Cuba: Free Education Costs Very Expensive Cuba: Free Education Costs Very Expensive

Cuba: Free Education Costs Very Expensive

ROBERTO ALVAREZ QUIÑONES

Free education as a "genuine work of the revolution", together with public health, formed the advertising flagship with which Fidel Castro sold the world the "advantages" of the superior socialist society over the decadent capitalist system.

It was all a farce. The commander took credit for the honors, but it was Uncle Boris from the Kremlin who paid the bills, with subsidies of some $3 billion annually. The unproductive "revolutionary" economy was incapable of sustaining those expenses, far beyond its means. When the USSR disappeared, the great lie fell apart.

Let's stop at education. To screw himself into power as a supposed benefactor of the Cuban people and a paradigm of the Latin American left, and to indoctrinate millions of children and adolescents, Castro I used much of the Soviet money on social spending instead of investing it in economic development, raising the level of people's life and assume social expenses without begging for foreign money. "Free" education exceeds the monthly minimum wage by 70%

Economists residing on the island have shown that in 2020 each student on the island cost the State 4,740 pesos (197 dollars), but that 44% of that expense was financed with the discount of 2,100 pesos in the year ($87.50) from their salary. each Cuban worker annually. Each one of them, with children or not, had to give the State two and a half full days of work to pay for “free” studies.

On top of that, given the terrible quality of teaching, parents had to pay about 250 pesos (12 dollars) a month to the “repasadores” so that their children really learn something.

To this we must add snacks, uniforms, shoes, books and notebooks, cakes, candies, croquettes and snacks for "activities", as well as gifts to the teacher so that he treats the child well and approves it, and other expenses. . According to calculations by economists residing on the island, in total, in 2020 a student in Cuba cost a family between 1,200 and 1,400 pesos ($58) per month on average.

Incredibly, this expense exceeded the current minimum wage in Cuba 2020 by 70%, of 400 pesos ($17 dollars) per month. Not even Kafka could have imagined something like that. In other words, a father who only earns the minimum wage has no way of paying for his son's studies, but instead deals in the street to earn additional pesos.

I put examples to better evaluate that Castroist absurdity. Let's imagine that a Brazilian father, with his minimum wage of 207 dollars in 2020, sending his son to school would have cost him 352 dollars a month; that it would have cost a Bolivian with a $308 minimum wage $524 dollars, or a Costa Rican $886, that is, $365 above his minimum wage of $521 per month.

The diaspora largely pays for education

And that in 2021 gets worse in a bad way. With monetary reunification, the cost of education must be multiplied by 5 in proportion to the salary increase. This year, instead of deducting 2,100 pesos from each worker, they will deduct 10,500 pesos in the year, that is, $437 dollars. That means that now a father and a mother with minimum wage, and without remittances from abroad, their son in school costs half of what they earn in their workplaces.

Does anyone know of anything like it in any other part of the civilized world? In other words, the "worm" abroad, the so-called "Miami Mafia", is the one that makes it possible to cover the expenses of millions of Cubans for the advertised "free" education. What does the Castro government do as a gesture of gratitude and reciprocity? Insult her and defame her daily. It is the continuity of the fidelista-guevarista ethics.

The last straw is that in a list with more than 200 countries and territories around the world, published in 2019 by the World Bank and disseminated by UNESCO, Cuba appears, with an economy in perennial crisis, as one of the 4 countries with the highest percentage of its GDP dedicated to Education, with a percentage that ranges between 10% and 12.8%.

Excess non-productive spending impoverishes Cuba

Does that mean that Cuba is a power in Education? No, it simply reveals that the Castro regime spends much more in that social sphere than its precarious economy supports. The origin of this distortion was that Castroism got used to financing those colossal non-sustainable nationally with money from the Kremlin, and later from Venezuela. And now for reasons of political "prestige" it maintains that unbearable expense so as not to deflate before the part of the world community that still swallows its propaganda.

The regime also dedicates another 10%-11% of GDP to Public Health (the WHO recommends 6% as optimal). This explains, among other reasons, the decapitalization on the island, where the rate of investment in the economy is barely 7%-8% of GDP (construction of infrastructure, means of production, productive services, technology, etc.), while in the rest of Latin America the average investment rate ranges between 18% and 25%.

And there is something key, no country should dedicate a higher percentage of its GDP to social spending than to the economy, because it cannot afford it, or it loses capital. If it does, a large public debt is generated that destabilizes the economy, stagnation of standard of living, shortage of supply to meet consumer demand, a devaluation and a high rate of inflation. In short, social spending above the capacity of the economy is a brake that impoverishes the country.

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That is why spending on Education in the European Union spends 4.7% of its GDP on Education, countries classified as High Income spend 4.9%, Middle Income (4.4%), Low Income (4.1%), and Very Poor (3.4 %). Canada dedicates 5.3%, France (5.5%), Switzerland (5.1%), Costa Rica (7.0%), Honduras (6.1%), Argentina (5.5%, Spain (4.1%).

Become a doctor or engineer with 5 pesos a month

The Castro lie goes much further. Hardly anyone on the island knows that in 1958, according to the Statistical Yearbook of Cuba, there were 7,567 free public primary schools and 869 private schools. In other words, 88.5% of the schools were free, and of them, 1,206 were in the countryside.

Secondary schools were also free (only a tiny tuition fee was paid), with advanced baccalaureate plans; normal schools for teachers, home schools, normal schools for kindergarten, commerce, fine arts, surveying, arts and crafts, journalism, technological institutes and others.

Less is known in Cuba today that until 1959 a young high school graduate could enroll in any career he liked and graduate as a doctor, engineer, etc. at the University of Havana with only 5 pesos a month. Tuition cost 60 pesos a year, to be paid in three installments. The author of this article keeps receipts (blue) for his 1959 Business Science tuition payments.

Conclusion, socialist education in Cuba is not free but so expensive that Cuban families cannot afford it if they do not receive money from the diaspora, or dedicate part of the money they need to acquire the basic survival basket to the study of their children.

(Alvarez Quiñones is a writer, journalist, and historian. For four decades he has written on economic, political, historical and social issues. They have published nine books. Specialized in Latin America and the Cuban reality. He lives in Southern California).

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