Cuban universities open their doors to all citizens

To attend the university is a secret aspiration that almost all of us have harbored at a given moment of our lives.  

Even to those who steered away from school  during their adolescense  or deviated from their course towards other forms of life, or simply prefered to “bend their backs and not sit at a classroom for the whole day”.

To many it is a much hoped for target, with which you also please your family, while to others is the only way they see to plan for their future and enrich it. To get there might not be easy, because it is a fact that not all of us are capable to be university students.

Economic hardships, inappropriate study methods, a weak base of knowledge, lack of long range interest and  diverse intellectual  levels influence the fact that not all those  who  approve the twelveth grade  continue studies at the University.

If the doors open without limitations, it is a gift that must be taken advantage of properly, although not all will be able to make good use of it.

Those doors are open again, just as it has happened in previous years, for all those who have obtained their twelveth grade tittle and want to study a carreer at that level either through programmed meetings or through education at a distance.

Is there an increase of university graduates vis-a-vis not sufficient available posts? Or is it viceversa? 

Now there is a new formula for admissions, in which it is no longer necessary to submitt for History, Mathematis and Spanish language exams.

This has been made necessary because over the past five years it has been impossible to fill the demand  of over 42,000  proffesionals in  technical fields such as agriculture, cattle raising and economy , although more specific subjects will also be available.

In the first course of the selected career, the students will attend classes on the subjects that were demanded in the entrance exams and will have to approve the exams in order to be able to continue  the course.

This shows the prevailing interest of graduating students with an appropriate knowledge of the subjects in the curriculum.

At the Round Table TV programme of late January,  high level experts of the Ministry of Higher Education answered questions on all these subjects.

They included Rene Sanchez, Director of Vacancies and Work Assignments of the Ministry of Higher Education, and doctor  Manuel Guillermo Valle, director de Proffessional Formation at the same Ministry, who answered questions posed by the viewers.

Sánchez pointed out that the aspirants to join the university course, most of them graduates from  Pre University schools, were required to approve the three subjects --History, Mathematics and Spanish.--  and a list of those who approved was to be drawn up as an entrance key to the University.

Should there be an excess of aspirants and a shortage of openings, each  University will apply selection criterion based on the history of academic performances of each aspirant.

In  coming days each University will make known its system of selection and the number of  openings.  Aspirants will  be able to  present their requests at just one university, it was announced.

The high University official recalled that higher education openings will continue to be offered to all those with the appropriate conditions. 

All this is proof that there is enough room for all in Cuba to have a university formation.

Options are open and as the popular saying goes, he who does not have a university formation in Cuba is because he or she has simply not wanted to reach that echelon.