In Venezuela, students and faculty caught in budget-driven university closures

[Zorro]

Normally buzzing with youthful high energy, professor Blas Dorta's biology classroom at Central University of Venezuela is eerily quiet. On a day when his class should be filled with 40 students, he is alone, absent-mindedly looking out a window.

The university, known by its Spanish initials, UCV, has been closed by administrators since September because of what they say is insufficient government funding. So are nine other Venezuelan public universities, leaving a total of 380,000 students in limbo.

"As long as I can keep getting off the canvas, I will continue to struggle to stay on the job," said Dorta, 65. "But I don't expect improvement anytime soon."

In the last two years, 1,000 professors at UCV and the other public schools have quit, many leaving Venezuela for jobs in Chile, Spain, Mexico or the United States. Last semester, a lack of supplies meant Dorta's students couldn't perform the 18 experiments they needed to pass his basic biology class. Instruments have broken down or been stolen, and no repairs or replacements are in sight, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-venezuela-professors-20151117-story.html

[Marksman_91]

1. The Chavista government is not interested in keeping autonomous universities open

They want all students to use their propaganda-spewing government-controlled institutes. But if that doesn't work, they simply don't want the youth to have any education, period. An uneducated population is much easier to control and manipulate, after all.