The Hazards to Higher Education of Reformist Pragmatism in Cuba: Proposals for an Agenda

Abstract

A critical study of public policy involving the 2016–2017 reforms of higher education in Cuba points to the hazards of the pragmatic approach to this policy evidenced in numerous educational indicators and official discourse. Although such features are still far from possessing a neoliberal imprint, uncontrolled pragmatism could lead to a neoliberal trend in Cuban educational policy. Various indicators show the slow mutation of educational policy, increasingly measured and understood as an economic policy (in its fiscal aspects) rather than as a social one.

Un estudio crítico de las políticas públicas ligadas a las reformas cubanas a la educación superior de 2016–2017 muestra los peligros del enfoque pragmático tomado por este proceso, los cuales se hacen evidente en numerosos indicadores educativos y discursos oficiales. Aunque aún no podemos hablar de una impronta neoliberal, el pragmatismo descontrolado podría conducir a la política educativa cubana en dicha dirección. Diversos indicadores muestran la lenta mutación de la política educativa, la cual se mide y entiende cada vez más como una política económica (en sus aspectos fiscales) que social.

Keywords

Cuba Pragmatism Reforms Higher education policy Socialism

The neoliberal canon of public policy is the very opposite of real socialism imbued with a collectivist spirit. According to Bourdieu (1998), under real socialism the school system reproduced social differentiation not because it was designed to train individuals to compete in the labor market but because it reproduced the differences of cultural capital that, along with political capital, were the determinants of that system. While this argument is hypothetical, it certainly invites us to consider how difficult it may seem today to discuss whether a socialist educational system can serve an equally important function as skill formation for successful job placement. We are now living in an era in which a long cycle of ideological battles and reforms has changed the terms of the discussion and neoliberalism has emerged the clear winner.

Particularly when it comes to higher education, the emphasis on mass access and tertiary training as a lever for integral social development has entailed a significant departure from the neoliberal policies currently being promoted worldwide and particularly in Latin America. Neoliberal higher education has been extensively reviewed, and we must inevitably link it to the budget cuts that have impacted education and to privatization, a particularly successful feature in higher education in, for example, Mexico and Ecuador (Ramírez and Minteguiaga, 2010; Rodríguez Gómez, 2004). However, the continent has taken other paths to reform, including external accreditation of educational quality (Días, 2006; IESALC, 2004), formulas for the differential allocation of financing according to results (García de Fanelli, 2006), approval of standards with a view to the creation of a regional-global university services market (Hermo and Verger, 2010), changes in university management schemes with private sector management tools (Bentancur, 2000), and the evaluation of teachers and researchers’ professional performance and differentiated stimuli to foster academic productivity (Ibarra and Rondero, 2008). As Skilbeck (2001) says, this amalgam of processes means that the university system has been under immense pressure to transform itself completely into a business, and this process includes Latin America.

This paper analyzes the higher education policy promoted by Cuba in recent years. Although Cuban higher education has experienced quality accreditation, academic performance evaluation, and incipient internationalization, none of this has been intense enough to take a neoliberal turn. While there is apparent inertia at the elementary and secondary education levels, however, tertiary (higher) education has become part of a broad reform begun a decade ago in an attempt to reverse the country’s worrisome socioeconomic situation. The reforms deployed since 2008 have focused on short-term economic recovery via openings to the market. For the education sector and particularly higher education, this pragmatism has resulted in cuts seen as a “rational” response to a scenario of budgetary restriction. Admissions quotas have been reduced, and to justify this the official discourse argues for increased returns on educational spending that benefit the country’s economic growth. Although this pragmatic orientation has been attempted with regard to specialized academic posts, its effect is not entirely consistent with the goal of strengthening the links between higher education and economic growth.

The most worrisome of the social effects have been a considerable limitation of access to opportunities and an increase in the incidence of social inequalities. This phenomenon has raised concern (Ávila, 2016; Domínguez, 2016; García-Chediak, 2016; Tejuca-Martínez, Gutiérrez-Fernández, and García-Ojalvo, 2015; Tristá-Pérez, Gort-Almeida, and Íñigo-Bajos, 2013) given that for years Cuban social policy deliberately sought to achieve the highest levels of equality with notable results. It is therefore appropriate to reopen the discussion of how to consolidate higher education in a space of social equality. Addressing this problem would rescue the country and generate alternatives to globally imposed models for higher education. Needless to say, this will be a very difficult feat to accomplish in the face of an increasing tendency toward deregulation and a national context of sustained economic crisis.

