Higher Education in Times of Hyperinflation

There has been a lot written lately about the big economic crisis in Venezuela and how it affects the everyday lives of Venezuelans in aspects like access to food and medicines. But today I want to give some information about how university education is working at the moment

First, a little about myself. I am a medical doctor, with a Master’s degree in diabetology. You can read a bit more about me in my intro here on Steemit. My main job is as a professor at one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country, teaching medical biochemistry for almost 18 years. Since october 2016 I am also Head of the Department of Physiological Sciences

My father was also a professor at the same university, teaching genetics and oilseed crop management at the College of Agronomy for over 37 years until his retirement in 2006. During all the time he worked, professors enjoyed good social and economic status. I’m not saying that all college professors lived luxuriously, or had mansions, but their quality of life was very good. My father was able to buy his own house after working for two years, bought his own car (he actually bought six different ones during all that time), my sister and I studied in private schools and he was even able to get both a Master’s and a PhD in the US. And all this he did with his salary as the sole source of income for our family until I was able to pitch in after graduating from medical school.

Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998. I graduated from med school in 2000 and started teaching at the university in 2001. So, my whole professional life has been under the “chavista” regime. For the first few years, everything was almost the same as before, but we could see that some things were starting to get just a little bit harder. I couldn’t buy a house with my salary, but I could afford to rent a pretty good apartment. I didn’t have enough to buy a new car, but did manage to buy and restore a used one. Now the difficulties during those early years, to be fair, were due to years of mismanagement and corruption during the so-called “Fourth Republic”. I’m not going to say that Venezuela during the “Cuarta” was an absolute paradise. We had many problems, lots of poverty and great inequality, which lead to Chávez getting elected in the first place.

But the often-promised improvement of quality of life never really arrived for many Venezuelans. It is true that the poorest received many long-due benefits during those early years, but the middle class slowly and surely started disappearing. But I won’t digress too much on that; I’m sure all that has been said before. Let’s get back to the universities.

Year after year, university professors (and all educators, in general), experienced how salaries became completely insufficient. Nowadays, no salary (with the possible exception of some top-tier politicians, high-ranking military officers and such other VIPs) allows even the most basic quality of life. So there really isn’t that much to inspire our youth to study. With ever-increasing frequency we witness how more and more young adults (and even teenagers and children) abandon their classrooms. Some are among the many Venezuelans fleeing the country, but others, regrettably, simply have no desire to continue studying because they see no advantages to having a profession. More and more frequently they ask themselves “Why stay in school to become an engineer, lawyer or doctor, if I can earn much more money just going to work in a (illegal) gold mine right now?”. And if they see all their teachers wearing faded clothes, worn-out shoe, struggling to get enough to eat and getting everywhere on foot because their cars are broken down with no money for repairs, can we really blame them for feeling that way?

So, many students are leaving their classrooms. However, at least in universities, there are still a great many students to teach. Some years back, due to some bad policies made both by the national government and university authorities, we received way more students than we could efficiently (or decently) manage. For example, my biochemistry course can manage up to 280 students (the are five of us professors). Ten years ago, we had to somehow manage 590. Just next week we’ll begin a new semester, and e have 310 students registered. It has been calculated that, just during 2018, over 3000 students abandoned the Bolivar nucleus of the Universidad de Oriente, and that is about 30% of the total population. Many are leaving, but many still remain. It’s not unusual for a class to have 300-400 students. And FYI, the largest auditorium at our college seats 150 people.

Another big problem universities face has to do with the budget. For the past 15 years, the government really hasn’t given a proper budget to public universities. All budgets are “reconduced”, which basically means we get an amount of money that has no relation to the amount we actually need. We just get whatever the government decides. For 2018, my department received just enough funds to buy 100 sheets of paper. I’m not joking! Five different departments had to add their budgets together to buy a single ream of letter-size paper. BTW, during that same year my department managed 2100 students each semester, in a total of 14 different courses. That 100 sheets of paper didn’t even cover internal correspondence, to say nothing of paper and ink for exams, lab reagents, equipment or maintainance.

So just how are universities still open in Venezuela? The answer is as simple as it is regrettable. We’re open because our students are paying for everything. They purchase all paper, ink and other materials needed for exams, bring light bulbs for classrooms and hallways (and take them with them at the end of the day, because if left in place, they will promptly be stolen), lend markers and erasers to their professors, occasionally pay cab fare for professors or technicians. Often our students even rent spaces for classes or tests. Legally, education in public universities is free in Venezuela, but in reality our students spend a lot of money in order to study. Paraphrasing Chilean ex-president Sebastián Piñera: “College education is free, but someone has to pay for it.” Sadly, in hyperinflationary Venezuela, it is our students who must spend most of their hard-to-obtain money to keep universities open.

Prof. Jesús R. Cedeño.
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