[News] The debate for the "dinosaur" students that resurfaced in Bolivia after a tragedy at the university

[FNX Magokiler]

The death in a stampede of four students in a university assembly reopened the debate in Bolivia about thousands of "dinosaur" students, who study for decades in the Bolivian free system without graduating. On May 9, a tear gas grenade panicked hundreds of students who were participating in a meeting at the Tomás Frías University in Potosí. The stampede left four dead, more than 70 injured and a controversy: the role of Max Mendoza in the assembly.

Mendoza is 52 years old, of which 33 have been in college. In more than three decades he has not managed to graduate from any of the various careers to which he has signed up, according to the ruling deputy Héctor Arce. "There are leaders who in some way have taken advantage of their role, because I believe that the university leader has come first to be a university student and then to be a leader," the rector of the state-run Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) told AFP. ) of La Paz, Oscar Heredia. Since 1989, Mendoza has failed more than 200 subjects and finished more than 100 courses with a zero grade (the worst), according to deputy Arce. But the Mendoza case is just the tip of the iceberg for thousands of "dinosaur" students.

That academic record did not prevent him from earning a monthly salary of 21,860 bolivianos, about 3,150 dollars (similar to that of a rector), because he also served as head of the Executive Committee of the Bolivian University, which coordinates the public institutes of higher education in the country. In the midst of the investigations of the tragedy, versions began to circulate on social networks that Mendoza, president of the Bolivian University Confederation, was behind one of the factions in conflict in the assembly.

 

 

Mendoza was sent to preventive detention on May 21, denounced for various crimes. "They are profiteers" "There are these dinosaurs, they live more than 20 years in the university," Karen Apaza, an engineering student at UMSA and an activist against the eternal student leaders, tells AFP. Beymar Quisberth, from the Sociology course at the Universidad Mayor San Francisco Xabier de Sucre, the oldest in the country, explains that "a satire is made" with the term dinosaur.

"That term is used for years (...), they always call them dinosaurs (in universities), but now it is at the national level that the term is used," he adds. Another leader accused of being a "dinosaur" is Álvaro Quelali, 37, a leader of the UMSA students, who has been a student at the university for 20 years. "They are dinosaurs, profiteers, it's a shame," says Gabriela Paz, 20, a student at the Faculty of Law and Political Science, while her partner Mateo Siles, 21, affirms that "there are people who remain in public universities to have certain gifts. Not only leaders The rector of the UMSA clarifies that there are not only student leaders who have spent many years at that university, but also thousands of ordinary students. Of the 81,723 students at UMSA, 23% (18,796) have been studying for more than 11 years and 6.7% (5,475) for more than 20 years. "It is an issue that worries us, but it is a subject of great debate," says Heredia.

There are even a thousand students who have been at that university for more than 30 years and a hundred more than 40 years. In other institutes the problem is similar. At the Gabriel René Moreno University in Santa Cruz (east) there are about 90,000 students and 3% of them (about 2,700) have been with them for more than 10 years. Guido Zambrana, renowned professor of Medicine at UMSA, affirms that "it is necessary to recognize that we are in the deepest crisis". Therefore, he recommends "that the entire structure of corruption, mismanagement, distortion of co-government (teacher-student), which for decades has been deteriorating, collapse." "The university is obsolete, anachronistic, it no longer responds to the current situation" in Bolivia, says Zambrana.

 

 

https://www.emol.com/noticias/Internacional/2022/06/04/1063061/bolivia-estudiantes-dinosaurios-universidades.html