We will first address the context of the national economic reforms, ending with a review of the main measures applied to higher education. We will go on to discuss their effects, analyzing the most relevant statistical indicators. Next, we will discuss the risks of increasing educational inequality through these policies. Finally, we will present a brief take on plausible alternatives for resuscitating the innovative orientation that has, so far, distinguished Cuban higher education. Our methodology is that of the case study, given its comprehensive perspective (Mitchell, 1983; Yin, 1994) and its relevance to educational research (Arnal, del Rincón, and Latorre, 1992; Cohen and Manion, 1990). Our data are gathered from document analysis involving legal materials, statistical databases provided by Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information and Ministry of Higher Education, and articles in the press and other media.

The Context of the Government Reforms

Social scientists agree that the reforms undertaken by Cuban President Raúl Castro Ruz were pragmatic in nature. According to Carmelo Mesa-Lago (2015), that pragmatism was mainly evidenced in their promarket orientation in contrast with the idealistic cycle that characterized the last stage of Fidel Castro Ruz’s administration. Along with other essential features, it involved a reduction of social spending and the elimination of egalitarian wages.

In political discourse, this pragmatism was reflected in the slogan that identified the reforms—the “Economic Battle,” which involved a new twist in socialist politics. Here we show that educational policy did not escape this intent. In contrast to the previous Battle of Ideas (the slogan attached to the last group of policies directed by Fidel Castro Ruz from 2000 to 2006), this slogan is of special interest in that it was a direct prelude to current university policy. Whereas the previous era had been characterized by the pursuit of the ideals of equality and social justice via education and this included mass access to university education and other social programs and a historic increase in social spending, the Economic Battle was perhaps most clearly evidenced in the abandonment of the policy of full employment with the state as guarantor. Its impact on labor dynamics has been researched (Nerey, 2015), and its application and gradual effects constituted a hallmark of the national labor landscape of the time.

This pragmatism raised the question whether this reorientation did not also imply a new political direction. There was debate over what kind of socialism existed in Cuba and where the reforms might lead in ideological terms. The controversy touched the general population and daily life, as well as the science and political sectors, which claimed to be improving Cuban socialism. However, the changing reality meant that it was impossible to understand under any absolutist lens.

Although whether pragmatism reduced the intensity and quality of Cuban socialism was debatable, the truth was that the contemporary policy regime (Wilson, 2000) was centered on the economic dimension of governance. Economic efficiency was a priority in both discourse and practice and was founded on the programmatic reform document prepared in 2011 by the Cuban Communist Party. From this document it would seem that the solution to the theoretical and practical challenges represented by the “endurance and improvement” of the Cuban political system was economic in nature: in fact, more than 90 percent of its content referred to economic matters (Mesa-Lago, 2012). Among the elements of this policy were a renewed political elite in which new groups replaced old power coalitions to lead a new governmental arrangement and a new Cuba–United States bilateral relationship. The change in power groups was most relevant to the advent of the changes in, among other things, higher education. However, the reforms cannot be understood in a single way. The official discourse spoke of both changes (an “updating of the economic model”) and continuity (“improvement of the political system”): “There will be no political changes in Cuba, but we will update everything necessary in the economic model” (see Murillo, 2012). The reform discourse, while prioritizing the economic aspect as a pathway to change, also insisted on strengthening the Cuban political system, and the “improvement” of education was a key element.

