$Unique_ID{COW00421} $Pretitle{266} $Title{Bolivia Chapter 6B. Secondary Education and Higher Education} $Subtitle{} $Author{Thomas E. Weil} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{schools school university students higher rural education teachers universities secondary} $Date{1974} $Log{} Country: Bolivia Book: Bolivia, A Country Study Author: Thomas E. Weil Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1974 Chapter 6B. Secondary Education and Higher Education Secondary Education Education at the secondary level is offered in general or academic schools designed to prepare students for university entrance, in vocational schools, and in normal schools for training teachers for schools in the rural primary system. On the basis of the shortened four-year course of study, the 1971 enrollment in secondary schools of all kinds was about 102,000. Between 1960 and 1968 (before the course was reduced from six to four years) enrollments almost doubled, and the four-year program registered an enrollment increase of about one-third between 1969 and 1971. In 1968 virtually all of the school units, with the exception of the rural normal schools, were located in cities and towns. Girls made up about two-fifths of the total enrollment, and about one-third of the students were in privately operated institutions. About one young person in five of secondary-school age was enrolled in the system. As in the primary school program, students were primarily occupied in note taking and memorizing predominantly theoretical course material. Laboratories, shops, and libraries were few. Academic Schools In 1971 nearly 86,400 students, or 86 percent of the secondary level enrollment, were engaged in academic or general studies, a proportion slightly higher than the 83 percent recorded in 1960. Boys' schools were called colegios and the schools for girls, who constituted about one-third of the enrollment, were called liceos. Most of the students at the secondary level come from urban families with, or aspiring to, middle class or higher status. Coupled with the social and intellectual prestige associated with the academic courses of study, this circumstance does much to explain the continued strong show of preference for the preuniversity academic curriculum-to the frustration of the efforts of administrators who sought to put greater emphasis on practical career studies in the vocational classrooms. The academic school curriculum was aimed essentially at university matriculation and the primary school facilities available to most rural children offered nothing above the third grade. From the fourth grade onward, the educational system was geared largely to the objective of placing young people in universities, which were already producing graduates at rates beyond the economy's absorptive capacity. Private academic schools, with about one-third of the total enrollment during the 1960s, are of particular importance because of the quality of education that they offer as well as because of the number of students that they attract. Their retention rate and their record of securing university admissions for their graduates are substantially higher than those of the public sector. Most of the institutions are located in La Paz and in the larger provincial capitals. A provision of the 1955 Code of Education requires that private schools give scholarships to poor children in proportion to their enrollments, and additional scholarships are sometimes offered by schools operated by Roman Catholic orders. For families of limited income, however, the cost of supporting children in their late teens even in the tuition-free public academic institutions is a severe one. At this age most Bolivian children are already working to help contribute to the family support, and parents of children in academic schools must look forward to the possibility of years of university attendance. In 1968 the students graduating from academic schools represented 26.8 percent of those who had matriculated six years earlier; the proportion was moderately higher than the 24.2 percent registered in 1965. Attrition was most serious-one-third of the total-at the end of the first year. Vocational Schools In 1971 a little less than 11,000 students, or about 10 percent of the secondary-level student body, were enrolled in vocational school classes. The rate of enrollment increase since 1960 had been a high one but not quite as high as that registered in the academic schools. About two-fifths of the students were in privately operated institutions. So large a proportion were in the commercial schools devoted largely to teaching office skills to girls and in home economics schools for girls that the vocational school system was predominantly a female one; girls and young women made up nearly 80 percent of the 1968 enrollment. The retention rate, varying considerably in the various kinds of study courses, had a collective average about the same as that for academic schools but was not readily comparable because of durations varying from two to six years. Most courses required a completed primary education, but some admitted students after completion of four primary years. The home economics schools for girls, with over 3,200 students in 1971, and the commercial schools, with over 3,800 students, represented about two-thirds of the total vocational enrollment. The four-year home economics program consists of some academic courses plus training in such fields as dressmaking, cooking, and nutrition. Commercial courses vary in length and