La política de educación superior en el mapa de las reformas actuales: Cambios de política y la Política sin cambios

The Hazards to Higher Education of Reformist Pragmatism in Cuba: Proposals for an Agenda

“…The moderate but constant contractions of spending in the sector and their negative effects on educational indicators presumably increased inequalities in access, educational performance, and outputs, all of which were essentially driven by income differences. Taken together, they highlight the scale of the change in policy to the point of identifying a historical counterpolicy given the magnitude of its negative effects on certain educational indicators and the unprecedented speed (five years) with which this happened (Quintana, 2015). At the same time, a new pragmatic higher education policy paradigm seemed to be emerging.…”

“…If we accept that Cuban education belongs to the state, the analysis of it harks back to background policy. The state and education have their structural base in a monopoly of policy (Quintana, 2015) specifically configured for Cuba's state policy regime. Characterized by a high concentration of decision-making capacity, this is an organization managed, centralized, and planned from within the state.…”

“…These anomalies led to the paradoxical situation of skilled jobs' (in the state sector) going unfilled by university graduates. 2 Unable to continue supporting this social policy, the education authorities came up with two goals aligned with the general reform: the economic updating of education policy to provide savings, efficiency, and foreign revenue capture through the export of professional services and intensified comprehensive effort and value training to restore the political effectiveness of the universities (Quintana, 2017). This was accompanied by modifications to the regulatory framework (especially regarding access), particularly Resolutions 120/10 and 236/10, which modified the mechanisms and requirements for access to the university (Curbelo, 2016).…”