Venezuela has already lost many of its brightest young professionals to better-paying jobs in more stable countries, and now the nation is also losing the professors who trained them.
College professors in the socialist country — plagued by a cash crunch, shortages and spiraling inflation — are abandoning their jobs in droves, unable or unwilling to survive on salaries worth as little as US$30 per month. Before, educators earned enough to buy homes and cars, and universities sponsored them to attend professional development courses abroad.
However, the past decade has seen only increases to the minimum wage for professors, meaning that the income gap between senior and junior instructors has disappeared and all are now left with a similar paltry wage.
Hundreds of professors have given up their posts in recent years, and the pace is accelerating, according to the teachers’ union.
More than 700 of the 4,000 professors who once taught at Caracas’ highly respected Central University of Venezuela have quit during the past four years, some taking better-paying jobs in other fields inside the country while others have been lured to more attractive academic posts at universities abroad.
Professors say that the exodus would have a multiplier effect as it lowers the quality of teaching and research at institutions once nurtured by Venezuelans who studied abroad and returned home to teach.
Now, those who leave the country to pursue advanced degrees rarely come back.
“We’re going to feel the consequences of this for generations to come,” said 52-year-old biology professor Pedro Rodriguez, who is working as a researcher at the University of Chicago while on sabbatical from his full-time job at Central University.
He is now weighing whether to retire and remain permanently in the US.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Higher Education did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the academic exodus.
Teachers said they cannot survive on the small salaries the government offers, and are tired of the official neglect that affects Central University and other autonomous public universities that were once the jewels in the crown of the nation’s educational system.
The 16-year-old socialist revolution launched by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has instead emphasized the government’s “revolutionary universities,” which offer free education to thousands of students who might otherwise not have attended college.
Meanwhile, the autonomous institutions get less attention and strangled budgets. The government provides funding for the autonomous institutions, but does not run them directly.
The autonomous institutions are free like the revolutionary universities, but they are also much more academically rigorous and selective, out of reach for all but the best students.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not