The official premise that what the Cuban political system needed was not transformation but perfecting (at most updating) removed politics from the debate,¹ and in fact evidence is emerging not of the political effects of the reforms but of the need to review theirs political background. Studies of the political actors and their capacity to promote a new kind of politics would be quite useful. For example, it is difficult to understand the designation of the process (“updating” and not “reform,” a concept widely employed in the specialized literature) because of its conceptual weakness and semantic manipulation. “Updating” has come to mean (1) temporary adaptation (modernization) and (2) strategic alignment with the international context. According to José Luis Rodríguez (Elizalde, 2014), this updating was meant to “create distance from the reforms that, in the name of perfecting socialism, led to its disappearance in Europe.” It would seem that the intent of this renaming was to disconnect the Cuban experience from previous references in order to present it as counterfactual. Following this logic, the official discourse attempted to build an image of genuine change protected by the concept of “updating,” which allowed for experimental, tentative, incremental actions taken by a small group of politicians and specialists organized into advisory committees for the implementation of the Party’s economic and social policy guidelines (PCC, 2011)—the reform wave that this paper partially addresses.

Understanding the current process as a reform might have called for an analysis of greater depth and complexity—for example, change as a conflictive and paradoxical process between revolution and reform. Although the previous relationship has been amply addressed by political theory, we follow the idea that revolution and reform are different solutions to the issue of change (Bovero, 1985). If revolution is the nonpeaceful foundation of a new social order while reform is a way of making changes without changing (Mészáros, 2008), we must address a new debate on the relationship between policies and politics in Cuba today.

Researchers who have examined the content and scope of the changes, although they tend to call them “reforms,” attribute various meanings to the concept. Cobo et al. (2013: 72) identify them as correction and rectification processes inherent in Cuban socialism and not as reflecting an antithesis between revolution and reform. Elsewhere in the same collective publication, they are called “updates” in a functional sense; the way we view them, the text says, should be extended to an analysis of the structure and nature of their relationships. The reform, it is proposed, has just started and is the beginning of a great transformation that entails changes in property regimes as the main issue, leaving only the fundamentals in the hands of the state.

In addition to the vagueness of the term “updating” and the polysemy of the reforms, socialism itself does not seem to be very clear as a concept, even though, according to the new 2019 Constitution, it is irreversible. There have been some surprising statements about socialism from the main historical leaders. Fidel Castro pointed out it was a historical error of the leadership to believe that anyone knew anything about socialism (Arreola, 2005), and Raúl Castro, as president and first secretary, issued a call without much clarity for the building of a “Cuban-style” socialism. Finally, in 2017 and barely two decades after the start of the ongoing reforms, a document was approved addressing aspects of the Cuban “economic and social model of socialist development” (see Cubadebate, 2017).

Our analysis of higher education policy assumes that both its development and the education itself reflect the change-continuity dynamics of contemporary macropolitics. The heuristic value of this focused view is that it not only offers clues for understanding the particularity of this sectoral policy but also gives political sense to national changes. If we accept that Cuban education belongs to the state, the analysis of it harks back to background policy. The state and education have their structural base in a monopoly of policy (Quintana, 2015) specifically configured for Cuba’s state policy regime. Characterized by a high concentration of decision-making capacity, this is an organization managed, centralized, and planned from within the state. It should not be interpreted as monolithic or impermeable; in fact, observing the public space confronting educational policy decisions allows us to appreciate the increasing participation of nonstate agents.

State education has implications that transcend the structural dimension to encompass domination in the field of the symbolic. This recalls the problem of “the state construction of mentalities” (Bourdieu, 1998), and that is why, when we say that one of the singularities of Cuban state policy regime is its organization as a monopoly, we are thinking not just structurally but also in terms of its capacity to concentrate symbolic capital, which makes the educational field, par excellence, one of constant dispute.

Cuban education has been highlighted as an achievement of the Revolution and, along with health, the most widely recognized aspect of socialist policy. Sustained investment in it is a clear indicator of political will, and its results have been applauded by international organizations such as UNESCO (2014). Cuba has high levels of schooling and high marks in both educational quantity and quality, although this relatively harmonious nexus is showing signs of tension.

Higher education policy in Cuba has two notable facets: the pursuit of links between education, the economy, and development to turn knowledge into the main economic resource of a development model based on the formation of scientific capital and a political and explicit role in the reproduction of the official ideology. The two facets, which make up the dominant paradigm of educational policy (Quintana, 2015), have evolved differently over time. The trend nurtured by the Battle of Ideas proposed an expansion of the pedagogical model based on values via the universalization of higher education. Also known as “the third revolution of higher education,” this trend sought to recover the ideals of equality jeopardized by the economic crisis of the 1990s through numerous social and emphatically educational programs. The goal was to settle a debt of social justice with the young people who had been left out of the university system as a result of the crisis and the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of selection.

