Coral Wynter
& Jim McIlroy, Caracas
More than 1000 students from the Bolivarian University of Venezuela (UBV) received their higher technician diplomas at a graduation ceremony at the Poliedro stadium on August 16, presided over by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The UBV was established in July 2003 to fight the capitalist ideology that dominates Venezuela's traditional universities, and to open the doors of higher education to lower-income students.
During his speech to the assembled students, Chavez recalled that the UBV was created to break the paradigm of elite universities.
Chavez urged students to take up the battle of ideas, because Venezuela's young, new professionals are one of the driving forces behind the new "socialism of the 21st century". He also noted that almost 70% of the graduates were women: "This is very significant. I have always said that capitalism is chauvinist. With this new socialism, you young women can fly free."
Andres Eloy Ruiz, rector of the UBV, told the August 19 Ultimas Noticias: "Our standard is to insert academia into the community — an education for liberation. [The students] will be the vanguard that transmits ... the values of solidarity and revolutionary humility.
"The UBV is an alternative in the construction of a new space in higher education. We can be a field planted with new ways of seeing higher education in Venezuela. It is an expression that academia does not have a supremacy above society, but there is an interdependence."
Asked about the fact that the major traditional university of the country, the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), had been converted into a bastion of the conservative opposition, Ruiz replied: "The dynamic of a university is slow. That of the revolution is really fast. It is possible that the university will go together with the revolution in its dynamic ... If the revolution here hadn't triumphed, they would have imposed neoliberalism and [the Free Trade Area of the Americas]. And the Venezuelan universities would have been swept away by the educational corporations from the US and Spain. So the universities ought to wake up to themselves.
"We were aspiring to have a university of 4000-5000 students, but this was before the impact of the [education] missions. Now, we have 20,000 students. Mission Sucre [the tertiary education program] has campuses in 620 towns. We have a plan for 153,000 students. The UBV will have coverage four times greater than UCV. We are sure that there will be mistakes, because of underestimating the effect [of the much greater number of students] on our progress. But we will overcome the crisis of growth. The new university is going to be born, little by little."
Commenting on the cost of the new venture, Ruiz said: "All projects when they start have much higher investment [requirements] than when they are established. We are in the foundation phase of this university. I can tell you that the cost of investment per student is 50% lower than the average of the traditional universities. If you consider that half of the costs of the 153,000 municipal students are also included in our accounts, then this represents a 10th of this [average cost]."