The Engines of Excellence

At the heart of Chile’s academic success are its top-tier institutions, which have made significant strides in research and international collaboration.

Cristián Larroulet Vignau, Former Minister General Secretariat of the Presidency of Chile, says, “Chile is receiving in the last decades a growing number of foreign professors and students. For example, in our business school in Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD), where I teach and work in research, around 50 percent of the faculty are foreigners.”

The reason, as Larroulet Vignau points out, is that “the research prestige of our university system is growing mainly because the productivity per researcher is the highest in Latin America. In terms of internationalisation, we have an open market economy that needs a human capital with international networks and, for that reason, our university system promotes internationalisation in our professors and students in the undergraduate and graduate programmes,” he tells QS Insights Magazine.

He terms the country’s university ecosystem as “very competitive with a combination of state, traditional and new private universities.”

Carlos Olivares, an expert in higher education strategy, points to the remarkable ascent of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC), which has climbed into the top 100 of the QS World University Rankings.

“In the QS Latin America 2025 ranking, UC Chile ranks second regionally, while Universidad de Chile holds sixth place, underscoring national academic strength,” says Olivares.

This underscores the country’s growing academic strength. “Chile has emerged as a regional frontrunner,” he says, attributing this success to a robust academic and employer reputation.

This is the result of a deliberate, if often fragmented, approach to internationalisation. Olivares highlights a key example: targeted initiatives like Ingeniería 2030, a consortium that has brought together top Chilean universities with global partners such as UC Berkeley, MIT, and Columbia. These strategic alliances have been instrumental in enhancing research capacity and driving curricular innovation, particularly in critical STEM fields. This focused, top-down approach has allowed Chile to excel in specific areas, creating centers of excellence that are recognised worldwide.

The country’s research profile is another pillar of its global standing. Maria Montt Strabucchi, Vice President of International Affairs, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC), emphasises that a commitment to “high quality and high impact research" is central to becoming a higher education leader. Citing an example of her university, she notes that PUC faculty have forged strong international research ties in a diverse range of fields.

While astronomy, biomedicine and engineering are often cited as prime examples — given Chile’s unparalleled geographic advantages for astronomical observation and its long history in mining — she is quick to add that research in social sciences, agronomy and the humanities also has a significant international footprint. This specialised expertise and dedication to academic integrity are what build trust and make Chilean universities attractive partners for global collaborations.

But this success story is largely confined to a small number of institutions. Olivares points to a significant divide: “internationalisation is far more advanced in larger institutions, with less resourced universities lagging behind.” This creates a two-tiered system where the benefits of international partnerships, faculty mobility, and research funding are heavily concentrated at the top.

“The system is robust at the top, but fragile throughout,” adds Olivares, a reality that threatens to undermine Chile’s broader national ambitions.

José Miguel Salazar Zegers, Superintendent of Higher Education, says that Chile “lacks a clearly defined national strategy for the internationalisation of higher education — one that is sustained over time and shared between the state and higher education institutions.”

A Flawed Framework?

Salazar Zegers highlights that currently the efforts are “fragmented, mainly led by larger and more traditional universities, without effective coordination with public policies or a broader national vision.”

“The absence of a shared regulatory, institutional and budgetary framework has generated significant asymmetries in internationalisation capacities and has prevented the development of a coherent structural agenda in this area,” he says.

Beyond the issues of funding and language, Chile’s higher education system is also hindered by a fragmented governance framework. The absence of a “unified, long-term roadmap,” as Montt Strabucchi describes it, means that internationalisation efforts are uneven. While government programmes like Becas Chile have been effective in sending Chilean students abroad, there is “still space to grow in attracting international researchers, faculty and students to Chile,” she says.

