Abstract

Chile is one of the world's most neoliberal countries with a high level of privatised healthcare and education. The presence of advertising for both public and private universities points to the radically altered relationship between public and private higher education as a consequence of neoliberalism. Some authors describe the increasing similarities between the representations of public and private universities as evidence of their hybrid nature whereas others contend that what comes across as contingent hybridity is the dominance of a neoliberal discourse that has invaded public universities. This article looks at how public and private universities' visual and textual representations of themselves evolve in a context of mobile, neoliberalised public spaces. The research is based on a mobile visual ethnography of higher education advertisements on public transport in Santiago de Chile in 2010. The visual and textual dimensions of the advertisements are analysed by means of critical discourse analysis. The universities' particular sales messages with regard to promised upward social mobility and employability through education are reinforced by the intertwining of images, mobile spaces and actors. However, as the discourse analysis shows, the promises of equal upward social mobility are in contrast with the realities of neoliberal higher education and the increasing financial debt faced by students.