Many teenagers choose to work after spending only one year in Military Service
14ymedio, Havana, August 8, 2024 — “In hard times, the croquette is put before the brain.” The diagnosis, coined by a university professor from Las Tunas, synthesizes the problem of entry into higher education on the Island, which is most critical in that eastern province. At the provincial university, for example, of the 7,000 students whose enrollment was planned for next year, only 6,320 were registered, and more losses are expected.
“Our team spoke with young people who revealed (with the recorder turned off and demanding discretion) that they would choose any degree program to spend just one year in Military Service, even though they do not plan to study it,” admits Periódico 26 in a report published this Thursday. Where are they going? The local newspaper of the Communist Party responds with a euphemism: “Their life projects are in other latitudes.” Meanwhile, they focus on “making money” in the private sector for their trip.
The future doesn’t look good for Cuban universities. The problem – according to the newspaper – is that it is no longer profitable to “burn the midnight oil” because a degree demands an excessive expenditure of money (travel, food, clothes), and a recent graduate’s salary is ridiculous, taking into account the cost of living in Cuba. “It’s better to sell on Revolico,” the buying and selling website, confesses one of the interviewees.
Among the pre-university students of Las Tunas, about 800 students took the entrance exams
Among the pre-university students of Las Tunas, about 800 students took the entrance exams, a figure slightly lower than that of 2023, but catastrophic compared to 2022 – when it was 1,000 – and even more of a catastrophe if compared with 2021, when more than 2,000 presented themselves. This year, only 72% passed Mathematics and 27% History. The best result was for Spanish, with 99% approved.
But that doesn’t guarantee anything. The “curve” in which almost all approved students are “lost” is when it comes to choosing their career. According to the professors of the University of Las Tunas, it is very difficult to convince students to choose careers that, traditionally, were the most demanded, such as Medicine. The solution,” explains a university professor, “has been to tell young people that at the university level “they are endorsed equally for the state and private sectors.”
Joel Borrero Alarcón, Vice Rector of the university, explains to Periódico 26 that the “high percentage of school dropouts are not just in the first or second year of the course. Even in the fourth year, about to graduate, there are now cases.”
Once they receive notice of a trip abroad – the “reunification of families” to which the professor alludes, with another euphemism – no one waits to leave. Others, also prepared in case they get the U.S. humanitarian parole or find another way of escape, “create their own businesses in the middle of the educational program and ask to be discharged.”
“And there are students who, after earning their degrees, do not join their job positions, but those are fewer than the greater number who choose to join the new forms of business, which offer better salaries and get the most valuable graduates in many specialties,” says Borrero Alarcón. “They leave to assume positions far from what they studied, and territorial urgencies are forgotten.”
Others do not even enter the university, even though they have passed the entrance exams. The “current social transformations are to blame,” laments one of the teachers interviewed. “What happens in a classroom is a reflection of society, not vice versa.” Young people need the money, and many families can’t pay for everything a degree demands from their own pockets.
The testimony of Mirtha – a mother who stated her situation to the newspaper – is eloquent in this regard. Her daughter, a university student in the neighboring province of Camagüey, can hardly travel from home to school. Each ticket, says the woman, “costs 39 pesos” on a state bus, but if the trip is canceled or she doesn’t get a ticket, it’s “time to give” 700 pesos to a private carrier. The young woman has spent two years traveling between Camagüey and Las Tunas, and Mirtha doesn’t know how much longer she can pay.
“I buy flour, bread and sausages so that she has something to snack on at school. When you add it up, my month’s salary goes to her”
In addition, it’s not only the transport but also the food and “a little spending money. I buy flour, bread and sausages so that she has something to snack on at school. When you add it up, my month’s salary goes to her, not to mention the cost of clothes, shoes and phone recharges so she can study,” she says.
According to Periódico 26, the study of medicine still arouses some interest, but only for “the fact that it can be exercised in any latitude and circumstance.” Those who choose the career think about how to revalidate their degrees outside Cuba, and if they have to finish the teaching process before the trip arrives, they don’t want to waste time. However, it’s usual to choose “short-cycle” disciplines, which allow one to obtain a degree in two years and in the province itself. Under that concept, there are young people “with astronomical qualifications who choose to graduate in Computer Science here and leave aside the opportunity to graduate from the University of Computer Sciences in Havana,” says the newspaper.
In summary, there are “very good students who don’t want to go to university,” a fact that would have been inconceivable ten or twenty years ago, say the university directors. Mirtha’s conclusion about her daughter’s future, after graduating, reflects this: “As I see it, a degree might give her a bit more than 4000 pesos a month, which is not enough for her to live on.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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