offer studies ranging from instruction in dictation and operation of office machines to bookkeeping and accounting. Secretarial schools operate in all of the major cities and towns-even the remote Oriente town of Riberalta has its school for secretaries-and the Institute of Higher Commercial Studies in La Paz has sections in commerce, accounting, customs procedures, and business administration. The commercial secondary schools are the only ones in the school system in which the enrollment in private units predominates. Industrial schooling for boys is offered in a four-year course at the Pedro Domingo Murillo National Industrial School and in a six-year course at the Don Bosco school operated by the Roman Catholic Church. The 1971 industrial enrollment was a little more than 600. The limited popularity of industrial courses is in part explained by the inability of graduates to find suitable jobs. According to one study, in 1968 only a minuscule percentage of the graduates receiving the technician (tecnico) diploma had been able to find employment in their fields of specialization; employers had almost invariably preferred to give on-the-job training to unskilled personnel. In 1971 over 1,000 students were enrolled in secondary schools of arts and music, which offered courses of up to six years. In addition, more than 2,000 students were trained in a variety of vocational courses conducted under the independent school program maintained by the national mining corporation. A public agricultural vocational school, the first in the country, was established with United States assistance in 1958 at Muyurina, near the city of Santa Cruz. In 1960 its administration was assigned to the Roman Catholic order of the Salesian fathers. Statistical tables appearing during the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, included no figures for agricultural enrollment in secondary level schools. During the early 1960s a system of labor secondary schools (colegios laborales) was established outside the regular school system to give instruction to young people in agrarian and artisan techniques and at the same time to give them some grounding in academic studies. By 1967 about thirty of these entities had been established, and more than 1,600 students were receiving instruction in a nine-month course of study. A majority were public institutions, but the fact that many of the number had been established through the initiative of parents in rural communities indicated the degree of popular interest that the program had aroused. The schools had been started primarily to offer prevocational training to rural children who had completed all of the primary schooling available to them and who had no secondary schools to attend. By the late 1960s, however, the schools were coming more and more to resemble regular secondary institutions, apparently as a consequence of peasant demand for formal education rather than practical training. In addition, their number was growing precipitously despite a precarious lack of funds, facilities, and adequately trained teachers. UNESCO, which had provided guidance in initiating the program, had envisioned limiting the number of units to one in each of the country's ten rural school districts, the curricula to be tailored to the needs of the district. Popular demand coupled with political pressure brought to bear by the peasant syndicates, however, had brought the number of units to fifty-six before the end of 1968, and rural leaders were beginning to talk about the possible creation of peasant universities (universidades campesinos). Rural Normal Schools More than 4,700 students were engaged in studies in rural normal schools in 1971 as compared with 3,465 in 1967. The first school for preparing rural primary teachers had been established in 1915, but at the time of the 1952 Revolution a scant 360 students were enrolled in the system. During the late 1960s male students somewhat outnumbered females. The minimum age for enrollment was fifteen years, and the student body included a few adults. The fourteen public and four church-operated normal schools were widely but unsystematically distributed about the countryside; they ranged in number from four in La Paz Department to a single school for the entire Oriente region. The most prestigious was Rural Normal School Number One, located at Huarisata in La Paz Department, the site of the prototype nuclear primary school (see Historical Development, this ch.). The Huarisata institution has played a prominent role in the training of student teachers in practical subjects designed to raise community living standards and to encourage personal habits of sanitation and good nutrition. The rural normal school teaching staff is more fully prepared than that of the secondary system as a whole. In the late 1960s all normal school personnel were listed as qualified (titulado) either through graduation from the Higher Institute of Rural Education in Tarija or by other means of qualification, which in some instances included schooling abroad. In a 1969 seminar, however, the National Directorate of Rural Normal Schools noted that the instruction furnished was excessively informational and did little to encourage students to think deductively and develop values. In addition, the assignment of personnel has not always been to positions best suited to their qualifications, and classroom presentations have as a consequence often been improvised. Instruction in technical subjects has been particularly deficient. Students come from