Analyzing the Institutional Diversity and Increasing Complexity in a Market-Oriented University System: The Case of Chile (2008–2020)
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2025
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Abstract
This article examines the process of massification and increasing complexity of marked-oriented university systems, using the case of Chile as an example. Starting from the idea that university systems do not maintain an unchanged direction in their development and that the governance balances between market, state, and civil society undergo transformations, this article seeks to analyze the process of increasing complexity and differentiation of the Chilean university system in the last 12 years (2008-2020). Using factorial and clustering analysis, universities were grouped into eight clusters, clearly heterogeneous in terms of their level of research outcomes, student profile, size, location, and institutional nature. This article concludes that in the last decade, the increasing heterogenization of the university market has crystallized inequalities and hierarchies among institutions although private universities often demonstrate a greater capacity for flexibility and adaptation to institutional changes within the system, this tendency does not uniformly apply to all cases.