UNAN

Yesterday was a tiring but very rewarding day of interviews. Douglas took me to a vocational school in a neighborhood about an hour away and then to the UNAN (the largest public university in the country). Although I'm focusing on primary education, it's really helpful to get a sense of what is happening on all education levels.

For example, Ortega's government has been centralizing its power in every sector, including in education. Because of this, it has revoked the ability of the vocational school to issue a high school diploma. As a result, the school lost half of its students. However, the new Citizen Power Councils (CPCs) have been distributing scholarships like mad to kids in the neighborhoods so that they can attend vocational school. In fact 90% of the students in the school that I visited were there on scholarship. While this sounds great, only about 30% of these students actually graduate. According to the director of the school, the CPCs are more concerned with showing that they are actually accomplishing something than they are with selecting students who are really dedicated to their studies. Very interesting unintended consequences...


This mural was on one of the buildings of the UNAN. The man in the circle is Carlos Fonseca, one of the founding fathers of the Sandinista Party (the FSLN, which is now led by President Daniel Ortega). The big 6% refers to Nicaragua's Constitutional Law that states that 6% of the national budget must be allocated to universities. According to the professors here, Ortega has been the only President in recent years to uphold this law without pressure from student demonstrations. Due to the highly subsidized nature of universities in Nicaragua (and most of Latin America), college students pay virtually nothing, even relative to the standard of living here. At the UNAN, students pay $200 cordabas per semester, which is about $10 dollars. On top of that, they are given scholarship bonuses for maintaining a B average and even more money for an A average. It's not much, but it's enough to purchase textbooks and pay bus fare.

There were several of these signs displayed at the UNAN. Pink is the color of the New Left, the Sandinista Party (changing from the red days when the party was communist). In the left-hand corner it says 'Citizen's Power´and in yellow it says 'Prayer against the Hate.´ There are people holding up these signs in every major traffic circle in Managua. Supposedly they are protesting against the negative press that the Citizen Power Councils have received in the anti-FSLN newspaper, 'La Prensa.´ (However, the pro-FSLN newspaper, 'El Nuevo Diario´isn't big on the CPCs either, I've noticed.) This supposedly Christian bloc of the FSLN argues that the CPCs are the voice of the people and that they are really trying to help. They resent the criticism that the CPCs are another one of Ortega's attempts to centralize power by allocating resources only to his own supporters at the local level. (My friends tell me that these protestors are being paid by the party to stand there, though I don't have any hard evidence to support this.)