Academics and students are warning of a major crisis in Venezuelan higher education as the country slips deeper into political chaos.

Problems of inadequate funding, low salaries and limited access to journals are fuelling a brain drain of scholars right across Latin America, according to?recent reports. But sector leaders say that, at a time of constant public protest against the government of President Nicol¨¢s Maduro, and even helicopter attacks on government buildings, the situation in Venezuela is in a class of its own.

Claudio Bifano, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela and?former president of the Venezuelan Academy of Science, believes that the country¡¯s universities are suffering from ¡°the most severe crisis in the past 50 years¡±. Government policies have focused on producing large numbers of graduates, he said, without regard to standards, and on ¡°train[ing] the professionals that the revolution supposedly needs for its political purposes¡±.

While the government has opened a number of new universities in its own ideological image, the traditional autonomous institutions ¡°suffer severe financial restrictions and legal constraints imposed by people who do not recognise the importance of research and higher education¡±, said Professor Bifano, who added that private colleges are ¡°also legally harassed by the government¡±.

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Amid ¡°uncontrolled violence¡±, Professor Bifano continued, academics in Venezuela work for ¡°probably the lowest [salaries] in Latin America¡± and find it ¡°increasingly difficult to do research of reasonable quality¡± because of factors such as ¡°the deterioration of all sorts of infrastructure for research¡± and ¡°the cost of laboratory equipment and reagents¡±. It is small wonder, he said, that many ¡°very good teachers and scientists [seek] to emigrate to practically any country that may offer them better living and working conditions¡±.

Political unrest in Venezuela is being fuelled by the poor performance of the country¡¯s economy, which is leading to severe shortages of medicine and food, as well as to increasing lawlessness. Mr Maduro was re-elected in 2013 on a platform of using income from Venezuela¡¯s natural resources to reduce inequality, but falling oil prices have forced the curtailment of social programmes.

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Rafael Moreno, who is now doing a master¡¯s in nanomaterials at the University of Bristol, was until last year an undergraduate in Venezuela, where his ¡°generation knows only shortages and cuts¡±.?The current crisis, in his view, has been a long time coming. He remembers how his ¡°university stopped paying for access to different journals¡± in 2008-09 and notes that ¡°academic productivity has been in clear decline from the mid-2000s¡±. Professors, who ¡°would see their alumni get better salaries as soon as they graduate¡±, ¡°need more than one job to survive, while also praying that no one in their families falls ill¡±.

Although ¡°many universities in the country have been in an intermittent state of strikes for years¡±, Mr Moreno added, this has now come to a head. His home town University of Carabobo, in Valencia, is ¡°commonly stopped in its daily activities by the face-covered troublemakers known as capuchas¡±.

¡°When the university is not on strike, these gangs with clear political affiliations ¨C promoting government intervention in the university ¨C stop the university¡¯s activities by means of violence,¡± Mr Moreno said.

An equally gloomy picture is provided by Benjamin Scharifker, rector of the private Metropolitan University in Caracas.

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Lack of access to foreign currency, a consequence of tight state controls, he said, means that ¡°maintaining or buying equipment, materials or reagents for laboratories, including vehicles for transportation, is practically impossible¡±. The problems are amplified by inadequate levels of funding, which result in ¡°nearly all resources in public and private universities [being] spent on salaries, with little or nothing left for maintenance, renovations [and] new facilities¡±.

University leaders are also constrained, explained Professor Scharifker, by the fact that ¡°opening new undergraduate and graduate programmes requires government authorisation. No new programmes have been authorised in private universities for a decade, and very few in public universities not under the direct control of the government.¡±?

Professor Scharifker is unimpressed by the ¡°parallel system of universities directly managed by the government, [which] operate in old facilities, such as buildings seized by the government from oil companies, and do not meet standards either in teaching or research¡±.

On his own campus, daily protests are met with ¡°continuous repression by police and the military¡±, all of which takes its ¡°toll in loss of lives, injuries and arbitrary detention of students¡±. In addition, there are many incidents of theft, students are often ¡°beaten and deprived of their mobile phones or laptop computers¡± and universities have been ¡°forced to close night classes¡±. Given such episodes, Professor Scharifker said, it is hardly surprising that many students abandon their degrees ¡°out of fear¡±.

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matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com