Higher Education Strategies in Venezuela

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The author outlines the future of higher education in this Latin American country, which is undergoing an accelerated political and ideological process called the revolución bolivariana, whose leader, Hugo Chávez, seems to be in a position to impact this future development by intervening and trying to control higher education. His doctrinarian approach is that the state should intervene and control the educational apparatus.Albornoz raises in this book questions How can the Venezuelan higher education system help the country in terms of economic and social development without resigning the serious commitment to science, technology and the humanities in their academic terms? Can a higher education system remain isolated from the turmoil and instability of a society or unhappily, these factors affect the vulnerability of an institution easily disturbed and weakened by governmental intervention and control? Can a higher education system generate knowledge in the most pure sense of the word, when the culture of the society is openly anti-intellectual and in fact openly authoritarian? Can academic institutions remain independent, from that pattern-culture directed towards academic life and unable to generate the necessary cognitive complex that would define a higher education system as efficient?