My title is a take off on another Chile blog, called “Just Married, Chilean Style” which is also written by a foreigner. Now back to my idea, it’s worth noting that public relations in Chile are usually one of the three following things.
1.) Orwellian
2.) Bizarre
Or
3.) Non-existent
My college had some problems with getting accredited by the Chilean federal government. In the end they were accredited. I don’t understand or have access to all the details; however accreditation here has two different aspects.
1.) A school is either designated as a University or a technical institute. My school’s name is Universidad de Las Américas and they have been accredited as a University for a while now.
2.) A school can also be “accredited”. This supposedly means that the school is of a higher quality but I am not so gullible. I know that some accredited schools aren’t as impressive as they supposedly are. For all practical purposes being accredited only means that students have more access to government loans and scholarships. Scholarships that I, being an American, could never apply for in the first place.
Accreditation is a voluntary process. I should mention that getting government loans here is a sweeter deal than it sounds like. In Chile they don’t exactly enforce laws about paying off student loans. So, getting a loan is almost like getting a scholarship! I am happy to say that Andrea (my girlfriend) intends to pay off every peso of her college loans because obviously- it’s the right thing to do.
As I mentioned, at the end of last year (since Chile is in the southern hemisphere the Chilean school year is from March to December) my college had some problems getting “accredited” which as I explained before basically means that its students are able to apply for government loans and grants. I heard about this from some teachers however there was no news whatsoever from the school’s administration. I also heard through the grapevine that my college appealed the government’s decision. However, during the summer no progress was made since, in Chile, in the summer everyone with money goes on vacation and Santiago’s population goes down by about 20%. Bottom line is that in the summer you won’t get much done. Don’t bother applying for a job because the boss will most likely be out of town. People who are lucky enough to get jobs working for the Chilean government reviewing a college’s application for accreditation are definitely on vacation during the summer. I also recently heard that many of the people on the board that accredits universities work for other Universities and it just so happens that they decided to accredit our school right after the deadline to enroll had passed, coincidence? After living here two years: I think not.
When I came back to Chile and started classes my college was still appealing the decision. This brings me to the public relations part of this article. Our school has two newspapers. One is written by paid employees of the college and basically promotes all of the good without reporting any of the bad things about Universidad de las Americas’s three campuses. The second is a small two-page student run newspaper only available in one of the seven campuses. I am one of the three people involved in this publication.
The administration’s newspaper did not include a single word about the accreditation process but did have about 30 pages of positive news. I have no problem with my college promoting itself however I also think it should defend itself. I have studied in more “prestigious” Chilean public universities and I still think that the only reason my school wasn’t accredited is that many powerful elements in Chile would love to see private universities eliminated.
In the following sentence I put “prestigious” in commas because I am literally translating what Chileans would say. In Chile, when talking about schools, “prestigious” is a synonym for “old.” Many people here think the longer a school has existed the better it is. A lot of people here will say, “my high school was one of the best in Chile, its 150 years old”. I don’t think a school being older that makes it any better but here many people do. To be fair there is a grain of truth to this common belief. Some of the best school’s have been around for a while and schools that have been around for a while do everything possible to prolong this stereotype. I can’t blame them it works like a dream, but the fact that a school has existed for 200 years doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “awesome”.
Anyways I think that my college should have done one of two things in respect to not being accredited:
1.) Defend itself from attacks by people who work in other universities and try to manipulate accreditation processes.
2.) Inform its students about what it is doing to become accredited instead of acting as if nothing happened and leaving them wondering whether they are doing anything at all.
The newspaper I am involved in ran an editorial that said that it was “rather inconvenient that our college was still not accredited.” The girl who wrote that editorial was the lucky recipient of a stern lecture from someone in the school’s administration about the damage that she may have done to the school’s image. As if someone who didn’t already know that we weren’t accredited would find out through our tiny student newspaper.
So, you’ll understand why I chose to write my article about something that had almost nothing to do with our college. My article was about the importance of Spanish for Chile and at an international level. I thought this was an important issue since many people here always talk about how important English is in a way that subliminally says “Spanish isn’t that important”.
Unfortunately, I think my account of my college trying to get accredited is a pretty good representation of the state of investigative journalism in Chile. Said journalism is legal, except if it defames someone in the government. There is an old law here, which makes it illegal to defame important people in the government. This law prevented many people involved in Pinochet’s government from being prosecuted. So while investigative journalism here is legal it’s about as easy to find as a family of vegans in an all you can eat steak buffet. So just remember if you work in PR in Chile, ‘mum’s the word’.
Update on investigative journalism in Chile: I have, thanks to http://www.blogger.com/www.c.hileno.com (I do make an attempt to acknowledge sources), found a source of investigative journalism in Chile! http://.ciperchile.cl/ (In Spanish) My discovery of this is the equivalent my metaphorical vegans figuring out that the all you can eat steak buffet has bread: i.e. this is but a small step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I am overjoyed for Chile that I was, albeit to a small extent, wrong about investigative journalism in Chile.
1.) Orwellian
2.) Bizarre
Or
3.) Non-existent
My college had some problems with getting accredited by the Chilean federal government. In the end they were accredited. I don’t understand or have access to all the details; however accreditation here has two different aspects.
1.) A school is either designated as a University or a technical institute. My school’s name is Universidad de Las Américas and they have been accredited as a University for a while now.
