The Promise of Free Tuition: The Case of Chile

Abstract

In recent decades, there has been a revival of free tuition policies around the world. The goals of these policies are typically to increase access to and success in higher education. Although research on free tuition policies is growing, it is mainly focused on providing empirical evidence of its effects on student outcomes in the U.S. context. Research related to the policy formulation or to its effects on other actors is scant. In this three-study dissertation, I will contribute to the literature on free tuition policies by exploring the case of Chile, a country that implemented such a policy in 2016. Using the case of Chile, I examine the arc of the policymaking process, from policy formulation to policy evaluation on student and institution outcomes. In the first study, I explore how a radical change in the conceptualization of higher education--from understanding higher education as a private good to positioning it as a social right—unfolded in Chile. Guided by the Advocacy Coalition Framework as my theoretical lens, and using mixed methods, I analyze who the main policy actors involved in the policy discussion were and how they interacted to move the free college idea forward until it became a policy. In my second study, I focus on examining the effect of the policy on student access and persistence in higher education. Guided by a college choice theoretical framework and using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, I provide empirical evidence of the free tuition policy's effects on reducing inequities in access to and persistence in higher education. Results indicate positive effects on increasing financial aid applications, the quality of the first institutional choice in the university application form, and persistence in institutions included in the policy. Although a negligible effect on increasing eligible student enrollment rates is found, the policy has an effect on changing student preferences from institutions not included in the policy to institutions covered by the policy. In my third study, I shift the focus to exploring possible responses of higher education institutions to the free tuition policy. Using Resource Dependency Theory and microeconomic concepts as the theoretical framework, and a fixed effects estimation strategy, I explore whether the policy changes the socioeconomic diversification of the student body, as well as admissions and finance outcomes of the participating universities. Overall, I found that the free tuition policy did not diversify the student socioeconomic composition of the participating universities. Examining admission outcomes, I found that the policy increased applications to participating universities, however, only highly selective universities respond by increasing enrollments. Additionally, I found that after the policy implementation, participating universities maintain constant the weight assigned to the standardized admission test in the admission system, interrupting the pre-implementation trend that was constantly decreasing this weight. I did not find any changes in institutional revenues after the policy implementation, but did find a decrease in the undergraduate expenditure rate after the free tuition policy was implemented. Collectively, these studies help to inform policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and advocacy groups about free tuition policies, the complexities in their design and implementation, and their effects on student and institution outcomes. Thus, these studies contribute to the discussion about the effectiveness of free tuition policies on decreasing inequities in higher education, a discussion that is relevant for many countries around the world.