varied cultural backgrounds and from various parts of the country, including a large minority from urban localities. Boarding facilities are frequently provided, however, and a considerable number of government scholarships are available. The four-year course of study includes practical teaching during the last year. Until 1968 only completion of the primary school cycle was required for admission, but in that year the requirement was raised to include the first two years of secondary school (eight years of primary school), and completion of the secondary cycle was to be required as of 1972. Institutions of Higher Education In 1971 a reported 32,550 students were enrolled in the country's institutions of higher education, as compared with fewer than 13,000 in 1961. A little more than one-fourth were girls, and almost all of the students were in public schools. Three-fourths of the total were in eight public universities. The remainder were in a single private university, in a higher technical institute, and in postsecondary teacher training schools. The universities, which represent the heart of the higher education system, are defined collectively under the law as the Bolivian University. All are located in the capital cities of departments (only Cobija, the village capital of Pando Department, is without one). All are frequently referred to by the name of the cities in which they are located, but most have other official names, in most instances prefixed by the term "higher university" (universidad mayor). The largest of the eight is the Higher University of San Andres, located in La Paz. During the early 1970s it offered the widest range of studies. In addition to several attached institutes and schools, it was composed of nine faculties (facultades)-quasi-independent academic units offering complete courses of study in an academic discipline or in several related disciplines. The faculties were those of law, economics, philosophy and letters (including pedagogy), medicine and surgery, dentistry, pharmacy and biochemistry, architecture, civil engineering, and industrial engineering. Second in size is the Higher University of San Simon of Cochabamba. Like the Higher University of San Andres, it was founded soon after independence in the early nineteenth century. Smaller schools have complained that these two institutions received disproportionately large proportions of the public funds available to the university system. The oldest Bolivian university-and one of the oldest in the Americas-is the Royal and Pontifical Higher University of San Francisco Xavier of Chuquisaca, located in Sucre. Despite the ecclesiastical flavor of the elegant name that reflects its Jesuit origin, it is a state-operated institution. The Higher and Autonomous Tomas Frias University, located in Potosi, and the Gabriel Rene Morona Higher University in Santa Cruz were founded in the late nineteenth century, and the Higher and Autonomous Juan Misael Saracho University was established in Tarija in 1946. The Technical University of Oruro was founded in 1892, and the Jose Ballivian University in El Beni opened its doors until 1967 as a school of exact and natural sciences. The country's only private institution of higher education-the Bolivian Catholic University-was established in 1966 by the Roman Catholic Church as a school of business administration. In 1973 it maintained departments of administration, humanities and education, economics, psychology, and sciences of communication in facilities located in La Paz and Cochabamba. The bulk of the postsecondary enrollment outside the university system is gathered in two institutions for the training of urban primary and secondary level teachers supervised by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The older of these, the National Higher Institute, was founded in 1909 in Sucre by the Belgian educational mission that was active in Bolivia in the early twentieth century. The second, the National Teacher Training Institute, was founded in 1917 in La Paz for the training of secondary teachers but later added primary school and kindergarten divisions. In addition, rural primary teachers are trained at a higher normal school founded in 1963 in Tarija, and there is a small institute for training teachers of physical education. Collectively, the postsecondary teacher training units had a 1971 enrollment of about 7,600. In 1971 about 300 postsecondary students were enrolled in the Higher Technical Institute. Founded in La Paz in 1961, this entity provides training in mining, metallurgy, petroleum technology, and related technological fields of study. Also offering postsecondary studies, but not ordinarily included in postsecondary enrollment statistics, is the Higher School of Fine Arts in La Paz. During the 1973 school year the institutions making up the Bolivian University offered studies in fifty-eight fields of study (carreras) leading to undergraduate or graduate degrees. These fifty-eight fields ranged from highly specialized ones such as Altiplano agronomy to broad ones such as architecture. Specific enrollment data available for 1968 showed that economics, medicine and surgery, law, and engineering attracted more than half of the total. Agronomy and veterinary surgery together attracted a little more than 3 percent. It should be noted, however, that a considerable number of students were enrolled in university-sponsored technical schools that offered subprofessional courses to students who had completed part of the secondary cycle. In addition, in 