translated from Spanish: Senator Provoste by higher education budget 2020: “We see again an attack on free, students and their families”

In the framework of the 2020 budget discussion in the National Congress, Senators Yasna Provoste (DC) and Carlos Montes (PS), accompanied by the Vice-President of the Council of Rectors of the Universi (CRUCH), Aldo Valle, expressed concern about the designated budget for higher education, denouncing the rebates made by the Executive and the financing problems of the free.
In the instance, they urged the Government to have openness to seek solutions to the demands of students and university communities.
“This is the first time that a Budget bill has proposed an institutionality that is the Under-Secretary of Higher Education, and, as many rectors have pointed out across the country, what we have seen is once again a bloating of gratuitousness , students facing greater difficulties and families who yearn, through gratuitousness, for their children to reach higher education,” said the Christian Democratic Parliamentarian.
In the same vein, Aldo Valle denounced the existence of a threat to the country’s public policy of educational gratuitousness, explaining harshly that in the draft budget, “the Government has explicitly commissioned to leave all students who they agreed prior to the entry into force of the Law on Grace, exposed to a sanction.”
It states that “the most vulnerable students, who with great effort strides of themselves and their families, have accessed higher education and universities that ascribe to gratuitousness are punished, and are punished for welcoming these students. It was done explicitly, even against an opinion of the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic,” he said.
In addition, the Vice-President of the CRUCH added that the project “also perseveres in preventing universities from reallocating own resources from the Solidarity Credit Funds to compensate for the losses caused by the losses anticipated free programs,” this, in a context where no country considers the formal duration of careers with the time that exactly considers the programs, “only in Chile is students considered to lose benefits in advance”, Denounced.
Both authorities urged the Government to replenish education resources in general terms and, in particular, to improve senior education. For its part, Valle added that “what you want is for universities, hopefully, to abandon this policy, because it is more burdensome to ascribe to the Grace than to stay out of it. It is unfortunate that these days there is a persevere in a policy like that. Public higher education is neglected, vulnerable and meritorious students who most require the state’s hands are punished,” he said.

Original source in Spanish