I am Chilean. This year I came to live to Bay Area and now I work in a Startup.
There are several misconceptions and thoughts that I want to express.
1. Getting a 'low tax student loan in Chile is easy'
That's BS. If you're in a good 'public' University, it applies. You can get -more or less from the Government- (which behind the camera acts as an intermediare with a Bank) what we call "Crédito Universitario". That is indeed low tax. However, most of Chileans don't go to the top 'Public Schools', it's hard to get in because you have to do well in what we have as a Standardized Test to apply for the University called PSU (University Selection Test). Most of the people in Chile end-up going to private Schools and to get a loan -as far as I know- you have to go directly to a Bank, and believe me, it's not low tax. I've know people having to pay up to 50% more than what their studies costed.
2. There's no class mobility in Chile.
This is true. It's virtually non-existent. The reasons are quite complex, but let me elaborate on one of the factors.
The Universitary Selection Test is a test much like SAT. There's Math, Language, Sciences (including social sciences), etc. When you apply to a university your presentation score is calculated from a ponderation between those tests and high school grades (9th-12th grade). In my case for example, for my Engineering School, it was something like 50% math test, 25% school, 25% Language test.
Since the School education in Chile is incredibly segregated, and there's only some decent schools, guess who are the majority of people who are doing well at this test? Yep, you guessed right, people that come from wealthier families that could afford to put their children in, more expensive and better quality schools.
That people is who get the best scores at PSU, fill up most of the capacity of the top Universities high-paying degrees.
And this is why in Chile, the best careers in the best universities are full of people who are already in a very strong economic position (and from more or less higher class strata). Yes, you will see some very smart guys with a University Credit here and there studying Medicine/Engineering in the top Universities, but they are more in the exceptional spectrum.
3. It's so bad that there's a market for studying for the PSU.
To take on this opportunity, in Chile we have private 'pre-universitarios' which are basically institutes that can charge even 4k a year, to better prepare you for PSU. People often go to them to improve their scores on their last year of School (after school)... again, guess who can pay them?
Personal Opinion:
We need a good educational reform in Chile. Sadly, the actual government is the worst we've had at executing on anything specific in a long time. They tried tackling a lot of very difficult challenges at the same time, and from what I've seen they have failed miserably.
The educational reform that will come out of this, will, most probably, be very watered down. People should pay, what they can pay for their education, that would fix part of the problems that the article correctly linked with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. My father was born low-class and at his time, he could afford an education in a top university (costed him 0, then he had to work in the public sector to pay the state for his education). This is a reality, that simply doesn't exist anymore, at least not like in pre dictatorship.
But remember that this is not only a money problem, even if it's free... the PSU is still there acting as a filter, and without excellent and cheaper public schools things are not going to get incredibly better.
PS: For the ones suggesting that free internet and e-learning as a possible fix, I won't enter that debate but no, I don't think that can fix for any of this issues in Chile.