In Chile, a Fast-Growing University, Owned by Sylvan ...



In Chile, a Fast-Growing University, Owned by Sylvan, Produces Profits and Scorn

By BURTON BOLLAG

Santiago, Chile

In the two and a half years since Sylvan Learning Systems bought a majority

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interest in it, the University of the Americas has gone from a small institution with a grand-sounding name to Chile's largest and fastest-growing private university. In doing so it has produced big profits while eliciting scorn from much of Chile's academic establishment.

The Americas was a family-owned institution with 4,000 students when Sylvan bought it at the end of 2000. Now, after enrolling 8,000 new students this spring -- the academic year here in the Southern Hemisphere runs from March to December -- it has 18,000 students, one-third of them working adults enrolled in evening degree programs. It caters to the low end of the market: students with grades too low to win places at most other universities.

Mario Albornoz Galdámez, rector since the university's founding in 1988, admits that the rapid growth has created serious strains. "I've tried to maintain the whole thing without letting the boat tip over," he says. "Growth is important, but we must maintain quality."

Yet this is just the start of planned expansion, says Lorenzo Antillo Matas, who remained chief executive of the company that owns the University of the Americas after Sylvan's arrival. The strategy calls for a doubling of traditional day students, to 25,000 within five years, and a quintupling, to 30,000, of evening students during the same period. "To say higher education is a fantastic business would be an understatement," says Mr. Antillo.

Part of the reason for this tremendous growth is the university's huge spending on marketing. It is the only university in Chile to advertise so extensively on television.

Shortly after Sylvan acquired the university, it advertised that its degrees were recognized in other countries. The claim was quickly dropped after complaints from the education ministry. But the Americas continues to stress that the university's membership in Sylvan's multinational network gives students the possibility of doing part of their studies at sister institutions in Spain and Mexico. Kathia Leyton, a first-year psychology student, says she enrolled at the Americas, after failing to win admission to one of the more competitive state universities in the capital, "in part because of the interuniversity exchanges and also because this is the only university in Chile where [the study of] English is obligatory."

Critics say the institution may be raising unrealistic hopes of study abroad: During the current academic year, only about 30 of its students are taking classes outside Chile. Mr. Antillo says that is because most students cannot afford it.

The institution has based its success on enrolling students with low grades, mostly from middle- and lower-middle-class families. Historically in Chile, 80 percent of university students have come from the most affluent 40 percent of the population. They have often benefited from the better education provided by private schools. We "give an opportunity to other people to study," says Mr. Albornoz, the rector. "The traditional universities don't." Administrators say the first two years of the basic five-year undergraduate program includes a significant amount of remedial training and help to develop good study skills.

Yet many in this South American nation question the kind of education the Americas is providing. "How could they get so big in a couple of years?" asks Gonzalo Zapata Larraín of Chile's National Accreditation Commission. "Are they maintaining quality standards?"

In Chile's deregulated higher-education system, private institutions must go through a process of extensive scrutiny leading to "autonomy" within 11 years of their establishment -- a process the University of the Americas had nearly completed when Sylvan arrived. Once they become autonomous, institutions are virtually free of further oversight.

José Brunner, a professor and former head of the accreditation commission, says the concerns are not over foreign ownership but over whether the Americas is providing an education "with the minimum standards the country needs. This is why it is an issue, not because of Sylvan." Mr. Brunner adds that by charging yearly tuition of $2,800, almost as much as the country's best universities, the Americas "probably does not represent much value for the money."

Most scathing are the criticisms from the state universities. Cecilia Sepúlveda Carvajal, vice rector for academic affairs at the University of Chile, the country's leading public institution, says the Americas "is trying to profit from the naiveté of the public. Students with low grades have no chance of getting a real university education. They'll end up with a meaningless diploma."

Mr. Antillo, the Americas' chief executive, chalks up such attacks to jealousy over his institution's rapid growth and its profitability compared with the public universities' chronic deficits. Indeed, like many of Chile's private universities, the Americas keeps costs down by employing mostly part-time teachers and doing no research. It has the equivalent of one full-time faculty member for every 40 students, compared with a 1:20 ratio at the public institutions. And few of even its senior academic administrators have earned a Ph.D.

Yet the partnership between the Americas and Sylvan seems to have produced a winning formula.

Sylvan has left the academic side of the university largely in the hands of the original administration; the main changes Sylvan has introduced are mandatory English lessons and a greater emphasis on the use of computer technology in education. "Our graduates in law, for example, know how to use Excel and make PowerPoint presentations" says Marcos Diaz, vice rector for extension.

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