Chilean Traditional Universities - Definition and Overview

In Chile, the term Universidades Tradicionales (Traditional Universities) is used to denote the group of universities founded before the 1980s.

These universities received economical state support (in many ways) and collectively are recognised as the public system of higher education.

Despite the categorisation of public the most of them do not belong to the state. Actually, there are three types of universities, according its property:

• Estatales, which belong to Chilean State. There are Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (formerly Universidad Técnica del Estado, technical focused university) and regional universities, which in the 1970s were constituted from the regional campuses the two first.
• Universities of the Catholic Church. As the estatales, most of them were created from the regional campuses of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in the 1970s.
• Two private universities, which belong to non-profit foundations. These universities are the Universidad de Concepción founded by Concepción citizens and the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, created as testamentary will of Federico Santa María Carrera.

Today there are 25 traditional universities. They are grouped in the Consejo de Rectores (Rector's Council).

Since the 1970s these universities manage a common admission test, known today as Prueba de Selección Universitaria.

External link

Consejo de Rectores de las Universidades Chilenas (http://www.cruch.cl)