There was increased investment in the education sector following the reduction due to the economic contraction in the first five years of the 1990s. Until 1997, higher education allocations had decreased by 17.1 percent in comparison with the 1980s, but the following year saw the beginning of sustained growth, with 2002 doubling the amounts of 1989 and an annual average growth of more than 24 percent between 2000 and 2004. Consequently, the net rate of tertiary schooling (the proportion of the 18-to-24-year-old population enrolled in the university) increased vertiginously in just four years (2002–2006), from 16.3 percent to more than 60 percent, reaching the largest enrollment in the historical record in the 2007–2008 academic year (UNESCO, 2014). Despite its laudable aspirations to social justice, this policy garnered strong criticism, especially given the great expenditures required. This paved the way for political pragmatism and the pursuit of efficiency and savings in educational spending.

In 2011, the main guidelines for the improvement of higher education were issued (Díaz-Canel, 2011), and these became the burden of the higher education policy addressed in this article. The discursive strategy sought to foster an idea of historical political continuity rather than a disruption, although its impact later proved quite the opposite. Along with the positive assessment of Cuban education at the university level, this new stage faced accumulated tensions, including the weight of historically large educational expenditures with little impact on the national economy. For example, according to World Bank (2015) data, Cuba was the country that had invested the most in education between 2009 and 2013, using 12.9 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). This would presume a large amount of qualified personnel. At the same time, despite high rates of schooling there was a downward trend in the contribution of highly trained personnel to economic growth, which was interpreted as the result of inefficient educational spending with a lower return on investment in both general and specialized training (Villanueva and Torres, 2013). These anomalies led to the paradoxical situation of skilled jobs’ (in the state sector) going unfilled by university graduates.²

Unable to continue supporting this social policy, the education authorities came up with two goals aligned with the general reform: the economic updating of education policy to provide savings, efficiency, and foreign revenue capture through the export of professional services and intensified comprehensive effort and value training to restore the political effectiveness of the universities (Quintana, 2017). This was accompanied by modifications to the regulatory framework (especially regarding access), particularly Resolutions 120/10 and 236/10, which modified the mechanisms and requirements for access to the university (Curbelo, 2016). While these were justified by criteria involving higher education quality and relevance, in practice they led to a radical decline in university enrollment.

In response to the very worrisome problems of the low return rate on educational investment and the decreasing efficiency in the completion of Level 1 studies,³ the decision was made to reduce the education budget as shown in Table 1, with consequences for the numbers of schools and students; to rekindle the discourse and action geared toward the social and economic relevance of university education; to restructure degree offerings in relation to the new economic plan; to make institutional changes such as new heads for Level 1 higher education;⁴ and to undertake institutional mergers to reduce bureaucratic expenses. Other important additional measures were to reintroduce entrance examinations for all higher education modalities and require a minimum score of 60 percent for admission; to eliminate what had been mandatory aptitude tests across most degrees; to allow students to advance even having failed two subjects; to expand quotas for part-time or long-distance courses; and, finally, to incentivize enrollment in middle-level technical education and skilled-work areas to compensate for the decrease in university offerings. In essence, these measures marked educational dynamics between 2010 and 2015, and although new decisions were being discussed (a new curriculum, shortening Bachelor’s studies to four years), they remained experimental.

Table 1

Budget Assigned to Education and Higher Education (Millions of Pesos), 2004–2017

Year	Education	Higher Education
2004	3,601	879
2005	4,819	838
2006	5,310	935
2007	7,109.6	1,726
2008	8,620	3,192
2009	8,166.7	3,113
2010	8,282.2	3,262
2011	8,816.7	2,359
2012	8,776.4	1,793
2013	8,697	1,939
2014	8,203*	1,939*
2015	8,268*	1,939*
2016	8,221*	1,939*
2017	8,278*	850*

Source: MES (2017).

Note: *, estimates; figures for 2016 and 2017 our own.