Olivares is particularly critical of the country’s quality assurance processes, which he argues have not kept pace with the demand for true, verifiable excellence. He highlights a series of structural flaws, including a lack of transparency in the dissemination of accreditation results. Salazar Zegers notes that despite having universities that rank well regionally and some notable bilateral partnerships, international collaboration “remains unsystematic, relying on informal networks or being driven by external funding agencies, such as the European Union.”

“There is no national science and education policy that positions Chile as a key regional player, leaving it behind countries like Mexico, Brazil, or even Colombia, which have developed more integrated and proactive strategies,” he tells QS Insights Magazine.

Language and Mobility Barriers

While programmes such as ANID (formerly Conicyt) and Becas Chile have enabled some degree of outbound mobility and, to a lesser extent, the attraction of researchers, their design has been predominantly focused on sending Chilean students abroad. “Initiatives aimed at bringing foreign students and researchers to Chile have been scarce, inconsistent, and lacking clear strategic criteria. Migration policy, the absence of institutional incentives, and the limited availability of English-taught programmes have also hindered Chile’s positioning as an academic destination,” says Salazar Zegers.

In Chile, language remains a significant barrier that limits its international reach. Montt Strabucchi acknowledges this directly, stating that “language remains one of the key factors regarding international engagement.” She admits there is a pressing need to “continue strengthening this area.” Expanding English-medium offerings is seen as a crucial step to building deeper global connections and making Chilean education more accessible to students and researchers from regions beyond Latin America, such as Africa and Asia.

Olivares, however, presents a more nuanced perspective on this. He says that while some English-medium instruction (EMI) exists, it’s largely confined to elective courses or specific programmes at elite universities. Fully English-medium degrees are rare and concentrated in a few top institutions. The reasons for this are clear: scaling EMI requires substantial investment in faculty training, curriculum development and ongoing support, resources that are not uniformly available across the academic ecosystem.

“Without a coordinated national and institutional response to the language gap,” Olivares warns, “Chile risks limiting the transformative potential of its internationalisation agenda.” He argues that language policy must shift from being an afterthought to a “strategic pillar of higher education reform.”

This language barrier is closely tied to the country’s mixed success in attracting international talent. While outbound mobility has been a strong point, thanks to programmes like Becas Chile and ANID, attracting inbound talent remains a work in progress. Montt Strabucchi acknowledges that while they have made progress, there is “still space to grow in attracting international researchers, faculty and students to Chile.”

Olivares describes the inbound trend as “nascent, yet promising,” but notes that “realising the full potential of mobility as a driver of internationalisation, innovation, and development will require strategic coordination, inclusivity, and system-wide investment, moving beyond programmatic success toward institutional and national transformation.”

The Road Ahead

To bridge the gap between its current reality and its global aspirations, Chile must embark on a path of strategic integration and systemic reform.

First, the country needs to move beyond a reliance on the success of elite institutions and investing in capacity building across the entire HE system. Olivares argues that for Chile to close the gap with global centres, it needs to “turn isolated excellence into a cohesive and competitive national brand of higher education.”

Some of the key challenges, as per Larroulet Vignau, include “giving stability to our actual public policy in the university education system, maintaining our public policy of different types of universities (private and public), non-discrimination between them, increasing public funds for research and unrestricted resources that the families provide for the education of the students.”

Chile has developed relevant ties in fields such as astronomy, climate change, mining, Antarctic sciences and renewable energy — mainly due to its unique geographical conditions and the presence of key centrers of excellence. “However, these connections have not translated into a sustained improvement in the country’s global academic reputation, as their impact remains confined to specific niches, and there is no national strategy to amplify these achievements. Research internationalisation remains uneven across institutions and is heavily dependent on the individual efforts of academics and research groups,” Salazar Zegers adds.

Looking ahead, the main challenges are structural and strategic. “Absence of a public internationalisation policy with clear objectives, instruments, and indicators; lack of coordination among key ministries [Education, Science, Foreign Affairs, Finance]; and inequality among institutions, with only a few universities possessing real internationalisation capacities. These are key areas which need improvement,” he says.