By Marc Frank, Reuters, October 3, 2012
HAVANA - Cuba is cutting back its hallowed free education system and moving
students into more practical careers to reduce costs and fill needs in its work
force, recently released government statistics show.
Enrollment
in the communist-run country's many and varied types of schools fell from 3
million students in 2008 to 2.2 million last year, a drop of 27 percent,
according to the National Statistics Office.
The
reductions include cuts in some of the most vaunted programs of the Cuban
revolution, which from its beginning in 1959 emphasized the importance of
education for all and incorporated ideas from Jose Marti, the intellectual
father of the country.
Soon
after succeeding his brother Fidel Castro in 2008, President Raul Castro warned
of coming budget cuts in education and health care because he said the
debt-laden country was virtually bankrupt.
"What
we need to root out definitively is the irresponsible attitude of consuming,
with nobody - or very few people - worrying about how much it costs the country
to guarantee that and, above all, if it can really do so," Castro told the
National Assembly in August 2008.
"Social
expenditures should be in accordance with real possibilities, and that means
cutting those expenditures it is possible to do without," he said.
Among
the hardest hit were universities, where the number of students dropped almost
50 percent from 300,000 in 2008 to 156,000 in 2011 as admission standards were
raised and liberal arts careers slashed.
Adult
education, often criticized as too informal, open to cheating and a substitute
for working, also fell dramatically.
Only
145,000 students were enrolled last year in university extension classes, a
fraction of the 578,000 signed up in 2008 for mainly liberal arts courses.
Enrollment
in adult education courses, designed to improve work skills, dropped from
373,000 in 2008 to 129,000 as the long-standing practice of paying state
workers and farmers their full salaries to study during the day came to an end.
SHRINKING
OPPORTUNITY
The
state runs the entire education system for the country's 11.2 million citizens
and sets the number of places available in each area of study based on what
kind of skills it thinks Cuba needs.
These
days that means more skilled workers and private farmers to boost stagnating
production, and fewer professionals.
At
the high school level, new emphasis is being put on sciences, pedagogy,
agriculture and skilled trades at the expense of liberal arts.
The
number of places for students in pre-university schools declined by some 50,000
or more than 20 percent since 2008, the report stated.
More
students were channeled into the skilled trades, where slots jumped from 26,000
in 2008 to 74,000.
The
data did not include provincial high schools run by the military.
"Opportunities
are shrinking and competition increasing," said Sonya Perez, a single
mother who is worried about her 12-year-old daughter's future. "I make my
daughter study two hours every day and pay one of her teachers 30 pesos each
week to tutor her."
A
common complaint among parents is that families who can afford tutors increase
their children's chances of obtaining a higher education and becoming
professionals, undercutting the standard of equal educational opportunity
enshrined in Cuba's constitution.
Marti,
whose bust sits outside public buildings all across Cuba, championed the
concept of combining study with work, which the revolutionary government
embraced by putting free boarding schools in the countryside.
But
with the revolution bumping up against budget realities, the number of boarding
school students fell from 415,000 in 2008 to 170,000 last year
All
of these changes can be jarring to Cubans who have taken a full, free education
as a birthright.
"It used to be that a university education, in one form or
another, was almost a sure thing," said Havana architect Alejandro Padron.
"Now you have to struggle. I understand that it was impossible to maintain
everyone studying, but I still want to see my son go to the university."
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