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

• Author: Rosa García-Chediak,Danay Quintana Nedelcu
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211053010
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211053010

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 244, Vol. 49 No. 3, May 2022, 99–115

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211053010

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

99

The Hazards to Higher Education of Reformist

Pragmatism in Cuba

Proposals for an Agenda

by

Rosa García-Chediak and Danay Quintana Nedelcu

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

A critical study of public policy involving the 2016–2017 reforms of higher education

in Cuba points to the hazards of the pragmatic approach to this policy evidenced in numer-

ous educational indicators and official discourse. Although such features are still far from

possessing a neoliberal imprint, uncontrolled pragmatism could lead to a neoliberal trend

in Cuban educational policy. Various indicators show the slow mutation of educational

policy, increasingly measured and understood as an economic policy (in its fiscal aspects)

rather than as a social one.

Un estudio crítico de las políticas públicas ligadas a las reformas cubanas a la edu-

cación superior de 2016–2017 muestra los peligros del enfoque pragmático tomado por

este proceso, los cuales se hacen evidente en numerosos indicadores educativos y discursos

oficiales. Aunque aún no podemos hablar de una impronta neoliberal, el pragmatismo

descontrolado podría conducir a la política educativa cubana en dicha dirección. Diversos

indicadores muestran la lenta mutación de la política educativa, la cual se mide y entiende

cada vez más como una política económica (en sus aspectos fiscales) que social.

Keywords: Cuba, Pragmatism, Reforms, Higher education policy, Socialism

The neoliberal canon of public policy is the very opposite of real socialism

imbued with a collectivist spirit. According to Bourdieu (1998), under real

socialism the school system reproduced social differentiation not because it

was designed to train individuals to compete in the labor market but because

it reproduced the differences of cultural capital that, along with political

Rosa García-Chediak is a professor of sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Center for Latin American Studies. She has

published numerous papers on educational sociology and comparative educational policy. Danay

Quintana Nedelcu is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers and the Science,

Technology, and Gender Network. She coordinates a postgraduate seminar on public policy at

FLACSO México and was a postdoctoral fellow at the UNAM’s Center for Interdisciplinary

Studies in the Sciences and Humanities in 2016–2017. Among her recent publications are Equidad

de género en educación superior y ciencia (2017) and Políticas públicas: Nuevos enfoques para la investig-

ación (2018). Mariana Ortega-Breña is a translator based in Mexico City. The authors dedicate this

work to their parents.

1053010LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211053010Latin American PerspectivesGarcía-Chediak and Quintana / PRAGMATISM AND CUBAN HIGHER EDUCATION

research-article2021

100 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

capital, were the determinants of that system. While this argument is hypo-

thetical, it certainly invites us to consider how difficult it may seem today to

discuss whether a socialist educational system can serve an equally impor-

tant function as skill formation for successful job placement. We are now

living in an era in which a long cycle of ideological battles and reforms has

changed the terms of the discussion and neoliberalism has emerged the clear

winner.

Particularly when it comes to higher education, the emphasis on mass access

and tertiary training as a lever for integral social development has entailed a

significant departure from the neoliberal policies currently being promoted

worldwide and particularly in Latin America. Neoliberal higher education has

been extensively reviewed, and we must inevitably link it to the budget cuts

that have impacted education and to privatization, a particularly successful

feature in higher education in, for example, Mexico and Ecuador (Ramírez and

Minteguiaga, 2010; Rodríguez Gómez, 2004). However, the continent has taken

other paths to reform, including external accreditation of educational quality

(Días, 2006; IESALC, 2004), formulas for the differential allocation of financing

according to results (García de Fanelli, 2006), approval of standards with a view

to the creation of a regional-global university services market (Hermo and

Verger, 2010), changes in university management schemes with private sector

management tools (Bentancur, 2000), and the evaluation of teachers and

researchers’ professional performance and differentiated stimuli to foster aca-

demic productivity (Ibarra and Rondero, 2008). As Skilbeck (2001) says, this

amalgam of processes means that the university system has been under

immense pressure to transform itself completely into a business, and this pro-

cess includes Latin America.

This paper analyzes the higher education policy promoted by Cuba in recent

years. Although Cuban higher education has experienced quality accredita-

tion, academic performance evaluation, and incipient internationalization,

none of this has been intense enough to take a neoliberal turn. While there is

apparent inertia at the elementary and secondary education levels, however,

tertiary (higher) education has become part of a broad reform begun a decade

ago in an attempt to reverse the country’s worrisome socioeconomic situation.

The reforms deployed since 2008 have focused on short-term economic recov-

ery via openings to the market. For the education sector and particularly higher

education, this pragmatism has resulted in cuts seen as a “rational” response to

a scenario of budgetary restriction. Admissions quotas have been reduced, and

to justify this the official discourse argues for increased returns on educational

spending that benefit the country’s economic growth. Although this pragmatic

orientation has been attempted with regard to specialized academic posts, its

effect is not entirely consistent with the goal of strengthening the links between

higher education and economic growth.

The most worrisome of the social effects have been a considerable limitation

of access to opportunities and an increase in the incidence of social inequalities.

This phenomenon has raised concern (Ávila, 2016; Domínguez, 2016; García-

Chediak, 2016; Tejuca-Martínez, Gutiérrez-Fernández, and García-Ojalvo, 2015;

Tristá-Pérez, Gort-Almeida, and Íñigo-Bajos, 2013) given that for years Cuban

social policy deliberately sought to achieve the highest levels of equality with

notable results. It is therefore appropriate to reopen the discussion of how to