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The decline in Venezuelan education every day it is evident with greater boom in the classrooms of the country’s institutions. One of the most affected studies are the medicine graduate taught in the different universities of the national territory, many of them closed by the student and teacher dropout.
The lack of students and the poor conditions for vocational training led to 16 postgraduate courses being discontinued at the UCV Faculty of Medicine; ten specialties and six master’s degrees, of the 34 clinical programs that were in place by August 2022 closed or inactiveout of a total of 157, as compiled by the non-governmental organization Aula Abierta.
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According to the data provided to Aula Abierta by the Coordination of Graduate Studies of the Faculty of Medicine of the UCV, at least 8 of the 34 programs were closed more than 10 years ago. Currently, “his recovery and activation requires large investments in personnel, equipment and medical supplies.
In the University Hospital of Caracas, 35 postgraduate programs and 16 extension courses. However, at least four of them were already there by September 2022; Clinical Neurology, Thoracic Surgery, Applied Neurophysiology and the Master’s Degree in Clinical Research.
Dropout of medical students
Between 2015 and 2022 there was 26% student desertion in postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Medicine of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). The figures were recorded in the report “Health University Students at Risk: Violations of Academic Freedom and Quality Education”, published by Aula Abierta.
The report highlights information from the UCV Postgraduate Studies Management, which specified that, for the year 2013, the Faculty of Medicine had an enrollment of 2,027 students; then in 2014 it reached 2,229; and for 2015 it was 2,156. By 2022 there were only 1,587 graduate students or residents linked to the different clinical programs taught in Caracas.
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Ivonne Martínez, a last-year student of Medicine and Student Counselor at UCV, reported to the Aula Abierta research team that, in 2016, 417 people began to study medicine, of which approximately 40% withdrew between 2017 and 2018. By September 2022, only 135 students remained, which represented a rate of student desertion of 68%.
Among the reasons, Martínez highlighted the economic situation of the country, the lack of job opportunities for medical professionals, as well as the poor conditions and threats in health centers.
Absence in every corner
At the University of Zulia (LUZ) a significant number of students also withdrew. In 2021 there were 42 residents in the postgraduate General Surgery of the University Hospital of Maracaibo, of which 10 withdrew. This equates to a number of 24% dropout in that specialty.
The NGO Aula Abierta had already documented in 2019 an increase in student desertion from LUZ’s postgraduate courses in Medicine. reached 80% in Thoracic Surgery and 71.4% in Cardiovascular Surgery.
Denlis Ortega, a sixth-year student at LIGHT medicine, he said that at the beginning of his career, in October 2014, there were approximately 800 students, while by September 2022 when he was regarding to graduate, he presumed that approximately 300 students were going to graduate; that is, 500 fewer students, which represented a dropout rate of 62.5%.
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In the Eastern University (UDO) in Anzoátegui, the Family Medicine graduate program had five graduates by 2022. However, there was no resident in training no new income.
A professor at the Family Medicine graduate program at the Universidad de Oriente said that previously the graduate program had up to 14 students enrolled. Later, in 2019, the average was between 6 and 7 residents per year, which represents a student dropout rate of approximately 50%.
On the date the Open Classroom report was documented, there were 20 residents in the postgraduate course in General Surgery at the UDO: 6 first-year, 8 second-year, and 6 third-year. Despite this, half of students expressed the desire to emigratewhile others were looking for alternatives to exercise in the midst of the crisis.
Lack of teachers
Teachers were also forced to leave their posts. Since 2017, at the UCV the decrease in teachers caused the closure of some programs graduate. By October 2018, the teaching payroll was reduced to 40%.
In 2022, more than 80% of the postgraduate professors of the Central University of Venezuela were not part of the ordinary teaching staff of the University, but were administratively dependent on the employer body, Aula Abierta specified.
The dropout of professors at the University of Zulia was driven by migration and retirement of professors, whose vacancies were not being filled. By 2019 there were only two professors per postgraduate on average.
Of 48 postgraduate courses in Medicine at the Universidad de Los Andes in 2020, only five had active professors for more than 500 students in training.
The NGO Aula Abierta highlighted that the scarcity of inputs, violations of academic freedom, lack of technological updating, budget suffocation, precarious infrastructure, persecution and insecurity are some of the reasons that drive student and teacher desertion among the different postgraduate courses in the area of medicine in Venezuela.
In this sense, Aula Abierta demanded from the Venezuelan State in its report that it cease the acts of criminalization and stigmatization once morest university students in health sciences.
Mairen Dona LópezVista_1
Mairen Dona LópezVista_1