The effects of these decisions were not long in coming. For example, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI, 2013), in 2012 education had the lowest growth rate in the GDP, with −3.8 percent (in contrast, in 2007 it had exceeded 9 percent). The rationale for such measures can be synthesized in terms of the decision to reduce education spending in order to achieve greater economic efficiency. Coupled with a discourse of “improvement,” “quality,” “relevance,” and “efficiency,” the sector has seen historical contractions of both spending and other indicators, along with an alleged increase in educational inequality.

The moderate but constant contractions of spending in the sector and their negative effects on educational indicators presumably increased inequalities in access, educational performance, and outputs, all of which were essentially driven by income differences. Taken together, they highlight the scale of the change in policy to the point of identifying a historical counterpolicy given the magnitude of its negative effects on certain educational indicators and the unprecedented speed (five years) with which this happened (Quintana, 2015). At the same time, a new pragmatic higher education policy paradigm seemed to be emerging. This could mean a significant turn in classic Cuban higher education policy, once governed by the principles of equality and broad access, secure material conditions, and constant experimentation to increase the quality of teaching.

The Implementation of Higher Education Policy

As we have seen, the “updating” of the Cuban economic model materialized in higher education policy in far-reaching ways. While progress in higher education from 1959 to 2006 was gradual, during the period of the Battle of Ideas many educational indicators increased as never before, and this made the new direction of higher education policy the more apparent. Though allocations were reduced as of 2009, the cuts to the educational sector as a whole were not drastic in any way. The decline of higher education was more drastic, though even with the cuts and until 2016 investment continued to be higher than during the Battle of Ideas, excepting the 2006–2009 period (Table 1). An even more drastic reduction was estimated for the 2017–2018 academic year (–56 percent), a figure consistent with the significant fiscal deficit budgeted for 2017 (Vidal, 2017). A complementary view shows resources allocated to higher education as a percentage of GDP and the state budget (Table 2).

Table 2

Estimated Higher Education Spending as Percentage of GDP and Total Budget (in 2017 Pesos), 2005–2017

Year	% GDP	% Total Budget
2005	2.0	3.1
2007	3.0	4.3
2009	5.0	6.6
2011	3.4	5.1
2013	2.5	3.9
2015	2.3	3.5
2017	0.9	1.5

Source: ONEI (2010; 2016); Saborido (2017).

At least until 2013 there had been no drastic decline in the proportion of the GDP allocated to higher education, but information from the Ministry of Higher Education for the 2017–2018 academic year points to a rather severe cut (Saborido, 2017). The 2011–2015 period did, however, mark a setback with regard to the heights attained during the Battle of Ideas. The gradual reduction of the proportion of the national budget was more significant. As we have said, this corroborates the argument that the move toward pragmatism rearranged budgetary priorities.

At the same time, an analysis of enrollment in higher education reveals considerable change. The contraction (Figure 1) is significant not just in comparison with the 2006–2009 expansion but in general. In absolute figures, the contraction from 2008 to 2015 meant nearly 58,000 fewer placements. The modest recovery from 2016–2017 on must be associated with the expansion of quotas for part-time or long-distance university studies implemented thereafter.

Figure 1.

Enrollment in higher education, 2004–2018 (ONEI, 2010; 2016 starred figures from ONEI, 2009, and double-starred figures from Saborido, 2017).

Generally speaking, the decline in enrollment is associated with the reintroduction of entrance exams during the 2010–2011 academic year. However, the redesign of upper secondary education was just as important, with considerable restrictions on qualifications to continue in higher education. Enrollment (Table 3) in modalities that allowed for continued studies at a higher level accumulated a contraction of 51 percent between 2009 and 2016.

Table 3

Higher Education Enrollment by Modality, 2009–2017

	2009–10	2010–11	2011–12	2012–13	2013–14	2014–15	2015–16	2016–17	2017–18
Continuous^a	432,486	377,135	300,031	269,306	263,169	255,337	269,380	271,025	–
Change (%)	–	−15	−26	−11	−2	−3	5	1	−51
Noncontinuous^b	30,033	41,065	73,695	94,893	92,496	86,113	78,095	69,388	–
Change (%)	–	27	44	22	−3	−7	−10	−13	61
Teacher training	4,806	12,630	20,909	24,854	25,840	23,697	20,405	21,012	–
Change (%)	–	62	40	16	4	−9	−16	3	99

Source: ONEI (2017; 2018).

