Chile to offer free higher education in 2016

Chilean Education Minister Nicolas Eyzaguirre Thursday said the country's government will uphold its pledge to provide free higher education starting in 2016.

"President (Michelle) Bachelet has clearly said that free education will begin in 2016, and we are going to honor that promise," Eyzaguirre said in a ministry press release.

To that end, Eyzaguire said, "we are going to present (to Congress) sometime this year a bill to finance and regulate higher education."

Regardless of the outcome of the legislative debate, "what is given is that in 2016 completely free education will begin," the minister said.

He added, however, that "the exact content of the proposed bill will be hammered out in Congress."

On Thursday, two weeks before the start of the 2015 school year here, the minister was supervising the distribution of textbooks, which are provided free to more than 11,300 public and private schools in the country.

Secondary and university students in Chile first protested the high cost of education in 2011, during the administration of former pro-business President Sebastian Pinera, who pushed the privatization of education.

The protests, the largest the country has seen since the demonstrations that put an end to the military dictatorship in 1990, dogged Pinera until he left office in 2014.

His successor, Michelle Bachelet, made the students' demands for accessible quality education a bedrock of her government program. Endi