Mission Sucre

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Mission Sucre (launched in late 2003) is one the Bolivarian Missions (a series of anti-poverty and social welfare programs) implemented by current Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. The program provides free and ongoing higher (college and graduate level) education to the two million adult Venezuelans who had not completed their elementary-level education.

Mission Sucre was originally referred to as El Plan Extraordinario Mariscal Antonio José de Sucre, shortened as Misión Sucre. Named after the 18th century independence leader Antonio José de Sucre, Mission Sucre establishes as a strategy the mass education and graduation of university professionals in three years, as opposed to the traditionally mandated five or more years. The mission is thus an attempt to popularize, reform, and expand Venezuelan higher education beyond its traditional role of mainly educating the children of élite and middle class Venezuelans. The program is thus geared especially towards the poorest and most marginalized segments of society.

In this mission, certain matters and subjects, such as foreign languages, are mostly left out of the Mission curriculum. The principal goal is the quantity of students graduating, as revealed by statistics. The program functions mostly at the margins of the Venezuelan tertiary education system, although several key institutions, such as Simon Bolivar University, have availed themselves of the program. For example, thousands of non-traditional, mostly low income students are currently undergoing training to become licensed physicians in a unique and accelerated curriculum.

Mission Sucre imparts tertiary education; other educational missions include Mission Robinson (for instructing the illiterate) and Mission Ribas (for obtaining secondary studies, classes, and graduation certificates).

Objectives

Mission Sucre, tiene por objeto potenciar la sinergia institucional y la participación comunitaria, para garantizar el acceso a la educación universitaria a todos los bachilleres sin cupo y transformar la condición de excluidos del subsistema de educación superior. Conjugar una visión de justicia social, con el carácter estratégico de la educación superior para el desarrollo humano integral sustentable, la soberanía nacional y la construcción de una sociedad democrática y participativa, para lo cual es indispensable garantizar la participación de la sociedad toda en la generación, transformación, difusión y aprovechamiento creativo de los saberes y haceres.

Origins of mass higher education

In the last decades of the 20th century, the Venezuelan government prior to the Chavez administration was steadily renouncing its support in areas involving education; specifically, it decreased support for tertiary education supports for the poor.

In fact, government funding and investment in higher education in Venezuela between 1989 and 1998 (Hugo Chavez only entered the presidency afterwards, in 1999) saw a marked downwards trend. The trend marked the government's desire to reduce resources and state support for education while furthering the project of privatization of higher education, as per the doctrines of the Washington Concensus and neoliberalism.

This brought consequences such as an ample accumulated "social debt" (the sum tablulation of govermental neglect of a given area, such as the total of all funds that could have been spent on education, but instead were spent elsewhere), because the number of university matriculations underwent stagnation, favoring the exclusion of students originating from Venezuela's poorest sectors. Numerous studies agree in affirming that the entrance to the superior education predisposes students from any background to eventually earn greater incomes, both of the population of the cities and to students the originating from elite private schools. On a par with this phenomenon, the tertiary education turning out official governmental managemers sensibly diminished its participation in the education of private (corporate) management. From 1999, the National Government has dedicated efforts to fortify all the Venezuelan educative system, for which he has been indispensable to rescue the initiative of the State like guarantor of educative opportunities of quality for all. With respect to the access to the superior education, the National Government has obtained the University expansion of the matriculation of the Institutes and Schools and in good part of the Experimental National Universities, in a joint work with the authorities and the established communities of these institutions.

In addition, starting from the beginning of Chavez's presidential mandate in 1999, five new universities have been founded. These universities are, namely: Experimental National University of Yaracuy (created by decree in the government of Rafael Boiler and opened under the Chávez presidency); Marine University of the Caribbean; Polytechnical Experimental National University of the Armed Forces (UNEFA); Experimental National University of the South of the Lake (that is, south of Lake Maracaibo) and the Bolivarian University of Venezuela. Also, four new University Institutes of Technology have been created; these are: the IUT of Bolivar State, the IUT of Apure State, the IUT of Barinas state and the IUT in la Fría Táchira State.

Además, desde 1999 se han creado cinco nuevas universidades, a saber: la Universidad Nacional Experimental de Yaracuy (creada por decreto en el gobierno de Rafael Caldera y abierta en la gestión del presidente Chávez); la Universidad Marítima del Caribe; la Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica de la Fuerza Armada (UNEFA); la Universidad Nacional Experimental del Sur del Lago y la Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. Igualmente, se han creado cuatro nuevos Institutos Universitarios de Tecnología, como son: el IUT del Estado Bolívar, el IUT del Estado Apure, el IUT del Estado Barinas y el IUT en la Fría, Estado Táchira

These institutions give new opportunities for study for the enormous number of college graduates who return to lower levels of education, and in addition they respond to the necessity to transform the system of tertiary education, in terms of geographic distribution, based on the construction of the Territorial Balance designed in the manner of the Economic and Social Plan of Development 2001-2007 .

Nevertheless, this effort remains far short of meeting overall demand, such is the extent of the social debt accumulated by previous administrations' neglect of popularized higher education. There are around 500,000 bachelors degree holders who remain excluded from professional tertiary education.

See also

• Mission Barrio Adentro.
• Bolivarian Revolution.

External links

• Misión Sucre — Official government portal for Mission Sucre.
• Mision Venezuela: Cambio para siempre