popularize the American community college models as have many other countries, including Hong Kong, where community colleges were used to double the number of places in postsecondary education within the short span of five years (2001-2005). The contrast between the Hong Kong and China systems illustrates the different ways that community colleges models are adapted. Hong Kong’s community colleges award the associate degree and articulate their programs with universities and four year colleges.

China has employed two-three year community colleges as a supplement to its well developed adult vocational and technical education sector, but without associate degrees, articulation and opportunity for successful students to transfer to degree-granting institutions. Diplomas and skill certificates are awarded, both with lower labor market status. They have become especially crucial as China looks for mechanisms to handle the growing diversity of needs in urban districts and its western rural regions – especially building skilled labor capacity, retraining laid off workers from the shrinking state owned enterprises and training of unskilled rural migrants. Nevertheless, China has paid enormous attention to the potential of American community colleges for modernizing its higher vocational-technical education within its rapidly prospering urban areas. This includes junior colleges that are part of what is known as regular higher education sector, as well as the largely voc-tech adult higher education sector.

With respect to China’s human resource challenges, the problem is not with university student graduates because they tend to enjoy preferential treatment due to the household registration quota (permit to remain in urban areas) and they all tend to be competitive in the labor market, despite the rapid rise in university graduates’ unemployment that began to occur in 2003. In comparison, laid-off workers are older, have a low-level of education and need support to adapt to the new market economy. With an estimated 140 million rural workers migrating to the cities to find work, much discrimination awaits them as they usually are not issued a permit to reside and have low levels of formal schooling. Of China’s 15-59 working age population, only five percent have received specialist education at university, a figure much lower than that of developed nations.