By Lida Prypchan
In Venezuela it is believed that “education for everyone” means that everyone can go to University. And going to university means choosing to study Medicine, Engineering, or Law. Everyone wants to be a doctor regardless of the fact that they graduate 2 years later than they should.
On the other hand, 100 students enter and only 15 or 20 of them graduate, which is a great loss to the country.
Universities have the capacity for a certain number of students who are supposedly prepared and interested in studying. Universities have room for only one group, but they lack the method of selection to choose the best.
Venezuela is the only country which accepts anyone who wants to be a doctor in a degree course as costly as Medicine, which requires constant theoretical and practical classes in a hospital. Amazingly, one sees semesters with 400 students, when there is only capacity for 150. One observes groups of 15 young men per cadaver, which are in terrible condition.
The results of the lack of selection are catastrophic in the most advanced semesters when hospital shifts are necessary; instead of being examined by two students, patients are examined by ten.
In the meantime, there are places for 100 students, and 1,000 or perhaps 10,000 enter.
There should be a rigorous selection of students so that few graduate, but they graduate well-prepared.
The same opportunity cannot not be given to a young person with good results in his/her baccalaureate and who is really prepared for the university as to another who passed due to inertia, to intuition.
With the current education system, neither the prepared students or the slackers study, nor those who want to or those who do not want to. We must take into account all of those professional students who do not leave or let others enter, and occupy a position that they do not put to good use. Professional students that are not required to have responsibilities .
