Universities: Latin America's Classroom Chaos

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Higher education in Latin America gains world attention only when students riot, which they seem to do somewhere at least once a month, or when governments crack down on them. Lately, the schools in the news have been those of Argentina, where President Juan Carlos Ongania has attempted to curb the universities' tradition of freedom from government control.

After Ongania imposed strict new rules on Argentina's nine national universities last month, students rioted, six rectors resigned, and nearly half of the 2,000 teachers at the big (81,000 students) University of Buenos Aires said they would quit rather than take an oath of loyalty to the regime. Last week, when Ongania attempted to reopen the university under a new, pro-government rector, students paraded through the streets chanting "Books si, boots no!" Police arrested 85 of the rioters, and Ongania banned the country's student federation, which promptly called a nationwide strike.

Although political turmoil may be the spice of life at South American universities, it is far from being their most serious problem. Judged solely by academic considerations, the quality of the education they offer is shockingly low. Dr. Luis Alberto Sanchez, rector of the University of San Marcos in Peru, goes so far as to say that some of his country's 22 universities are in danger of becoming "intellectual slums."

Part-Time Professors. Mainly because of dismally low salaries, most Latin American faculties consist of part-time teachers whose main interest is in their outside jobs in law, medicine or politics. At San Marcos, only 57 of 1,344 professors teach fulltime, have little opportunity or incentive to do scholarly research. In inflation-ridden Brazil, where professors seldom make more than $200 a month, university teachers moonlight on two or three different jobs to make ends meet. Understandably, a Buenos Aires student complains: "It is very difficult to study with professors who very often have less knowledge than those being educated."

Until World War I, many universities were little more than liberal arts colleges or professional schools for a wealthy elite; now they cannot find nearly enough teachers, part-time or not, to handle expanding enrollments. At Buenos Aires, enrollment in economics alone has nearly quadrupled in the past ten years, to 22,400 students—yet to teach them all, there are only 205 professors, who sometimes handle 800 students each. Lectures at San Marcos are such sporadic affairs that students often assemble in classrooms with nothing more than a wistful hope that a professor will show up.

Jealous Faculties. Latin American universities are further plagued by inefficient administration. Most schools are loose-knit amalgamations of once-separate faculties that jealously cling to their own identities and offer duplicate courses. At the University of São Paulo, which consists of 16 separate institutes and 68 affiliated units, chemistry courses are taught in 22 different buildings. Costs consequently multiply. Some third-rate regional universities in Brazil spend up to $4,000 per student for each year of study—about the annual cost of an education at Harvard.