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Here's what progressives do about education (they don't make a system which forces people to give a big chunk of the money the earn trying to be middle class to banks): Loans to Grants: University Funding Plan for a New Venezuela
Thursday, May 25, 2006
By: Simone Baribeau - Venezuelanalysis.com
“As Victor Hugo says in Les Miserables, while a woman has to prostitute herself because of hunger, a child loses himself in darkness for lack of education and a worker is exploited by capitalism. Books like this, like Les Miserables, have not been in vain,” comments Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on his five-hour weekly television show, which is riddled with literary quotes and a segment akin to Oprah’s book club.
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And Chávez’s pro-education banter isn’t just rhetoric. Higher education hasn’t been more within the reach of the majority of Venezuelans for decades. Between 2000 and 2003, according to the World Development Index, the number of Venezuelans enrolled in college as a percent of the college aged population jumped 11 percentage points to 39%—well exceeding the regional average (which, according to the most recent numbers, Venezuela still lags behind in primary and secondary education, despite recent improvements). This comes after a decade where the percentage of Venezuelans enrolled in tertiary education fell by one point.
According to officials, increased enrollment is due, in part, to the gradual growth in higher education institutions in Venezuela, and the creation of the Bolivarian University, a free college with a liberal admissions policy, similar to community colleges in the US.
But the newest development to encourage students to seek higher education isn’t so much a development, but a return to the 1980s, when those seeking tertiary education were funded by the state: the Venezuelan government’s student loan program, Fundación Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho (Fundayacucho), has announced that it will no longer lend money, but is instead giving out about 13,500 grants to students in the 2006 academic year. The grants will be worth $38 to $47 million combined, up from about $28 million in loans and grants given out in 2005.
“This year we were planning to reduce the interest rates to 3%, the lowest we could, but still people had to pay. But President Chávez , ‘No, higher education cannot be paid, not even a Bolivar should be paid, it’s our duty to make it free, it’s a constitutional provision.’ ‘Okay, President, they won’t pay anymore, okay, very good,’ ,” said Jorge Arreaza, president of Fundayacucho.
This vision of higher education stands in sharp contrast to that of the foundation’s leadership in the early 1990s, when then Fundayacucho President Leopoldo López Gil approached the World Bank to help the foundation change its program from grants to loans. A commercial bank then determined which students would be able to repay their loans, even though all money continued to come from the state.
Jamil Salmi, Coordinator of the World Bank’s Network of High Education Specialists, said the goal was to ensure the financial health of the program. Money lent out one year would be repaid by students in future years to be used to finance future students’ education, helping the program to be more self sustaining.
“We were the managers of a bank, not a political person interested in social change, in making people study,” said Arreaza of the program in the 1990s. Arreaza argued that before World Bank involvement, loans were given out at a ¨social¨ interest rate, but after Bank involvement, the interest rate reached 58%.
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“They’re now treating education like an investment in the country, rather than like a bank,” she said, adding that monthly payments on the loan had been a hardship.
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One of the goals of switching the program from grants to loans, Salmi said, was to increase the number of low-income students receiving aid. While the bank running the program required two guarantors from students from higher income families, Fundayacucho itself could be the guarantor for poor students. Fundayacucho also organized a media campaign to encourage low-income prospective students to apply.
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Arreaza also said they were going to address the problem of corruption within the program. “There’s a big difference between the past governments and this one. Past governments worked for the elite…and so they helped…the children of their friends…But this government is related to the people, so…I wouldn’t help a friend a cousin my brother…I want to the poorest of the poor study, we’re a different kind of government, so it’s not going to happen again.”
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According to Arreaza, the purpose of the fund is not only making higher education more obtainable, but to expand internet access throughout the country. “Chavez didn’t like the internet because he said, ‘Well, poor people don’t have access to the internet,’ so I asked him to give us the opportunity to demonstrate that we can also democratize it. So we are going to go to the smallest towns to make people apply for the grants,” Arreaza recounted.
Starting the 22nd of this month, he said, he and his staff will travel to remote regions of the country, setting up internet stations and encouraging people, particularly indigenous, to apply for scholarships.
In Petare, a run-down barrio in the far east of Caracas, students hadn’t yet heard of the changes in the program, but liked the idea.
Matilde Suárez, a teenage girl working at one of the many stalls that lined the street, had dropped out with one year of high school left to finish. She looked surprised when asked if she wanted to go to college. “Of course,” she said. “I want to study teaching or criminology.”
“Now that there’s no obligation to pay …they’ll teach more ,” she said, commenting on Fundayacucho’s return to grants. She was planning on returning to school the next year.
“It’s important because low income students can study with the grants, go to university,” agreed Luis Flores, who had three more years left in high school. He said he didn’t want to go to university, but that, even so, the program was important to him personally, because he wanted the option to be open.
Future college students aren’t the only beneficiaries to the grant program. Former recipients of loans are seeing their debt forgiven.
“Those who owe money , now they owe nothing,” announced Chávez earlier this month.
Some have criticized the debt relief as a giveaway to the upper classes, who received most of the loans. “By and large students from rich communities are going to benefit from , unless targeting ,” said World Bank Education Coordinator Salmi.
However, the relief is across the board. And Fund officials admit that largely this is a subsidy to the wealthy.
“It’s going to benefit the middle class and upper class, but in terms of socialism we cannot judge a person for the class he comes from…We have to look to the future and those people who already we’re going to approach them and try to make them work with the state to teach in the public institutions,” said Arreaza, saying that they would encourage people to work in the government’s social missions or provide free services to low income people out of their own offices.
Recipients of the debt forgiveness reacted positively to the news. “That was a huge surprise. I’m really happy,” said Grecia Delgado, the physical therapist. “It’s an investment in the country.”
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1737 |
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