‘By reason or by force’: compensatory higher education strategies and elite reproduction in Chile

This study examines how elite Chilean students with comparatively weak academic resources navigates a highly stratified higher education system. Using administrative registry data on university applications, we analyse how students from elite backgrounds mobilise non-academic resources to sustain elite trajectories. Through correspondence analysis, we identify a set of institutions and programmes—exclusive private universities and high-cost baccalaureates—that serve as ‘sanctuary schools’ and ‘roundabout routes’: pathways that lower academic thresholds while maintaining symbolic legitimacy and social exclusivity. These findings revive and adapt Bourdieusian concepts of compensatory strategies to a national, massified higher education context. In doing so, we demonstrate how institutional differentiation and geographical centralisation facilitate elite reproduction through non-meritocratic means. The dual logic captured in Chile’s national motto—Por la razón o la fuerza—illustrates how access to legitimate educational positions can be secured either through merit (‘reason’) or through economic and social capital reconversion (‘force’).