Includes high school and mid-level technical schools except in teaching.

Includes trade schools.

The number of students pursuing degrees in teaching increased by 99 percent for the same period, but these degrees qualified them only for further studies in pedagogical universities. Similarly, there was significant growth (61 percent) in modalities that did not allow for continuation of studies such as trade schools. These figures evidence considerably reduced access to higher education with the reorganization of quotas in the preceding educational levels. In fact, in producing their entrance exam quotas the Cuban authorities take into account, among other factors, the number of graduates from the upper-middle level who fulfill the exam requirements, and therefore the number of openings is always slightly larger than the number of contestants—becoming the basis for the slogan that in Cuba all young people are guaranteed access to higher education.

An interesting detail associated with decreased enrollment at this level, combined with budgetary reductions, was a temporary increase in per capita spending, although there was an abrupt decrease in 2017 (Table 4).

Table 4

Per Capita Spending on Higher Education, 2009–2017

	2009	2011	2013	2015	2017
Cuban pesos	5,130	6,719	9,356	11,686	3,446
US$ at official exchange rates	205	236	329	411	121

Sources: ONEI (2017; 2018); Saborido (2017).

Note: After 2011, the U.S. dollar was depreciated by 8 percent.

In the midst of the reform process, this indicator reaches values well above those of previous years. This is interpreted as a partial transfer of spending from the state to families, who largely bear the economic burden of these new decisions. However, recent measures to increase enrollment combined with budget cuts have had a significant impact on per capita spending on higher education that will not merely result in a greater burden on families but also possibly affect the quality of educational services. At the same time, there was a noticeable reduction of the number of institutions of higher educations, which in 2016 was almost half (46 percent) what it had been in 2009 (ONEI, 2010; 2016). The biggest decline involved municipal university centers that were emblems of the Battle of Ideas. Nevertheless, this reduction was not a clear trend, and this is consistent with the alternative solution of centralizing neighboring headquarters, a process currently referred to by the national authorities as “integration.”

Another significant indicator of the contradictions of the reform process was the number of students who benefited from higher education scholarships, grants to young people from municipalities or provinces far from the study centers for accommodation, food, and transportation to the university. From a maximum of 78,286 in 2009–2010, the number dropped to 53,272 in 2015–2016 (ONEI, 2011; 2017). However, when the decline of university enrollment began in 2009, the proportion of scholarship recipients began to increase, and in the last reported year (2016–2017) the number was 60,764 and the proportion of total enrollment 28 percent (Table 5). This contradicted the pragmatic orientation to a degree but was consistent with the principle of limiting the effects of regional inequality.

Table 5

Higher Education Scholarship Recipients as a Proportion of Enrollment

Year	Recipients	Proportion of Enrollment
2004–2005	69,837	19
2005–2006	71,234	15
2006–2007	71,236	11
2007–2008	76,630	10
2008–2009	68,965	10
2009–2010	78,286	13
2010–2011	75,853	16
2011–2012	67,143	19
2012–2013	60,676	23
2013–2014	58,419	28
2014–2015	55,384	32
2015–2016	53,272	32
2016–2017	60,764	28

Sources: ONEI (2009; 2016).

The change in the distribution of enrollment by specialty has been seen as an eloquent example of the pragmatism of the reforms. There was a revealing steep decline in the social sciences and humanities. At the same time, however, there was a decrease in medicine, even though the export of medical services was the country’s second-largest source of currency. This is another of the many contradictions of the pragmatic approach, which would theoretically seek to promote specialties with export potential. There was also a decrease in enrollment in specialties with more direct impact on the national economy such as technical fields, agriculture, and economics, which proportionally declined more than did total enrollment. This distribution of enrollment by specialty allows for two hypotheses. The first is that enrollment reduction, although it somewhat reduced costs, was not consistently conducted to foster the nation’s economic recovery. The second is that pragmatism was implemented mostly in the form of cuts in response to budgetary constraints rather than to promote efficient educational investment for economic recovery, an option that would have required the promotion of strategically important specialties.

