Current Chilean Sociology: Training, Graduation and Professional Practice

Abstract

The article analyzes the effects of enrollment expansion in the careers of sociology in Chile, in the last two decades. The main argument is that the enrollment expansion is related to the increase in the number of schools and the overcrowding of the university system, as a whole, since the 1990s. The analysis of the problem of sociology students’ retention, the differences by type of school, and the issue of jobs is based on the data provided by the Ministry of Education for the period 2009-2019. This information is contrasted with historical data about the way sociology has emerged and institutionalized in Chile, starting in the late 1950s, and its later stages of professional and scientific development. After the analysis, it is possible to account for the current conditions in which are carried out the training, graduation, and labor insertion processes of those who have opted for sociology careers in different universities.