1968 about 7 percent of the university enrollment was in popular universities (universidades populares)(see Literacy and Adult Education, this ch.). In 1968 about 60 percent of the university degrees granted were in the prestigious disciplines of law, economics, and medicine. The problem of providing a larger cadre of university graduates with a variety of professional skills better adapted to the needs of the society, however, is second to the larger problem of providing employment for graduates in all disciplines that at once makes use of their skills and provides conditions of employment sufficiently attractive to stop their emigration (see ch. 3). Data on the Bolivian "brain drain" are frequently conflicting but, according to one unofficial series of estimates, professionals of all kinds have emigrated in very substantial numbers. Among the proportions of professional groups living abroad, for example, were more than 50 percent of all agricultural engineers. The estimate is so high as to seem fanciful, but in the early 1970s it was clear that the universities were producing graduates at a rate far beyond the effective absorptive capacity of the economy. Successful completion of secondary studies and an entrance examination are customarily required for matriculation in regular university courses of study. Most courses are from four to seven years in duration, and in some of the faculties doctoral (doctorado) degrees are offered after additional study and presentation of a thesis. Among the four-year courses are agronomy, veterinary surgery, and nursing; architecture, law, economics, pharmacy and chemistry, philosophy and letters, dentistry, and geology require five years. Engineering and medical degrees require six and seven years of study, respectively. Because a large proportion of the university enrollment is also employed full or part time, however, the average graduating student has spent more than the indicated number of years in completing his course of study. The physical plant in most of the universities is much more nearly adequate than in the schools of the primary and secondary systems. The buildings are scattered irregularly about the cities in which they are located, however, and demonstration equipment and teaching aids of all kinds tend to be inadequate. In particular, libraries leave much to be desired. The number of volumes is limited (with fewer than 100,000 volumes, the library of the Higher University of San Andres is the largest), and the selection tends to be dated. A North American visiting professor at one of the universities found that the economic section of its library consisted largely of standard texts by such nineteenth century authorities as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill-and a shelf of works by Karl Marx. In the late 1960s less than half of the first-year students were promoted, although promotion rates improved progressively thereafter to more than 70 percent in the fourth year and still higher in the fifth, sixth, and seventh years. An excessive rate of failure in the first year is attributed in large measure to preparation at the secondary level so often inadequate that several of the universities maintain schools for preuniversity studies. In addition, the academic structure of the universities is such that students matriculate directly into a faculty or school without benefit of orientation programs in general studies, such as those offered in the lower undergraduate classes at North American universities. As a consequence, the entering student often finds himself locked into an unsuitable course of study. Academic failure or dropping out as a consequence of discouragement is often prompted by poor study conditions. The consequences of inadequate laboratories and libraries are compounded by a system in which most of the teaching staff is made up of persons practicing the various professions who teach only on a part-time basis and to whom students as a consequence have limited access (see The Teaching Profession, this ch.). The consuming interest evinced by university student groups in partisan political activity has been an important factor in academic failure, in expulsion or jailing of students, and in intermittent closing of the universities. In addition, the necessity of simultaneously studying and holding a job imposes a sometimes impossible burden on serious students. The burden becomes so severe when the student comes from another part of the country, and must usually provide himself with food and lodging, that some educational authorities have urged the establishment of dormitories and additional dining facilities as important means of raising the student retention rate. Students and University Reform The autonomy of universities and the academic freedom of action enjoyed by these institutions are sources of national pride. The safeguarding of these prerogatives against government interference has been considered by students and faculty alike to be a personal obligation of the highest importance During the politically turbulent late 1960s, however, expression of the prerogatives of autonomy increasingly took the form of political demonstration. In the last days of June and the first days of July in 1971, university delegates played active roles in the first plenary session of the Popular Assembly (Asemblea Popular). This remarkable paralegislative body was convoked by the then-dominant central labor organization and was likened to the Paris Commune of 1871 and the first Soviet meetings of 1905 and 1917. Delegates