The Central Problem: Social and Educational Inequality

The most sensitive indicator of Cuban educational transformation in this period was the significant drop in enrollment, which in 2016–2017 was half what it had been in 2008–2009. Repercussions were particularly noticeable when calculating the proportion of the population involved in higher education, which was estimated at 22 percent for 2016 (ONEI, 2016). Following Martín Trow (1974), this would still qualify as “mass access” (15–50 percent), though it was well below the central values and even farther from universal access (˂50 percent). Both standards were surpassed during the Battle of Ideas, which (whatever its negative effects on quality) had universal access to higher education as one of its imperatives. In this regard, it must be assumed that the reduction in access to university education was associated with the effects of social inequality.

The problem is not merely the drastic decline in participation in higher education but the design of higher education policy itself. Neither the policy nor its implementation involves any specific or compensatory measures for vulnerable groups. Gender, race, income, and class origin are diluted dimensions of “youth” as a target audience.⁵ The authorities, considering many of these differences to have been overcome, have failed to assess the incidence of inequality in the Cuban social structure. The equalizing potential of higher education policy is inadequate, and the situation is worse when it results in generalized restrictions or exclusions, which double the negative effects on vulnerable groups while increasing the vulnerability of others.

In this regard, some research has shown a return to inequality of access to university education. The reductions have strengthened the meritocratic rationale involving students’ entrance and reinstated mechanisms of social reproduction via schooling. Unequal access is increasingly determined by unequal familial possession of cultural and economic capital (Tristá-Pérez, Gort-Almeida, and Íñigo-Bajos, 2013). Other studies have documented unequal access to higher education for black and mestizo populations, residents of particular geographical areas, and people of certain family educational backgrounds or occupations (Ávila Vargas, 2013; Domínguez, 2010; Domínguez and Díaz, 1997; Martín Sabina and Leal Villoro, 2006 and Tristá-Pérez, Gort-Almeida, and Iñigo-Bajos, 2013). Overall, it is evident that even during times of most extensive coverage, higher education was not immune to the effects of the social inequalities rooted in the Cuban social structure since before 1959. Further research is needed on the role of economic (income) inequalities, which would be an excellent anchor point for preventing the reflexive pragmatism of these reforms from devolving into a neoliberal approach.

The levels of equality achieved in the 1980s and the neutralizing effect of an educational system tending toward universal coverage and significant benefits may have postponed the in-depth examination of the effect of income differences on access to and completion of higher education. The increase in income differences since the stabilization implemented in the 1990s has, however, been studied (Mesa-Lago, 2012). The reforms of that period contemplated liberalizing measures and forced budgetary restrictions that have since been far exceeded, and we must therefore assume that income differences are once again affecting access to higher education. Given the lack of public information on income inequality, we cannot corroborate this hypothesis, but there are some indications that point in this direction.

While the country has made substantial efforts to maintain a free public education system, the truth is that families today have to allocate part of their incomes to their children’s education. Many of the benefits of the public higher education system have become unsustainable in the context of serious fiscal deficit. Families and students must cover needs previously absorbed by the state: fast food in street stalls, transport, photocopies, and, for out-of-province students, rent. The largest expenditure is for the so-called reviewers who, since 2010, have been offering private study support services. These actors currently hold a key position, enabling students to succeed in entrance exams in the face of ineffective governmental palliatives such as the study and review sessions held at municipal headquarters, in worker-peasant schools, or on educational television since 2011. There is, however, no official information for fully assessing their impact. According to official press reports, the number of reviewers totaled 1,023 in 2013 (Rodríguez Guerrero, 2013), but this figure probably does not include those for whom this is a second job in addition to state-funded employment. While María I. Domínguez (2016) reports that an estimated 17 percent of young people turn to reviewers in order to gain entrance to the university, observation suggests that the actual figure may be around half.

Almost all of the jobs in the state sector pay too little to cover basic household consumption (García-Álvarez and Anaya-Cruz, 2014). Given this deficit, this income cannot be the source of the funds families allocate to their children’s education. Therefore the educational expenses that play a decisive role in guaranteeing access come from nonstate- and nonlabor-sector-based sources (remittances, inheritances, savings, and illicit earnings in the informal economy). The nonstate labor sector involves about 30 percent of the country’s employed population, and wage dynamism in this sector is pronounced (ONEI, 2013). Beyond this, we have a concentration of monetary income among a small percentage of actors. As a result, those employed in the nonstate sector are in a privileged position when it comes to income and the ability to cover expenses associated with higher education.

