Cuba to guarantee each high school graduate a place in 2020

HAVANA, Cuba, Mar 3 (ACN) Despite limitations that Cuba is facing due to the U.S. blockade, the state will guarantee this year a college place for every high school graduate, which is unprecedented in the sector.

This was announced by Rene Sanchez, director of Admissions and Job Placement at the Ministry of Higher Education (MES by its Spanish acronym), who also announced that 91,609 places will be granted, more than 3,600 compared to last year.
He specified the most benefited fields are technical, health, pedagogical and agricultural, and that the biggest increase is in the short cycle higher education level, where 10,736 places will be granted for the full time course and 4,405 for the distance learning one.
This year, the priority of MES is to reward talent, he said, and also announced that although the university entry process maintains its basic characteristics, some actions will be incorporated to recognize the students with the best results and to encourage them to attend the most demanding degrees in society.
As part of these changes, the best graduates of each family of specialties in Technical and Professional Education in the province will be allowed to continue their higher studies directly, that is, without entrance exams, both in the full time course and in the meeting ones.
Another new feature is that university administrations will have the option of approving the re-entry for the next academic year of students who have dropped out in any academic year, in vacancies in the degree courses both in the meeting program and in the higher technical one that have not been covered, as long as they do not displace another applicant who has not entered university.
For the assignment of short cycle degrees, priority will be given to those who passed the entrance exams that applied for or did not reach any of their 10 options, Sanchez noted.
Those who are in pre-university studies at universities to access the Pedagogical, Agricultural, Basic Sciences, and other exceptional courses of study will benefit from passing the entrance exams, the education official concluded.