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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 22, 1987)
K I) SK»«;iO hORANTKS SV(,M \ Trying to rise above Third World povorty: Strolling across IJNAM's sprawling campus i n»i|n on i m-1 ami puses anu out ui t ne i ray i ne si uaents were allowed to strike. They organized two massive rallies in the capi tal s Zocalo (central square*—and, without suffering one arrest or injury, they forced UN AM rector Jorge ('arpi/.o to suspend indefi nitely his proposed reforms. "This was a great success for the student movement," says Imanol Ordorika, a 2H-year-old physics student, above all, because we students had suffered 15 years of consecutive defeats in the universities." It began as a rather parochial, ivory-tower dispute between university bureaucrats and defiant students. From its founding in 15al until tin* late 1960s, the national university had been regard ed as the country's pre-eminent institution of higher education, a sort of Harvard, t'altech and MIT rolled into one. Five of the last seven Mexican presidents (de la Madrid included (graduated f rom t he l N AM, and most of de la Madrid’s cabinet ministers are fellow alumni During a 40-year span that began in the earls 1900s, the l NAM evolved into a kind of academic factory cranking out the Unions of managers, technicians, profes sionals and bureaucrats Mexico needed to modernize itseconomvand pull itselfout of Third World poverty. When the 80-building UNAM campus opened in the mid-1950s, the student body stood at 38,400. Including students who attend 14 IN AM-chartered high schools in Mexico City, the university’s enrollment now hovers around 840,000. Many of the I’NAM’s current problems can be blamed on its bloated size. The university’s budget has failed to keep pace with the school’s growth. Government subsidies underwrite 95 percent of the budget, and skidding oil prices in recent years have forced sharp cuts in public-sector spending. Successive UNAM budgets have felt the ax. No money: That hastranslated intooutdat ed text books and a decaying physical plant; the school’s central library was closed for nearly a year because there was no money for repairs. Meager faculty salaries of be tween $250 and $400 a month force most tenured professors to moonlight. Once a ticket toa rewardingand well-paying job, a UNAM diploma has lost much of its value amid the country s worst economic crisis in 50 years, so most Mexican families who can afford to now send their children to expensive, privately run universities instead. UN AM’s current student body is largely-drawn from lower-middle-class families. Named to the UNAM’s top post in January 1985, law professor Jorge C arpi/.osoon realized t hat sound hing had to be done about the once proud university. Last yearC'arpi/.osubmitted an unflinching diagnosis” that shocked prominent alumni. The rector disclosed, among other findings, that fewer than half of the undergraduates who entered the UNAM between 1972 and 1981 completed their courses of study and that nine out of 10 graduate students were flunking out Though t he cost to t he school of educating a graduate student for one year totaled S310, that student was liable for a tuition payment of less than 25 cents. So last fall. Car pizo proposed a sweeping package of reforms that would have hiked fees for gradu ate st udent standardized examsand eliminated automatic ad mis sion forgraduatesofthe 14 UNAM-chartered high schools. A quasi Activists Abroad Whether they were fighting to blink tuition hikes or for freedom of the national press, students around the world made their voices heard this year. (From left) A n tigovernmen t studen ts rioted in Seoul; in Pans, marchers were peaceful; rallies led by leftists in Ma drid turned violent; Chi nese demonstrators sparked a repressive backlash. ANTIIONV SI \l' BLACK ST\K I>m \l Kh ■) Nil INK I* \1{|* HCII In limn I'