‘Garage universities’ sprout like weeds: El Caribe

Santo Domingo.- “Universities” sprout like weeds in the Dominican Republic so much so that at least 39 have been created in the last 30 years mostly in an “anarchic” manner, with a total of 52 institutions of higher learning from 1962 to 2009, or more than one per year.

Elcaribe.com.do reports that since the University of Santo Domingo (today Autonomous) was founded in 1538, i422 years had passed before a new one was born: the UCMM Catholic University, today Pontifical.

“During the 1960s Dominican universities began to diversify with quantitative and qualitative growth, which was indirectly condoned by a State which paid little attention to the issue, due in part to the political situation the Dominican Republic lived then,” the expert said.

Numbers v. quality

“The proliferation and massification of universities, especially from the 1980s to the 1990s, was negative reflect regarding the professional training of graduates from their classrooms, since various studies, some by the Higher Education Ministry (MESCYT), came to neglect not only the curriculum, but the formation of its faculty.

The unchecked spread of those higher learning centers has even coined the phrase “garage university,” to depict the fact that they are built just about anywhere.

Education PhD Alejandro Alonso Padua cites as an example that the higher education system was the target of serious questioning by the spread of universities and corruption from the sale of counterfeit diplomas during the 80’s and 90’s. The expanding number of universities wasnot accompanied by the due technological and academic progress, reaching the case where the programs and teaching methods were substantially divorced."