March 7, 2008

Venezuelan Government Eliminates Universities' Entrance Examinations

Bogotá, Colombia — Venezuelan public universities’ individual entrance examinations will be eliminated, the government’s National University Council decided on Thursday night against the wishes of many at the nation’s leading colleges.

University officials and student leaders have said that eliminating the tests will lower academic quality and admit far more students than the universities can handle. For their part, government officials argue that the universities’ entrance exams discriminate against lower-income students, who come from public high schools and generally receive poorer educations than wealthier students who attend private high schools.

As a result, most students at the best public universities, which charge no tuition, come from the nation’s small middle and upper classes. Under the new system, government officials have said, students will be admitted based on their standing in their high-school classes.

In the past, most students at the nation’s eight major traditional universities have been admitted under the individual entrance exams, and smaller numbers have been admitted under a national exam.

The policy change has implications for the universities’ political leanings. The nation’s major public universities have been bastions of opposition to the socialist policies of President Hugo Chávez. However, most lower-income Venezuelans back the president. Last year student organizations led opposition to the government’s rescinding of transmission rights for a television station as well as to constitutional amendments that would have greatly expanded Mr. Chávez’s powers.

Jorge González, a spokesman for the National University Council, said details of the new policy had not yet been worked out. He said that a commission of government and university leaders would make final recommendations in two months.

Roderick Navarro, who heads a student committee on high-school education at Venezuelan Central University, in Caracas, the nation’s largest university, said the policy change violated the universities’ autonomy. “We are opposed to policies’ being imposed by the government,” he said. “The universities must set their own policies.” —Mike Ceaser

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