Between Excellence and Sustainability: A Critical and Bibliometric Review with a Neutrosophic Approach to Academic Quality and Financial Health in Chilean Higher Education

Abstract

This article develops a critical and bibliometric review of academic quality and financial health in Chilean higher education, within socio-academic contexts in which current Latin American social problems simultaneously jeopardize equitable access, institutional sustainability, and quality standards. The review covers 63 documents indexed in international databases between 2010 and 2025, systematized under a neutrosophic stance detection methodology. The results highlight the risks of high tuition dependence, the positive effects of income diversification, and the relevance of governance, retention, and faculty profiles for financial and academic sustainability. In addition, demographic decline and increased competition emerge as contextual threats. The study integrates neutrosophic triplets (T, I, F) to quantify the degree of consensus, indeterminacy, and contradiction across the literature. The conclusions of the literature review are coherent and consistent with the results of stance detection, which provides validation and formalization of the patterns that already emerged in the state of the art.