Final Thoughts

This article raises some important issues. One of these is the need to preserve and reinforce the historical achievements of an educational policy such as Cuba’s, based on the principle of a right to high-quality and free mass education. This principle cannot be ignored in a Latin American context overrun by the privatization of higher education and increasing social inequality. Therefore, despite the criticisms presented here, we applaud the Cuban state’s effort to maintain education as a fundamental social right, which is the more commendable given the national economic slowdown.

At the same time, Cuba must consider its problems with education. The design and results of current higher education policy amply justify concerns regarding the risks of this pragmatic approach. As we have shown, the most worrisome result has been the reduction in enrollment, which could become even worse in the event of drastic cuts in educational spending. It remains to be seen whether the recent implementation of short-cycle degrees will lead to a rebound in access indicators.

As for the design, we must highlight the double-edged sword of a universalist policy that argues for egalitarian social justice while in practice ignoring vulnerable groups, making them more vulnerable by failing to consider their differences in background, which cannot be bridged by meritocratic access to education. As for the implementation of higher education policy, we find a general contraction of certain indicators that may mean the exclusion of a considerable number of young people. In the face of this contraction, the new service offerings aimed at students that are beginning to appear outside of the domain of the state are signs of an emerging private field contesting the power spaces traditionally occupied by public and free education.

We are witnessing an unsustainable combination of the ideological principles of Cuban socialism with regard to social justice with a context of economic contraction, and Cuba is attempting to implement an education policy appropriate to that context. It is quite clear that, from the viewpoint of policy design, the main challenge is how to face the nation’s current economic situation, not attempting to maintaining the high standards of the 1980s but avoiding an increase in exclusion. However, this experiment has its contradictions, especially among groups in which inequality has historically been concentrated. There is a need to reconsider the universalist rationale in order to allow for shared focus areas that would allow the principles of equality and social justice to be better harmonized with the realities of economic contraction. Policy design must acknowledge vulnerable groups as a target for a focused agenda. The idea of subsidizing people rather than products was one of the first initial slogans of this government and referred, above all, to the serious issue of producing an effective and efficient social benefit policy.

Other proposed measures to safeguard equal access include furthering the debate on the creation of a higher nonuniversity educational level supported by long-distance modalities and information and communications technology. In this regard, the short-cycle modality became part of regular daytime education for the 2018–2019 academic year. Enrollment in part-time courses should be increased, and the criteria for access to this modality should be regulated. A collateral measure with the potential for positive short-term results would be to foster the participation of nonprofit organizations attending to groups with diminished access, a role that, in one way or another, has been developed by some churches.

In the still distant context of a revived national economy, it would be worthwhile to introduce stratified tuition fees based on family income, supplemented by bonuses and support scholarships for students from families with insufficient income. This approach has been recommended for contexts in which taxation is weak, since it is deemed more effective than one that depends on a fiscal scheme based on progressive taxation. This could alleviate the state’s burden of allocating resources to higher education and redirect expenditure toward other key priorities also meant to ensure equal access such as secondary education (Post, 2011). This would not amount to reducing the scope of the public system but rather address higher education access in a differentiated way according to candidates’ backgrounds, given that not all of them enjoy the same amount or kind of capital.

Footnotes

Notes

Rosa García-Chediak is a professor of sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Center for Latin American Studies. She has published numerous papers on educational sociology and comparative educational policy. Danay Quintana Nedelcu is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers and the Science, Technology, and Gender Network. She coordinates a postgraduate seminar on public policy at FLACSO México and was a postdoctoral fellow at the UNAM’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Sciences and Humanities in 2016–2017. Among her recent publications are Equidad de género en educación superior y ciencia (2017) and Políticas públicas: Nuevos enfoques para la investigación (2018). Mariana Ortega-Breña is a translator based in Mexico City. The authors dedicate this work to their parents.

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