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REUTERS/Kimberly White
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (l.) greets supporters at a university ceremony in Caracas.
Do Revolution and Higher Education Mix?Revolutionary government’s policies begin to change universities
Venezuela’s first constitution in 1811 stated that the country was a federal state. However, most observers agree that the common denominator for all of Venezuela’s constitutions since then has been a principle of federation in form but not in practice. The result has been a weak federal structure. The most important strength of the system has been the regular election of governors and mayors in each of the 23 states of the country. Some competences have been partially ceded by the federal government, especially those related to health services, water and energy provision, as well as basic and secondary education. Post-secondary education has always been the responsibility of the federal government. Some have called this centralized federalism, because the power of the central government has been stronger than the idea of federalism. After 40 years of democratic rule, in 1998 the new government of President Hugo Chavez was elected with the aim of refounding the republic. The first step was to approve a new national Constitution in 1999 that had, as a key feature, movement toward a social and inclusive participatory democracy instead of the representative democracy that the 1961 Constitution had established. However, the decentralization and transfer of services to states and municipalities that was promised by President Hugo Chavez has not happened. Most observers agree that Venezuela, as a nation, is going back to a more centralized and authoritarian government. Post-secondary education has been one of the untouched issues as the federal government continues to be the primary public entity responsible for this level of education. Funding, student enrolment and admission decisions, and the creation of institutions and new academic programs were under the control of the federal Ministry of Education until 2002, and then under the federal Ministry of Higher Education, created in that same year. The Ministry now also has taken over the budget distribution among the universities, which had been done by the National Council of Universities. Expansion and Diversification Of the 49 universities, six are official universities that are autonomous, meaning that they have academic, organizational, administrative and financial autonomy, even though they depend on the federal government for funds. There are also 43 experimental universities that only have academic More students – 58 per cent – enrol in universities than non-universities in Venezuela. More than half of the universities in Venezuela are private institutions that, although they account for one-fifth of all university enrolments, generally have a low profile and social impact. By the same token, more than half of the 120 non-university institutions are also private, representing 70 per cent of enrolments in the non-university sector. Heavy Dependence on Federal Funding The federal formula for distributing funds to institutions to support both teaching and research is based not on quality indicators, but on enrolments, student/faculty ratios, administrative staff numbers, and growing obligations to fund early retirement. Also, federal funds are the primary source of student financial aid through scholarships. One exception is in the state of Zulia. There the governor, Manuel Rosales, who ran unsuccessfully A large proportion of funding for post-secondary education in Venezuela, as with many other public functions, is provided through revenues from oil production. One result of this dependence on oil and the increase over time in oil prices is that spending on post-secondary education in Venezuela is relatively high – 2.4 per cent of GDP. As well, oil revenues were crucial in providing funds for scholarships and loans, an area in which the states of Venezuela have done little or nothing. The federal government is also the primary provider of research funds concentrated in the areas it considers critical for national development. Other matters controlled by the central government include the admissions process, regulated through the Academic Aptitude Test that measures such abilities as numeric, reading, and comprehension, the results of which determine the distribution of students among the institutions and careers. This test had been criticized by many observers for promoting exclusion, The Revolution Comes to the University Thus, the federal government is deepening its control on all matters related to post-secondary education. Many observers consider this a step backwards, inasmuch as the country was being driven to a more decentralized model before the current revolutionary period began. At this time, there seems to be little room for negotiation between the centralized federal government and the states that have lost most of whatever autonomy they might previously have had. Therefore, it appears that in post-secondary education, as in almost any other government function in Venezuela today, the federal government will pursue those policies that impose the ideological content of President Chavez’s “socialism for the 21st century”. Post-secondary education in Venezuela is proving to be a convenient mechanism to succeed in that goal. |
Maria Cristina Parra-Sandoval, a sociologist, is currently full professor in the University of Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela responsible for the higher education research in the Doctorate in Human Sciences.
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