2.) A school can also be “accredited”. This supposedly means that the school is of a higher quality but I am not so gullible. I know that some accredited schools aren’t as impressive as they supposedly are. For all practical purposes being accredited only means that students have more access to government loans and scholarships. Scholarships that I, being an American, could never apply for in the first place.
Accreditation is a voluntary process. I should mention that getting government loans here is a sweeter deal than it sounds like. In Chile they don’t exactly enforce laws about paying off student loans. So, getting a loan is almost like getting a scholarship! I am happy to say that Andrea (my girlfriend) intends to pay off every peso of her college loans because obviously- it’s the right thing to do.
As I mentioned, at the end of last year (since Chile is in the southern hemisphere the Chilean school year is from March to December) my college had some problems getting “accredited” which as I explained before basically means that its students are able to apply for government loans and grants. I heard about this from some teachers however there was no news whatsoever from the school’s administration. I also heard through the grapevine that my college appealed the government’s decision. However, during the summer no progress was made since, in Chile, in the summer everyone with money goes on vacation and Santiago’s population goes down by about 20%. Bottom line is that in the summer you won’t get much done. Don’t bother applying for a job because the boss will most likely be out of town. People who are lucky enough to get jobs working for the Chilean government reviewing a college’s application for accreditation are definitely on vacation during the summer. I also recently heard that many of the people on the board that accredits universities work for other Universities and it just so happens that they decided to accredit our school right after the deadline to enroll had passed, coincidence? After living here two years: I think not.
When I came back to Chile and started classes my college was still appealing the decision. This brings me to the public relations part of this article. Our school has two newspapers. One is written by paid employees of the college and basically promotes all of the good without reporting any of the bad things about Universidad de las Americas’s three campuses. The second is a small two-page student run newspaper only available in one of the seven campuses. I am one of the three people involved in this publication.
The administration’s newspaper did not include a single word about the accreditation process but did have about 30 pages of positive news. I have no problem with my college promoting itself however I also think it should defend itself. I have studied in more “prestigious” Chilean public universities and I still think that the only reason my school wasn’t accredited is that many powerful elements in Chile would love to see private universities eliminated.
In the following sentence I put “prestigious” in commas because I am literally translating what Chileans would say. In Chile, when talking about schools, “prestigious” is a synonym for “old.” Many people here think the longer a school has existed the better it is. A lot of people here will say, “my high school was one of the best in Chile, its 150 years old”. I don’t think a school being older that makes it any better but here many people do. To be fair there is a grain of truth to this common belief. Some of the best school’s have been around for a while and schools that have been around for a while do everything possible to prolong this stereotype. I can’t blame them it works like a dream, but the fact that a school has existed for 200 years doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “awesome”.
Anyways I think that my college should have done one of two things in respect to not being accredited:
1.) Defend itself from attacks by people who work in other universities and try to manipulate accreditation processes.
2.) Inform its students about what it is doing to become accredited instead of acting as if nothing happened and leaving them wondering whether they are doing anything at all.
The newspaper I am involved in ran an editorial that said that it was “rather inconvenient that our college was still not accredited.” The girl who wrote that editorial was the lucky recipient of a stern lecture from someone in the school’s administration about the damage that she may have done to the school’s image. As if someone who didn’t already know that we weren’t accredited would find out through our tiny student newspaper.
So, you’ll understand why I chose to write my article about something that had almost nothing to do with our college. My article was about the importance of Spanish for Chile and at an international level. I thought this was an important issue since many people here always talk about how important English is in a way that subliminally says “Spanish isn’t that important”.
Unfortunately, I think my account of my college trying to get accredited is a pretty good representation of the state of investigative journalism in Chile. Said journalism is legal, except if it defames someone in the government. There is an old law here, which makes it illegal to defame important people in the government. This law prevented many people involved in Pinochet’s government from being prosecuted. So while investigative journalism here is legal it’s about as easy to find as a family of vegans in an all you can eat steak buffet. So just remember if you work in PR in Chile, ‘mum’s the word’.
Update on investigative journalism in Chile: I have, thanks to http://www.blogger.com/www.c.hileno.com (I do make an attempt to acknowledge sources), found a source of investigative journalism in Chile! http://.ciperchile.cl/ (In Spanish) My discovery of this is the equivalent my metaphorical vegans figuring out that the all you can eat steak buffet has bread: i.e. this is but a small step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I am overjoyed for Chile that I was, albeit to a small extent, wrong about investigative journalism in Chile.
4 comments:
Hey berk! Real interesting article. I've asked a lot of questions about the difference between traditional and private universities. You are the first to paint the difference in terms of access to money. Also, I had no idea (but am not surprised) that loans tend to turn into becas. Well written and researched.
Sarah Woessner
Thanks for the compliments. I should mention that private colleges also receive government funding just not as much as public colleges. Some, who seem to me to be mainly higher-ups who work in public colleges and their cronies, don’t want them to receive any funding. I think the focus should be on grants for students and not whether the funding is given to bureaucrats in public or private colleges but that's just me.
Loans used to tend to turn into becas, but those days are soon ending (or maybe have already ended...I haven't watched the news for at least six months now since I got a new job).
When I was a student here, there was a massive strike because the government was cracking down on students who don't pay their loans. The students were protesting because they were mad they were going to have to pay back their loans since every generation before them treated loans as becas.
Also, if you're going to take off from my title idea, at least link to my blog, that's good blogging etiquette. :)
Sorry Mamacita. My mistake. Your blog title is now a link.
As for loans turning into grants. My understanding is that if you don't pay your loans that you may have problems getting further goverment loans but that is all that will happen to you.
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