Thinking About Higher Education in Paraguay

Paraguayan higher education is at a crossroads for which it is poorly prepared. Suddenly the nation, liberated from a repressive era, is required to make many populist decisions. The first wave of policy initiatives have looked beyond higher education to other sectors and sub-sectors: within the education rector, massive budgetary increases have been directed to basic education while higher education’s share of budget public funds for education has dropped from 21.4% in 1990 to 16.6% in 1991 (see Table 1 below); and, furthermore, the Ministry of Finance has blocked the expenditure of significant proportions of these budgeted funds. Table 1 Internal Efficiency of U.K. Asuncion

	Program Length (in Yrs)	Entrants						Graduates		Efficien Estimate
		1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1989	1990
1. CAPITAL FACULTIES
Lak & Social Science	4–5	381	354	414	531	455	644	325	387	0.87
Meóicine	5	122	151	80	86	90	129	163	133	1.11
Economics. Acct.	5	434	384	586	743	741	876	190	190	0.47
Physics. Math	5	129	111	115	93	89	77	69	46	0.47
Dentistry	5	30	35	31	27	35	67	31	31	0.67
Cheaistry	5–6	393	184	222	283	273	172	117	122	0.50
Philosophy	4–6	253	215	211	205	230	242	134	173	0.71
Agronoey	5	127	131	129	13c	144	146	129	12c	0.96
Veterinary	6	87	79	91	100	100	100	26	28	0.33
Architecture	6	217	159	133	131	195	121	162	9	0.75
Electronic Eng.	6		13	16	7	8	13	11	5	0.69
Geography	4–6		40	31	37	29	24	13	20	0.55
Polytechnic	2–4	654	361	329	274	321	285	166	193	0.60
Barbero Inst.	4–5	63	57	53	75	76	89	64	65	1.09
Basic Science I.	4	305	273	220	234	203	222	69	72	0.31
Library	2–4	16	12	10	15	14	15	16	21	1.41
Languages I.	3–4	78	91	78	80	72	86	42	29	0.46

Source: Statistics are supplied by the Departarente de Planification. Universidad Nacional de Asuncion.

Note: Efficiency refers to the number of entrants who cordite their prograe in the expected number of years. For departaents such as aedicine which have a unitors number of years, this aeasure can be coaouted by dividing the number graduating in a given year (e.g. 1990) by the number who entered six years earlier (in 1985); the aeasure averaged this calculation for the graduates of both the 1989 and 1990 classes. Some departments have aultiple orograes whose lengths vary. In the case of these deoartser me introouced various adjustments. For exaspie in the language institute with a 3–4 year progras the 1990 graduates were divided by the average of the 1987 and 1988 entrants the 1989 graduates by the average of the 1986 and 1987 graduates, and then the two figures were averaged.

‡ Only for 1989.

‡ Only for 1990.