elected to its presidium gave clenched-fist salutes at their swearing-in ceremony. Among the important acts of the nonelective Popular Assembly was the determination taken to transform the universities into a stream-lined structure consisting of a single technological or labor university for the entire country with its center at the Catavi-Siglo XX mining complex at Oruro. It was to be based on replacement of the traditional liberal arts program with technological training and would bring about a gradual closing of the gap between manual and intellectual labor. Although the proposal meant abandonment of the concept of university autonomy, the student delegates voiced no strong objection to it. In August 1971 a revolt against the government of President Juan Jose Torres Gonzalez erupted in Santa Cruz and spread quickly to La Paz (see ch. 10). Students, supporting the government, seized the main building of the Higher University of San Andres, but aircraft of the insurgent forces strafed the building in an attack during which ten students died and twenty-five or more were wounded. The revolt toppled the incumbent government, but students in San Andres were among the last to surrender. Under the new administration of President Banzer, some 300 students were promptly arrested, and a substantial number of students and professors went into exile. Banzer closed all eight of the country's universities, announced that henceforth students would not be permitted to engage in national or international politics, and appointed the National Commission on University Reform to prepare a new basic set of rules governing the university system. The universities were still closed in June of 1972, when the new Fundamental Law of the Bolivian University was promulgated by decree as the legal instrument governing the structure and operations of the universities. The 239-article document was greeted with expressions of disapproval by spokesmen of students and professors, but it incorporated several important reforms that had previously been recommended by educational authorities. Article 9 of the new law specifically reaffirmed the principle of university autonomy with respect to purely administrative and academic matters but limited it to these areas of concern. It specified, inter alia, that autonomy was not to be interpreted to include immunity for university properties or the license to violate public order; this point was later repeated by President Banzer in a 1972 Independence Day address in which he also stated that he regarded the new law as essentially preserving the principle of autonomy. The right of students to organize was confirmed, but the activities in which student groups could engage were specifically limited to those directly concerned with university matters. Students and professors were to share responsibility for governing the internal functioning of the universities, the students playing a minority role. Previously, the equal cogovernment by students and professors had been incorporated in the legal statutes of the several institutions. The new supreme directive body for the Bolivian University, the National Council on Higher Education, was made directly responsible to the executive power and assigned broader authority over the universities than that assigned to its predecessor body, the National University Council. The new law called for restructuring the preexisting system of faculties by the creation of departments responsible for the individual academic disciplines taught, which were to be grouped in six schools-architecture and arts, health sciences, social sciences, pure and natural sciences, humanities, and education and technology. Not all universities would be permitted to offer the disciplines taught in all departments; in order to reduce costly duplication of effort, the National Council on Higher Education was to assign teaching responsibilities to the universities on a regional basis, with three universities in a northern, three in a central, and three in a southern zone. In commenting on this innovation, one educational authority pointed out that seven of the universities were currently offering programs in law and in economics and that implementation of the new system would make possible a reduction of this number by three or more. University teaching and administrative staffs were to be named by the governing bodies of the universities themselves. A transitory article of the new law, however, assigned to the National Council on Higher Education a one-time responsibility for making these appointments. Under the new program, the universities commenced to reopen late in the year. The catalog of the Bolivian University for the 1973 academic year reported that uniform academic programs, school calendars, teaching methods, and performance evaluation had been designed to facilitate transfer of teachers and students between institutions. This, in turn, would facilitate the structuring of departments within the faculties and the reduction of duplication in teaching programs. Literacy and Adult Education In the late 1960s and early 1970s widely varying estimates concerning the rate of literacy for the population aged fifteen years and over averaged about 40 percent of the total, as compared with an estimated 37 percent reported by the Organization of American States (OAS) for 1960. Data from the 1950 census, as adapted by the OAS, showed the rate to have been about 32 percent. The adapted census figures were based on a definition of literacy as the ability to read