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La primera etapa del proceso solo considera las carreras de Pedagogía y Derecho, frente a lo cual el vicepresidente ejecutivo del CRUCH, Juan Manuel Zolezzi plantea: “¿Qué pasará cuando entren las otras carreras? No sabemos. Tampoco podemos inferir, con los antecedentes que tenemos, qué es lo que va a ocurrir finalmente con la institución. Por ahora, solo estamos viendo la punta del iceberg”.
In this Thursday's session of the Council of Rectors, the process of regulating fees and the negative consequences for universities was again analyzed, so that it was agreed to reiterate in all the corresponding instances the request to suspend this process.
This issue is of great relevance for CRUCH universities, particularly for free institutions, which is why it has been addressed in detail in the July and August sessions of the Council of Rectors. Also, in early September the CRUCH issued a public statement to make known the arguments that support the suspension request and on September 14, the executive vice president was invited to speak at the session of the Senate Education and Culture Committee.
The executive vice president of CRUCH, rector Juan Manuel Zolezzi, stated that “one of the fundamental reasons for requesting and supporting the suspension of the process is that we cannot approve a procedure without knowing what will be the form of financing of the other areas that they are not directly contemplated in this process of setting the cost of teaching fees. We all know that research, connection with the environment, aspects related to quality, regarding different aspects of future development, which are increasingly demanding, are not financed in the costs that the universities have reported. Therefore, as long as there is no more complete reality of the process from the point of view of the other areas of competence that the same law requires universities to develop, it makes a lot of sense to ask for the postponement ”.
Another relevant element for universities is that in the first stage of the process, only the careers of Education and Law are considered “but we are not looking at the rest. But what will happen when the other races enter? We do not know. Nor can we infer, with the antecedents we have, what is going to finally happen with the institution. For now, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, ”added Chancellor Zolezzzi.
It should be remembered that the process to implement the regulation of fees, basic enrollment rights and fees for the concept of degrees for the universities that ascribe to free - within the framework of Law No. 21.09 - is being carried out by the Undersecretariat of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, and that in the first stage includes the careers of Pedagogy and Law.
"Reasonable cost"
In the development of the process, the Undersecretariat of Higher Education has defined a “reasonable cost” as an amount that is below the real costs reported by most of the institutions for each of the careers. “The percentile in which this cost is established is only between 15 and 20 of their distribution, which is valid for both Law and Pedagogies. In other words, the model proposed by the undersecretary, inevitably leads to setting the reasonable cost in the 15% or 20% of the cost distribution, which means that the universities will receive income less than their current costs, "said Zolezzi.
According to the information compiled by the CRUCH, the tariff regulation established in the calculation report of the Undersecretariat of Higher Education has a negative impact on the set of universities of the Council of Rectors, reaching -$8,887,149 million pesos.
“We believe that the model used can irremediably contribute to inequality and condemn a significant number of institutions to situations of fragility and financial vulnerability. It is for this reason and due to the transcendence of the public interests that are at stake that we demand that at least the application be suspended and postponed ”, concluded the executive vice president of the Council of Rectors.