Great expectations are generated by the new bill announced by President Gabriel Boric that promises the forgiveness of the CAE (Credit with State Guarantee). The way in which it was chosen to do so, however, requires a deep analysis outside of all phraseology, to see how it will impact people, especially its recipients, families and working people.
The first thing that stands out is the great business that this announcement meant, where The most beneficiaries are the banks that are linked to higher education institutions. Of the total of 896,000 people in the student debt payment stage, 57% have stopped paying for more than three months, that is, they are in a state of delinquency according to the Pivotes study center, this becomes more serious throughout the year. 2023 where delinquency increased by 7% according to data from the commission, it turns out that more than 540,000 debtors stopped paying the CAE.
The commission attributes this trend to Boric’s government campaign, but the number of delinquencies has been increasing steadily since 2016 (MINEDUC 2023). This situation was undoubtedly a great crisis for the banks, who were accustomed to being the absolute winners of the theft of this law, causing the State to pay large amounts in surcharges since its creation. As an example, a study by the Sol Foundation in 2021 maintains that the treasury has paid 4.1 times more than what was originally required. Only the totality of credits purchased by the treasury between 2006 and 2020 is equivalent to 4.66 trillion (four million million) of which 924,136 million corresponds to overpricing (!)
Thanks to the new bill, if you are a person who has paid less than 75% of the debt (the vast majority of debtors) you will pay in installments directly to the State, which in turn will pay the banks in charge of the credit portfolios . That is, they will seek to prosecute, under the promise of better indebtedness, these payment leaks. that the banks have experienced during the last 8 years, guaranteeing the benefit to those who have profited in a proven way with education since the implementation of the CAE, in addition to saving their business, it is assumed by the State under a new form.
With the data presented we can measure the crisis in which the CAE business had entered in monetary terms. Politically this reached a critical point. It meant questioning the private business of education with the case of Marcela Cubillos and her millionaire salary at the expense of the debts of thousands of students who use the CAE to be able to study in higher education.
In the eyes of millions of people, who have to finance their higher education with what has been the main tool of “financing by the State” for years, the San Sebastián University and its authorities-managers and right-wing political operators linked to Luis Hermosilla were a bitter image, but above all it was a blow to the right that defends through its politicians such as Andrés Chadwick and Evelyn Matthei the commercialized education inherited from the dictatorship. However, the government had to take charge of this crisis, in particular Apruebo Dignidad with its allies from the former Concertación.who have not hesitated to generate big business for the banks with our basic rights such as education, but have sought sophisticated ways to maintain self-financing in higher education.
From a new financing system to a new debt system
The electoral campaign program of the current government was the cause of the most diverse political hesitations for the coalition. Public education was not free from this situation. Initially, a single public education system that integrated higher education institutions was promised. This idea was even promoted by supporters of “approve” during the Constitutional Convention. But this changed over the years of management and the gradual integration of the former Concertación and its neoliberal logic into the executive.
Later we saw silence from the government regarding this issue. In the student federations, the pro-government youth responded to the grassroots mobilizations against precariousness in the universities (such as the takeover of Artes Centro) with the war cry of “new financing system”, they organized dense petitions for the Ministry of Education that crowned their claims with “new financing system.” Ending self-financing according to the political reflections of Confech and Fech, under the direction of the Frente Amplio and the Communist Party, was the horizon towards which the manifestations of discontent with the crisis in the financing of public education should point. Once again reality plays tricks on them. They will be remembered as those in government who gave a new form to self-financing, a hallmark of neoliberal education.
But what is self-financing? To answer this question we have to see the change in logic that the hand of the dictatorship meant in the educational system in Chile. Since before 1973, education was financed directly by the State, something similar to what is done in most countries in the world. The Welfare State installed the idea that there are basic rights that must be financed with the taxes of the people who inhabit a certain geographic delimitation. With this idea he came to break neoliberalism, establishing that everything should be governed by the laws of the market and naturally, be a niche for capitalist accumulation for the benefit of some.
Installed in fact by the military boot, this meant the privatization of basic rights such as health (ISAPRE), pensions (AFP) and education (commodification and subsidy to the private) changing the focus from basic right to merchandise to be exchanged in the market such as a cell phone or a toothbrush.
What does this education sell? Or in other words, what is the business? Uspeople who attend higher education are seen as clients, but at the same time as a human commodity, which is endowed with value through our time in university classrooms. Furthermore, for this, we have to pay, a commodity that pays for its own training from the perspective that it accesses a service, round business.
But outside of abstractions it means that universities are seen by the State as companies, where financing for higher education depends on how many “clients” or “assets” each educational institution has to allocate the funds. This in the current system was reflected in the subsidy according to the amount of enrollment at a university, to allocate a certain percentage of financing, in the form of CAE, free scholarship, other state benefits and direct resources. What changes now is the route of the funds, but not their content. Now, we students will contribute to a kind of solidarity fund for studying in higher education, paying the state for the semesters completed. With this money, educational institutions will be financed, in the public and private spheres, and this fund will go, as in the logic of self-financing, to the universities with the most “clients.” The banks leave the equation with respect to the benefit they had been receiving from the CAE, but this does not mean that through educational institutions and private financing they can continue saving and putting into circulation the capital generated by the educational business. Logically, it does not break with the subsidy principle either.
The new FES law deducts 8% from the salary of those who completed a university degree and earn more than the minimum wage. With this fund, based on the principle of “solidarity” and meritocracy, they sow the illusion of a perfect labor market, something very far from reality, but also creates a financing instrument for higher education that is an extra tax for studying a university degree.
In addition to the consumer tax, salary deductions apart from future educational debt, etc. This tool to tax the vast majority for studying in an economic context of low growth and an increase in the minimum wage below the poverty line, creates a fund that will also be invested for private universities, doing a great favor. to the education businessmen, who through mechanisms such as Chadwick-Cubillos and the banks can continue to parasitize on this basic right, that is, in addition to maintaining self-financing, the neoliberal business continues.
To confirm the above, just read the operating section of the bill that says “The State will transfer to the institutions the amount equivalent to the sum of the regulated fees and basic registration fees corresponding to the beneficiaries of each institution.”
Towards free higher education with unrestricted access
The big absence from this bill is selection tests, a segregation tool typical of the education business. What would happen to private universities if everyone could enter the country’s main universities without impediments? That they actually do research and have tools to train hundreds of thousands of people. Well, the selection tests in higher education are maintained, in a centralized and “more inclusive” way with the PAES. This is very important since it shows the dedication of the Approve Dignity and Democratic Socialism government to maintain the mechanism of market education. Segregation, insufficient financing and shameless profit will be the legacy of the “transformative government and major reforms.”
From the anti-capitalist group Vencer we propose that We must resume the historical program of the student movementthrough reflection and debate in assemblies, question this sacred truth of the educational business that the right seeks to impose on the Communist Party as the only way for the educational system. Furthermore, change this reality by mobilizing from the grassroots and at the national level for direct and basal financing from the State to public higher education institutions, an end to selection tests so that we can all study and the only measure is our own capabilities and free higher education so that the doors of universities are opened to the daughters, sons and sons of working families, without debt or profit, without drowning in taxes or thinking that we are clients of an educational service.
To achieve this perspective we must question the student leaders who share interests with the government with an independent federation on the right, the former concertation and the new conciliators with the education businessmen of the Frente Amplio and Communist Party to encourage debate in all universities nationwide and Let’s decide from below what educational system we need today.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
