|
Peru Universities
As the first university founded in the Americas in
1551, the
National Autonomous University of San Marcos (Universidad
Nacional Autónomo de San Marcos--UNAM) has had a long and
varied
history of elitism, reform, populism, controversy,
respect,
prestige, and, especially since the mid-1980s, conflict
and
confusion born of political divisions and broad social
unrest.
Although it remained the largest university in the nation,
it had
lost much of its former prestige by 1990. In the 1970-90
period,
several smaller private institutions, such as the
Pontifical
Catholic University of Peru (Pontífica Universidad
Católica del
Perú), located in Lima, have gained more stature. The
major
public universities are the specialized National Agrarian
University (Universidad Nacional Agrario--UNA) in Lima's
La
Molina District and the National Engineering University
(Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería), also in the Lima
area. The
most prestigious medical school is the private Cayetano
Heredía
in Lima.
Lima has captured most of the resources of higher
education.
Universities in Lima, which had 42 percent of all
students,
employed 62 percent of all faculty in the late 1980s.
Nevertheless, there are universities in all but four of
the
departments. Although many of these are newly founded and
poorly
equipped, the demand for access to advanced study has
provided
them with a growing stream of students. The abandoned
colonial
University of Huamanga (Universidad de Huamanga) in
Ayacucho is
one of these, having been reopened in the late 1950s to
fill an
educational void for students drawn from impoverished and
isolated Ayacucho Department. Although initiated on its
modern
course with high hopes, it has suffered from budgetary
inadequacies, frustrated plans, and disgruntled students
impatient for social change. During the late 1960s, it
became the
home to embittered revolutionaries, who emerged as the
leaders of
the SL movement.
The public schools have long been deeply influenced by
political factionalism, which has divided the
constitutionally
established governing bodies of universities. Internal
politics
at San Marcos and other universities have involved complex
alliance-making among administrators, staff, faculty, and
the
student body, as well as partisan political forces that
crosscut
these sectors with their own agendas. Thus, APRA, various
communist factions, and other groups have played out their
strategies, often with negative consequences or even
little
direct reference to the mission of education as such.
APRA,
however, did play a role in establishing the University of
the
Center (Universidad del Centro) in Huancayo and Federico
Villareal in Lima, now the second-largest university. The
present
organization of the public universities was originally
conceived
as a result of the Latin American-wide university reform
movement
of the 1920s and 1930s which attempted to democratize the
traditional, colonial-style elite traditions. What has
evolved,
however, has led to constant problems of paralytic
conflict,
student strikes, slogan mongering, and, often, closure of
a
university for one or more semesters at a time. As a
result, the
private universities, such as those tied to the Catholic
Church
and various segments of the upper-middle classes, have
emerged as
the most stable and best staffed institutions during the
last
twenty-five years.
Out of this milieu, one can begin to understand the
political
role of teachers and their organizations, such as the
Trade Union
of Education Workers (Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de
la
Enseñanza del Perú--SUTEP), the national teachers union.
Most
teachers attend teaching colleges before entering the
classroom
with their certificates, and many of these colleges, such
as La
Cantuta outside of Lima, have long been centers for
radical
politics. With teachers earning less than the average
beginning
police officer, discontent has run high among teachers for
many
years. Thus, given the importance and role of teachers in
district schools nationwide, it is not surprising that
SUTEP has
been a strong voice in expressing its social and economic
discontent or that the SL and MRTA had succeeded in
recruiting
followers from the ranks of SUTEP.
Data as of September 1992
|
