The deaths of four students in a riot at a university meeting have rekindled the debate in Bolivia about the thousands of “dinosaur” students who have studied without graduating in the free Bolivian education system for decades.
On 9 May, tear gas grenades caused panic among hundreds of students attending a meeting at Tomás Frías University in Potosí. The riot left four dead and more than 70 injured and sparked a debate: Max Mendoza’s role in parliament.
Mendoza is 52 years old, 33 of whom are in college. Vice-government Héctor Arce did not graduate from any of the various courses he had followed for over three decades.
“There are leaders who somehow enjoy their role because I think a university leader is a college student first and then a leader,” said Oscar Heredia, dean of the state-owned UMSA (Universidad Mayor de San Andrés). He’s in La Paz, he told AFP.
Mendoza has suspended more than 200 classes since 1989 and has resulted in more than 100 classes with zero grades, said Héctor Arce, the condemned government deputy.
But the Mendoza case is just the tip of the iceberg of the thousands of students known as “dinosaurs.”
This academic role did not prevent him from earning a monthly salary of 21,860 Bolivians, or about $3,150 (similar to that of a dean), as he was also director of the Universidad Bolivia’s Executive Committee, which coordinates the country’s public institutes. higher education..
Amid the investigations into the tragedy, versions began circulating on social media that the head of the Bolivian University Confederation, Mendoza, was behind one of the disputed groups in parliament.
Mendoza was arrested on 21 May and sent to prison to be tried for various crimes.
“they are profiteers”
“There are these dinosaurs, they’ve been living at the university for over 20 years,” Karen Apaza, an engineering student at UMSA and an activist against eternal student leaders, told AFP.
Beymar Quisberth of the Department of Sociology at Universidad Maior San Francisco Xabier de Sucre, the country’s oldest, explains that the term dinosaur is “a satire.”
“This term is used by the orbit of the years […]always called dinosaurs [nas universidades]but now the term is used at the national level,” he adds.
Another official accused of being a “dinosaur” is Alvaro Quelali, 37, student leader at UMSA, who has been a student at the university for 20 years.
“They’re dinosaurs, they’re profiteers, it’s a shame,” says Gabriela Paz, 20, a student in the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences. certain advantages”.
not just leaders
The UMSA rector explains that not only are the student leaders who have spent many years at this university, but also thousands of ordinary students.
Of the 81,723 UMSA students, 23% (18,796) have been in education for more than 11 years and 6.7% (5,475) have been studying for more than 20 years.
“It’s a topic that interests us, but it’s a big topic of discussion,” Heredia says.
In fact, this university has a thousand students for over 30 years and 100 students for over 40 years.
The problem is similar in other institutions. Gabriel René Moreno University in Santa Cruz (east) has about 90,000 students, of whom 3% (about 2,700) have been there for more than a decade.
“We have to acknowledge that we are in a deeper crisis,” says Guido Zambrana, professor of medicine at UMSA.
Therefore, he proposes “a distortion of the whole nature of corruption, of mismanagement, of co-government”. [docente-estudantil]which has been deteriorating for decades”.
“The university is outdated, outdated, no longer responsive to the current situation,” says Zambrana in Bolivia.
source: Noticias
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