and write a simple paragraph in any language; persons whose hard-earned ability had been eroded by lack of use or lack of relevance of the skill to their daily needs were ranked among the illiterate. Illiteracy is seldom absolute. A series of late 1960s surveys concerning reading ability alone conducted in all four of the geographical regions of the country found that there were pronounced regional differences but that, overall, the proportion "partly able" to read exceeded both those "unable" and those "fully able" to understand written material. At the root of the literacy problem is the language barrier in a country where half or more of the population consists of Aymara- and Quechua-speaking Indians whose knowledge of Spanish-the language of instruction in the regular school system-is for the most part limited or nonexistent. The 1955 Code of Education prescribes that Aymara and Quechua are to be used as a means of teaching reading and writing in Spanish in those localities where they are predominantly spoken. Quechua- and Aymara-speaking teachers are not always available, however, and in practice the adults who acquire literacy are those who already have some command of Spanish. The barrier represented by the Spanish language is the factor that contributes most heavily to illiteracy among Quechua- and Aymara-speaking women. The traditional indigenous prejudice against female education extends also to the learning of another language. No overall data are available on the degree of rural literacy by sex, but the limited information available indicates that the rate for men is as much as twice that for women. Conversely, the ability of most urban people to speak Spanish probably contributes as much to the higher urban literacy rate as does the greater availability of schools in urban localities, where the rate of literacy among females is probably not significantly lower than that among males. According to one late 1960s estimate, the literate 40 percent of the adult population included 85 percent in the cities and towns and 14 percent in the countryside. In rural localities literacy tends to be highest in those areas relatively close to urban centers, where schools are more numerous and where there is more practical need for the acquisition of reading and writing skills. The origins of recent literacy programs can be traced to the establishment in 1956 of the National Office for Literacy and Adult Education. Since that date numerous plans and campaigns have been inaugurated, but accomplishments have fallen far short of the overly ambitious announced goals. According to an estimate reported by the Inter-American Development Bank, an average of some 12,000 adults became literate annually during the 1960s, less than 1 percent per year of the illiterate population. During the decade there was no clear evidence that the annual rate had increased. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the public program for adult literacy training was provided in small centers scattered about the countryside, which were presided over by regularly assigned teachers. The announced focus of the program was on a few key economic development areas and on young adults who were already employed in jobs contributing to development of the economic process. The work of the regular literacy teachers was supplemented by that of specially trained military conscripts as part of the military civic action program, by teachers in classes sponsored by a few peasants syndicates, and occasionally by volunteers from the universities. In at least one instance, however, a group of universitarians was found to have volunteered in order to distribute Marxist propaganda rather than the literacy-training materials that had been furnished them by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The 1955 Code of Education prescribed that, in addition to reading and writing, the national adult literacy program was to include instruction in fundamental education and in practical skills. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a substantial proportion of the adults receiving scholastic training was enrolled in the regular primary and secondary institutions and in subuniversity practical courses offered in several of the universities. In addition, several universities maintained units called popular universities. The functions of these entities had little to do with the higher education program; in the 1955 Code of Education they were assigned the role of providing for workers "cultural, politico-social and labor-union training." An innovation of the MNR political party, the popular university was devised as a symbol of the revolutionary concern for mass education. Outside the regular school system, the Center for Technical and Craft Training was established in La Paz in 1966 under the auspices of various entities including the Ministry of Labor and Trade Union Affairs, the National Chamber of Commerce, and the United States assistance program. Also outside the regular school system, beginning in the early 1960s a number of schools were established in the countryside to teach scholastic and practical courses at the secondary level to young peasant adults in localities where no regular schools were available (see The School System, this ch.). In the early 1970s an accelerated adult program was reported available for the completion in three years of the equivalent of the regular six-year course of study. At the secondary level, centers for intermediate adult education (centros de educacion media de