Hey everyone!
I write this post for all of you who does not live in Venezuela and does not know what is going on in here with public universities.
I'm a student in Universidad Simón Bolivar - USB (Simon Bolivar University). I'll explain to you a situation in which we've been for years now, but it's come to an extreme level this past September 18th when the trimester started.
The USB is a public university, it means the students does not pay anything to study, instead it is supposed to be maintained by the goverment, and the idea for this is that at the moment we graduate, we work for the country as a manner of retribution, of course this is not obligatory, but it would be the most normal thing stay in the country you lived your whole life and studied.
Obviously this does not apply in Venezuela because living here is madness, chaotic and dangerous... Basically impossible.
If you don't already know by now, the Venezuelan goverment is corrupt. They are thieves and don't invest in the sectors they are supposed to invest to make the country grow or at least stay stable, instead they prefer to keep all the money for them and that's when the budgetary problem enters in the universities.
I entered the USB in 2012, when I graduated high school.
In that time, the dinning room offered in the luncha plate of: soup, main dish, salad, dessert/fruit, bread and juice. All of that for 2.5 Bs. (I don't remember the equivalence in US dollars by that time, but right now it is crazy) and it was pretty good because you couldn't find anywhere anything like that at that price, but it was actually normal in the university because the government used to approved a decent budget to give the students and workers the food.
Over the years the economy went to waste , and so, the budget approved to the universities, resulting in an awful decadence. I'll show you a picture where the costs are explained (In spanish), it was published by the Federación de Centro de Estudiantes de la USB - FCEUSB (Federation of student center of the USB) in Twitter:
Up right: Picture of a full plate back in 2016.
Down right: Picture of the plate they can give us now with the budget the government approved.
A full plate costs: 10.947,06 Bs.
A full plate if the government gives us the protein costs: 7.294,72 Bs.
The budget they give us: 1.750 Bs.
I think the picture is very explicit.
This causes students to leave the university for ever or to work part time just to try to cost some food to keep studying. And it does not even help that much, because a work consumes a lot of time for the misery it can pay.
I said before that this trimester got worse the situation and I think the last picture showed very well why, because for the lunch, they can only offer us a plate of soup. But the picture that went a bit viral in here in the country and in the community, was the next I'm going to show you, it is from September 18th:
This is the "breakfast" the dinning room served the first day of the trimester: a soda cracker and a coffee (small). That's what we can get for the miserable budget the government approved for the USB.
When I entered the university, they used to serve sandwiches, arepas, pancakes, etc. Now it is practically nothing.
I hope you help me to get this post to as much people as possible just so you can know how bad the situation in the country is, an in my university, of course.
Please share and upvote. If you have anything to ask, do it, I'll answer with pleasure.
Thank you very much!!