PERU-EDUCATION: Knowledge Is Worth Nothing

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

LIMA, Oct 31 1995 (IPS) - Peru leads most Latin American countries in its number of universities, but the university-educated population is disproportionately low and professionals have no assurance that they will find work in their chosen field.

According to the 1993 population census, only 6.9 percent of Lima’s six million inhabitants work as professionals – despite there being 15 universities in the capital. Nationally, Peru has 55 universities, 28 of which are privately run and the rest are public.

Despite these educational resources, a study conducted by the non-governmental Association for Work and Culture found that only half of the capital city’s university graduates worked in their professional field. Of 417,000 graduates, 213,345 worked as professionals, 116,000 worked in other occupations (generally as clerical workers or technicians), and the remainder worked in the home or as taxi drivers, were unemployed, or lived on investment income.

The highest absolute numbers of unemployed professionals are found in law, economics, and administration, but the highest relative numbers are in the social sciences, biology and the humanities.

Among the study’s most striking findings was the discovery of 12,000 university graduates identified as “uncredentialed workers,” that is, casual laborers or ambulatory street vendors.

The study also revealed that graduates working as technicians instead of exercising their professions earned an average of 20 percent more than their professionally-employed colleagues.

“These statistics only confirm a troubling trend in Peruvian education: the poor education provided by many universities,” Juan Gargurevich, director of the journalism school at the venerable University of San Marcos, told IPS. “I think that the level of learning has to change because the liberal economic model is here to stay for many years and (public universities) are not training competitive professionals.”

As an example, Gargurevich referred to his own students, who do not have the technological equipment available to students at leading private unversities. Among other advantages, those students have access to personal computers and are required to use the online Internet telecommunications service once a week,

The large learning gap between private and public universities leads many knowledgeable observers to refer to publicly-trained graduates as “second-class professionals.”

Jesus Checa, human resources manager for a financial firm, acknowledged that “we have very demanding hiring standards and accordingly only select graduates from the prestigious universities, not just for the quality of education they receive but also for their disciplined and rigorous course of study.”

“I think the public universities fail to form character,” he added. “They produce salaried timeservers and followers, not leaders.” Even so, “young people are encouraged at school or at home to get a university education as a status symbol, although they seldom realize this status graduating from a public institution.”

Isolina Duran, who received a degree in economics from the public Technical University of Callao but works as secretary for an autoparts import company, agrees with Checa. “I got tired of looking for work. All the job listings I saw wanted graduates from the Pacifico, Catolico or Ricardo Palma universities.”

These are Lima’s and Peru’s most prestigious universities, but attending them is out of the question for most students: monthly tuition costs between 300 to 400 dollars, and the average worker’s monthly salary is 300 dollars.

“At first I was dying of shame working as a taxi driver – me, a certified public accountant — but I earn 1,000 dollars a month compared to not even 300 dollars when I worked in my profession,” said Agustin Sosa, one of thousands of professionals driving taxis through the streets of Lima. Tourists regularly comment about Lima’s cultivated taxi drivers, with whom one can hold entertaining conversations while traveling.

A contrasting view on public education is provided by Fiorella Loo, who studied industrial engineering student at exclusive Lima University but says she would have preferred to get her professional training at the public National Engineering University (UNI). “I knew I wouldn’t be able to have the career I wanted because a degree from Lima University isn’t the same as one from the UNI,” she said.

UNI rector Javier Sota Nadal regards his institution as one of the few public universities that remain prestigious even though, unlike Lima University, it lacks the latest technical equipment. Referring to statistics gathered from private firms, Sota Nadal says 80 percent of his graduates are working in their professional specialties, although he acknowledges that other public insititutions provide inadequate training.

Another factor affecting the fortunes of university graduates is the oversupply of some professionals and undersupply of others.

“The trend is to study business administration and neglect the scientific and technological specialties,” Sota Nadal added. Gargurevich agrees that this is a problem, as young Peruvians leave high school with little career preparation and select the professions popular at the time.

“In the 1970’s, these were economics and the social sciences. In a society subject to every-growing automation, can we continue to produce 200 to 300 journalists a year?” he asked. (ENDIPS/cs)

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