adultos) were reported in operation in early 1973 in La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and Sucre for persons twenty-one years of age and older. Not all of these centers had yet established complete courses of study, which were to cover the equivalent of six regular years (seventh through twelfth grades) in a three-year period. The program led to a certificate of bachiller por madurez (literally, bachelor by maturity), qualifying the holder for university matriculation. The increasing use of inexpensive transistor radios has brought about a corresponding increase in the use of radio broadcasts for educational purposes. Some of the sets, as well as educational materials for use in connection with educational radio programs, have been contributed by public and private welfare-oriented organizations. In the early 1970s educational broadcasts were being transmitted from La Paz, Cochabamba, Sucre, Oruro, and Potosi. A program conducted by the Maryknoll order of the Roman Catholic Church outside La Paz covers a range of sixty miles from the transmitter and thus can theoretically be received by half of the country's Aymara population. No information is available concerning the number of regular listeners, but during the late 1960s a reported average of between 2,500 and 3,000 people participated in study groups formally organized to hear the broadcasts, and about one-fourth of these received certificates of satisfactory course completion. The study groups, organized in communities, were led by unpaid volunteers who had received a short course of training conducted by the Maryknoll fathers in La Paz, and students paid a small amount per month in order to participate. The core element in the curriculum was the use of Aymara as a means of teaching literacy in Spanish, but the inclusion of basic instruction in arithmetic, geography, hygiene, farming, and religion made it possible, in theory, for the persevering student in eight months of study to achieve the equivalent of three years of regular primary education. A similar Maryknoll program, using the Quechua language, was broadcast from Cochabamba. The Teaching Profession There is no quantitative teacher shortage at any level of instruction. Statistics on numbers of teachers are sometimes conflicting-in part, perhaps, because urban personnel frequently occupy two or more teaching positions-but the student-teacher ratios of about twenty-seven to one and eighteen to one at the primary and secondary levels, respectively, in 1971 compared favorably with those in other Latin American countries. The necessity of holding multiple sessions in urban institutions resulted from a shortage not of teachers but of classroom space and, as a consequence of this shortage, many teach only a few hours daily. It has frequently been suggested that an accelerated building program would make it possible to use staff services more fully, thereby leaving funds available for other badly needed educational purposes. Qualitatively, a serious shortage does exist. According to undated material published by the Ministry of Planning and Coordination in 1970, only 36.5 percent (30.8 percent rural and 41.6 percent urban) of the primary and 44.5 percent of the secondary personnel were qualified. Data from other sources show both higher and lower proportions, but all figures indicate a moderately rising proportion of qualified personnel during the 1960s and early 1970s. Most of the qualified teachers are graduates of urban or rural normal schools. Other teachers hold temporary, or interim (interino), appointments. After ten years of service, interim personnel may become assimilated (asimilado) by successfully passing a special examination and thus attain the rank of qualified teacher. There are relatively few assimilated teachers-in 1967 fewer than 500 of the nearly 8,000 rural primary teaching staff were assimilated, and the proportion in urban schools was probably much lower. In theory, entering teachers who are not qualified by virtue of graduation from a normal school must at least have completed the general secondary school cycle. In practice, however, many of the teachers in rural localities have completed only a few primary school years, and in the few schools scattered along the frontiers the instructional personnel are themselves often little more than literate. Teachers in the public system must by law be between the ages of eighteen and sixty years, although the requirement of retirement at sixty is not regularly enforced. Despite the fact that many normal school graduates leave the teaching profession after a few years, the average teacher is a mature person. During 1965 more than 40 percent of the personnel in urban primary and secondary schools were between the ages of thirty and thirty-nine, as compared with 6 percent under the age of twenty-five. Complete data are not available concerning the proportion of teachers by sex, although in 1967 some 43 percent of the rural personnel were reported to be women. The proportion of women is believed to be far higher in urban primary and secondary schools. Before the Revolution of 1952 teacher employment, dismissal, and promotion often depended on political affiliation. An unprecedented number of teachers were appointed and promoted during the years immediately after the war, and legislation enacted in 1957 on seniority limited dismissal and demotion to instances of gross incompetence or immorality and established rules governing employment, promotion, transfer, and retirement. The resulting degree of