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760,000 higher education graduates
Navil
García
CUBA
has become a grand university and the 760,000 higher
education graduates attest to that. This figure was
reached this year after innumerable efforts by the
government to guarantee the function of academic
institutions during the most difficult years of the
Special Period.
But this volume of professionals trained by the
Revolution does not only represent a wide force of
well-qualified workers, but the concretion of social
ideas and the concept of Cubans’ human development.
It is about having been able to inter the exclusive
model of education that up until January 1959 kept
illiteracy rates high and reserved university access
as a privilege of the upper classes.
There were 510,000 students in this school
year–distributed throughout the 65 institutions of
the Ministry of Higher Education (MES), the 3,150
Municipal University Sites, and more than 110,000
professors.
The consolidation of the new education concept that
extends learning to the whole community is
reinforced by the incorporation into training
courses of youth previously uninvolved in work or
study. To that is added the active participation of
all the students and professors in tasks of social
impact such as the Energy Revolution, collaboration
in Operation Miracle, the Latin America Doctors
Training Program, training of Venezuelan Social
Workers Training Program, the computerization of the
universities and the preparation of students as
future university chairs.
From a scientific-technological viewpoint, Cuban
universities have managed to raise the quality of
research despite the deterioration accumulated over
several years in biological, chemical, physical, and
pharmaceutical laboratories– the majority of them
originating from the former Socialist bloc and for
which parts are no longer available. Academic
institutions and research centers within the MES
received 32 awards from the Cuban Academy of
Science, mainly in the areas of energy and
biotechnological development.
In
the area of computerization, the central university
network has been brought to all the municipalities,
guaranteeing training centers access to updated
databases and bibliographies; in addition more than
2,000 computers have been installed.
The
University of Information Science is the vanguard of
professional formation in the computer world and in
the creation of software that has already brought
substantial earnings to the country. The situation
is similar in the case of the José Antonio
Echevarría Higher Polytechnic Institute and the
University of Havana, which are centers of
excellence in the national education system.
For the next school year beginning September, the
bibliographical and support resources are expected
to improve, as well as the educational furniture and
resident student accommodation, precisely one of the
weakest points of the MES. Other reconstructive
action will be taken including the waterproofing of
roofs, exchanging wood fixtures for aluminum and
restoring all sanitation services in universities
and student housing.
There are also 869 Senior Adult Learning centers
from which more than 16,000 elderly people have
graduated from basic courses.
Some 600,000 professionals in all disciplines have
concluded continued training courses. Cuba has 8,283
Doctorate holders in the sciences, a figure
considered low in relation to the country’s total
university graduates and the possibilities of
further learning guaranteed by higher education
institutions.
However, research is maintaining a high scientific
level in conjunction with universities of
acknowledged prestige in developed countries. All of
this guarantees the continuation of the high quality
specialization achieved by the university education
in Cuba, which is reinvested to the benefit of
society.
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