translated from Spanish: Welfare Universities still without campuses, no clarity in expenses: Coneval

In his first report to the town of April 5, 2020, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that 15 thousand students were already studying at the new universities of the Benito Juárez Wellness, one of the main programs of his government, although until that time there was no information even about the direction of the supposed campuses to be able to verify it.
Now, with the recent evaluation of the program carried out by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) it is confirmed that the first campuses began to be built in November 2019 and received students at temporary venues before having ready to identify the problem that the program intends to solve, analysis of the relevance of the races, headquarters, operating guidelines, expenditure or evaluation; elements that in some cases are still pending this year.
The Coneval also acknowledged as a success that the program seeks to “develop the pedagogical proposal based on the social, cultural and economic needs of the regions”, and considers the educational proposal as “innovative”, as it takes into account the inequalities in knowledge acquired during high school and therefore, at the beginning of the careers a diagnostic assessment and a course of knowledge recovery is carried out.
Read: Teachers from Welfare Universities report irregularities in payments and hires
However, the problem is that it is not landed. The design of the program that includes identifying the problem to identify whether and why, the type of population to which it will be targeted and, above all, the objectives it intends to achieve and the measurement of them to determine whether it will actually achieve a benefit is not yet clear.
The faults
In December 2019, days after taking office, President López Obrador presented the program of 100 Universities of Welfare in what would be the first campus in the Escuela Normal el Mexe, which had been closed in 2004 and which would be in charge of the Ministry of Public Education.
Animal Politics made dozens of requests for transparency to know the project, but the recurring response was “non-existent” of the information. It is now confirmed that it was, because the “Diagnosis of the U083 program. Benito Juárez García Universities for Welfare Program,” was made until June 2019, explains the Coneval in its evaluation.
In the diagnosis, the programs should establish what are the causes and effects of the problem that is sought to be addressed, but in this case some of the data presented do not include the sources of information and others are not up-to-date. Nor does it “distinguish between population groups that could present the problem on a higher average and there is no analysis of the evolution of the problem over time.”
Although information on the universities website already has information regarding curricula, not all are certified, and although the municipalities where the campuses will be listed, they still do not place the precise ground where they will be, even though they already report young people enrolled by class.
“The diagnosis mentions the areas of study in which the careers to be taught on the campuses are focused; however, there is no mention of what these will be, how long they will be defined, or how the priority survival needs of the communities from which careers are allocated at each university will be determined.”
And while the program has made progress in registering some of the careers for obtaining an official certification and validity, they have not achieved it with all, therefore, “this situation puts at risk the possibility of issuing degrees and professional certificates of the students who are currently enrolled in a University that coordinates the intervention”.
On the decision of where the 100 campuses would open, the Program Coordinating Agency, led by Raquel Sosa, reported the selected municipalities, but of them, “only 36 meet the assumption of being located in locations that have between 15,000 and 45,000 inhabitants”, main element this decision.
In addition, although activities for the installation and/or rehabilitation of 85 schools would have already begun at the time of the report, “there is little clarity on the criteria that were used for the designation of the amount per project, procedures in the purchase of materials and the recruitment of staff”.
Read: Young Building the Future: No one Verifies That Fellows Are Trained, Says Coneval
The program also offers that those young people whocommunities away from the campus may be welcomed into the homes of families living near universities, but so far there are no precise guidelines regarding “what are the mechanisms that the program will use to identify families who want to collaborate with the program in the accommodation of young people in municipalities? How will the student’s privacy, monetary expenses and security be ensured?” the Coneval questions.
In addition, the program defines as its objective “contributing to social policy by incorporating people with finished bachelor’s degrees to undergraduate studies relevant to the economic and social development of localities, municipalities and regions in poverty and marginalization”.
But the Coneval warns that this is “a greater objective to which the program contributes and its achievement is not controlled by those responsible for the intervention”, as the program is about offering higher education option in areas of high marginalization.
The objective that should be sought would be the egress (terminal efficiency) of the young beneficiaries of the Universities, since “it constitutes a more far-reaching result with documented effects on the income levels and status of labour formality of the population; while “access” to university studies is seen as a means of achieving results that translate into better opportunities, although it is essential, “access on its own does not guarantee the transformation of the social and economic conditions of the population”.
The Assessment
According to the General Law on Social Development, all social programs carried out by the Federation, as part of its social policy, must be subject to evaluations to determine their effectiveness by the Coneval.
Read: Coneval sees failures in AMLO’s flagship programs; government ignores recommendations
Thanks to this legal obligation, citizens have learned that, for example, the National Crusade against Hunger, the main strategy against poverty under President Enrique Peña Nieto, did not actually combat hunger.
He has also evaluated Progresa, which worked in the six-year-elm of Ernesto Zedillo, then changed the name to Oportunidades in the government of Vicente Fox, and to Prospera with Enrique Peña Nieto. All, poverty combat programs with minor design changes.
And while the evaluations warned of the benefits or advances, they also permanently warned about improvements to avoid client and political use, as the book “The Progress-Opportunities-Prospera 20 years after its creation” warns.
The Design Assessment reports with fieldwork 2019-2020 presented on Monday, are the first revisions made by the Coneval to the programs of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has focused his policy just on social programs, especially those of direct money delivery.
The reports apply a number of methodologies to evaluate programs and make recommendations for improvement. However, in some cases, such as with Welfare Universities, program officials rejected the evaluation on the grounds that evaluators do not understand the programs and are prejudiced.
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Original source in Spanish

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