job security has been such that it has caused some critics to complain that teachers have been encouraged to neglect self-improvement through the several available inservice training courses. There are no programs in the private school system for upgrading qualifications, for social benefits, or for employment security. Salaries tend to be higher than in the public system, however, and private teaching appointments are in relatively high demand. The normal schools have little trouble in filling enrollment quotas. A variety of room-and-board scholarships are available, and-in addition to the good social standing and the job security offered by the professions-the generally low demand for labor in Bolivia encourages many young people to enroll. Cochabamba, chronically the department with the highest rate of unemployment, is the highest in the rate of normal school matriculation. Moreover, the continued hiring during the 1960s of teachers who were not graduates of normal schools is believed to have resulted from a compelling desire to create jobs rather than from a need for the services. The several attractions of the teaching profession do not include good pay. During the late 1960s the average amount received in all parts of the country came to less than the equivalent of US $70 per month; the rural average was closer to US $40-well below the average of miners and factory workers. Fringe benefits include such features as long vacations and short working hours, and some rural personnel receive housing and the right to farm small plots of land attached to the school. Many of the teachers, however, hold outside jobs and are sometimes absent from their classes. The attitude of members of the teaching corps toward their profession differs less between teachers in urban and in rural schools than between teachers who come from urban and from rural backgrounds. There are several reasons for this pattern of differentiation. Although all or almost all of the personnel in the urban system are urban bred, a large proportion of the rural personnel also come from urban homes. Teachers in urban schools are better educated and, for the most part, are drawn from a higher socioeconomic class than their rural school counterparts, but their relative status in the local community is lower. The rural teacher-whether of rural or urban origin-enjoys a high social status in the community to which he is assigned and lives as well as, or better than, other members of the community. The urban-bred teachers who make up the entire urban teaching corps, on the other hand, frequently find it necessary to live in poor housing in undesirable localities and to mix with social classes lower than those to which they have been accustomed. Within the rural teaching corps, the country bred are likely to see teaching both as a lifetime career and as a means of upward social movement. The city bred are more likely to regard teaching as a transitional occupation. They often foresee a lack of opportunity in the urban labor market and secure scholarships in rural normal schools in the hope of ultimately securing a supervisory assignment in the rural system, an appointment to a normal school staff, a position with one of the peasant syndicates, or entry into the political arena. Others expect to remain in the countryside a few years and then to return to the city and establish themselves in other urban occupations. The Aymara and Quechua young people who enter normal school directly from the farm are considerably changed by their years at normal school. Spanish has been spoken, the curriculum has been urban inspired, and the values of urban schoolmates have been at least partially assimilated. As a consequence of this process of change, the peasant normal school graduate accepting his first teaching assignment is no longer regarded as fully a part of the rural community. His social status is superior to that of the temporary or assimilated teacher, but this status has been achieved at the cost of becoming to some extent an outsider who is neither of the country nor of the town. It is significant, however, that these teachers think of themselves as normal school graduates (normalistas) rather than as qualified teachers. Although they make up a minority of the rural teaching corps, the normal school graduates are the leaders. They represent an elite of the only permanent representatives of the central government in the countryside and, as such, play a significant role in the integration of the countryside into the national life. Their collateral work in community development activities is often opposed by local peasant syndicates, which tend to regard them as competitors. University professors are appointed by the rectors. In 1968 fewer than 100 of the nearly 2,000 people engaged in university teaching were women. The teaching staff consists for the most part of professional men who devote a few hours daily or weekly to teaching. Inadequate salaries and chronic irregularities in the academic schedule have contributed to the prevalence of part-time university teaching, which is customary in most of the Latin American institutions of higher learning. The administration of President Banzer announced its intention of establishing a program that would encourage more university teachers and researchers to work on a full-time basis and its belief that the provision of the 1972 university reform legislation for concentrating particular fields of study in particular universities would increase the opportunities for full-time employment.