A week with closed classrooms, the campus taken over by students, complaints of corruption, sexual harassment and humiliation, deteriorated infrastructure, deans and teachers overwhelmed by numerous reports of abuse and a long string of problems have highlighted the serious crisis that the University is going through. Autonomous Gabriel René Moreno.
Is not a new problem. Some time ago it was known about the sale of false professional degrees, a crime perpetrated by officials of the institution and the existence of “dinosaur” students who have been studying a degree for decades and who, instead of accumulating academic merits, add years of university leaders who have custody of dining scholarships and other economic resources that come from the State.
Today, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities is in the eye of the storm.
The allegations against him are extremely serious and must necessarily be clarified. Following the internal rules of the Uagrm, an internal process has been opened that must be transparent and expeditious. If the syndicates are justified, the Public Ministry must intervene and justice will have to be applied with all rigor. On the other hand, if the accusations are false, the material and intellectual authors must also sit in the dock and assume the consequences of their criminal actions. What cannot be admitted are delays and waste of time until the case sinks, submerged in a tower of files reeking of impunity and oblivion.
The state university of Santa Cruz is the largest in the country, it has the largest student population and one of the largest teaching bodies, although quantity is not synonymous with quality. Although the current administration headed by Vicente Cuéllar has imposed stricter standards for the selection and retention of teachers, characters who have negative backgrounds still cling to their professorships and refuse to understand that higher education cannot and should not continue to be masterful. unidirectional and lacking practical experiences.
Also striking are the high dropout rates or the low terminal efficiency rates. In other words, a university cannot be a factory of graduates who have cost the State thousands of dollars and who could not complete their degree process simply because they lack sufficient capabilities to raise a topic, problem, objectives or hypothesis of a thesis. degree. In short, in academic matters, the Uagrm is indebted to Santa Cruz.
It is also striking that, in the midst of the rise of digital technologies, Gabriel René Moreno and the other state universities continue working anchored in the 20th century with photocopies, personal procedures, officials who only put stamps and receive gifts for speeding up some procedures and delaying them. others. By now, all academic and administrative management should be able to be done from a smartphone. But it seems like it’s too much to ask.
Is it too much to demand a transparent and modern university?
Definitely not. In the world there are many examples of state universities that train professionals, produce knowledge and generate their own resources; But to make that qualitative leap, political will and decision are needed.
Nobody is against autonomy. The most important universities in the world are also autonomous, but unlike ours, they are not affected by the cancer of corruption and inefficiency and, unfortunately, the Uagrm is a sad and terrible example.
