Nicaragua approves education reform seen as move to destroy university autonomy
By Ismael Lopez
MANAGUA (Reuters) – Nicaragua’s Parliament, dominated by President Daniel Ortega, on Thursday authorized reforms that educators warn will weaken the autonomy of universities amid new guidelines that strengthen the federal government’s management over curriculums, applications and chairs.
The regulation establishes the Nationwide Council of Universities (CNU) as the primary governing physique, overruling the teams of educational specialists from every establishment that held these powers.
The rule was authorized with 75 votes in favor and 14 abstentions.
“This reform kills the autonomy of universities that price a lot blood in Nicaragua. The federal government now controls the CNU, which till now was solely an advisory physique to universities,” mentioned tutorial Ernesto Medina, former rector of the Nationwide Autonomous College of Nicaragua, the nation’s largest college.
The professional-government deputies argued that the reform seeks to strengthen greater training and the function of the CNU as a governing physique of universities.
The reform additionally cuts public funding to the Jesuit Central American College (UCA), a essential establishment with the federal government and cradle of the nationwide anti-government protests that broke out within the Central American nation in 2018.
The UCA was included within the CNU and granted public funding some months earlier than Ortega’s Sandinista Nationwide Liberation Entrance (FSLN) social gathering left energy in 1990.
The UCA didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. It has mentioned that in 2018 the state granted the college $8.1 million for its operations, an allocation that has been decreased by way of the years and dropped to $38,000 in 2022.
“It’s a revenge towards the UCA for the function its college students performed within the rise up of April 2018,” mentioned constitutional regulation professor Maria Asuncion Moreno.
The reform integrated into the CNU three universities created by the federal government within the final weeks and expelled UCA, the place Ortega and three of his kids studied.
The Nicaraguan Parliament has closed 14 non-public universities in the previous couple of months, stating they failed to satisfy their obligations to the governing physique, whereas the opposition has mentioned it’s a authorities’s try to take management of universities essential of Ortega.
(Reporting by Ismael Lopez; Writing by Valentine Hilaire; Modifying by Leslie Adler)
