Salvadoran University Struggles Against the Odds

Professors at Oscar Romero University in the poor, rural Chalatenango province of El Salvador face enormous challenges in educating their students. Many of the students are former combatants from both sides of the violent civil war that raged across El Salvador throughout the 1980s, often pitting neighbor against neighbor. During the war, the quality of elementary and secondary education suffered, so students at the university, which has a liberal admissions policy, often have educational deficits to overcome. To make matters worse, El Salvador’s economy is in recession, and the country has not yet recovered from the effects of a devastating 2001 earthquake.

Professors are paid "abysmally" in El Salvador, typically earning about $400 a month, according to Barbara Acosta, one of the founders of Oscar Romero University. Most professors at the university work part time, and many commute from the capital city of San Salvador, about an hour and a half away, where they hold other teaching positions. As a private institution, the university receives no government funding and operates mostly on income from tuition, a difficult proposition given the poverty of the student population. Tuition is about $40 a month, yet many students have trouble coming up with that amount in a country where half the population lives in poverty.

Despite these barriers, the university is growing steadily. It rose in 1994 literally out of the ashes of the war—one of the first tasks undertaken by the founders was clearing munitions shells from the farm property that would become the university’s campus—and now has four buildings and almost six hundred students. About sixty people have graduated from the institution, which offers two- and four-year programs in agronomy, agricultural engineering, law, education, and computer science. The institution’s mission is twofold: to offer educational opportunity to students traditionally excluded from higher education, and to help rebuild the poor, rural, and war-torn province of Chalatenango by producing graduates with the education and skills necessary to contribute to the local economy.

Remaining independent in the face of the strong ideological agendas in the region has been a challenge for the university, says Acosta. "A university by definition needs to be universal in its ideological approach and not become controlled by any political faction," she says.

Accreditation is the next challenge for the university. El Salvador’s system of higher education has changed rapidly in the last two decades. The closure of the country’s only public university for four years during the war and a widespread interest in rebuilding education after peace accords were signed in 1992 led to a proliferation of private colleges and universities, ranging from full-service academic institutions to storefront operations offering little of substance. With help from a team of researchers from Harvard University’s Institute for International Development, the country recently adopted both minimum required standards and optional accreditation standards.

For more information on Oscar Romero University, go to the university’s Web site <umoar.mnm.kent.edu>.

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