Universitätsverlag Göttingen Jesús Humberto Pineda Olivieri The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion Biographical Trajectories of Students from Disadvantaged Environments in Venezuela Jesús Humberto Pineda Olivieri The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Published by Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2017 Jesús Humberto Pineda Olivieri The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion Biographical Trajectories of Students from Disadvantaged Environments in Venezuela Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2017 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de Address of the Author Jesús Humberto Pineda Olivieri Email: jesupino@hotmail.com This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law. It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and the Göttingen University Catalogue (GUK) at the Göttingen State and University Library (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de). The license terms of the online version apply. Set and layout: Jesús Humberto Pineda Olivieri Cover design: Petra Lepschy Cover picture: Graphical representation of the difference between equality and equity by Barbara Mendez Mendez (Okadosa) © 2017 Universitätsverlag Göttingen http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de ISBN: 978-3-86395-310-2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2017-1027 Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. 11 Chapter 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 15 1.1 The genesis of the research project .................................................................... 15 1.2 Research questions and methodology ................................................................ 19 1.3 Structure of the dissertation ................................................................................. 21 Chapter 2. Inclusion to (higher) education ..................................................................... 25 2.1 Locating my research within the field of sociology of education .................. 26 2.1.1 Sociology of education and the study of inequality .................................. 28 2.1.2 Inequality is not just a class issue: Other categories and current debates ......................................................................................................... 30 2.2 The debate of educational inequality in Latin America ................................... 31 2.3 The Inclusion Era .................................................................................................. 34 2.3.1 The inclusion paradigm in education .......................................................... 36 The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion 6 2.3.2 How did the inclusion paradigm reach the higher education arena? ..... 38 2.4 The debate on higher education inclusion in Latin America .......................... 44 2.4.1 Funding schemes ............................................................................................ 45 2.4.2 Affirmative action (also known as reserved admission or quotas) ......... 45 2.4.3 Compensatory courses................................................................................... 47 2.4.4 Creation of new universities ......................................................................... 48 2.4.5 Creation of parallel systems .......................................................................... 49 2.5 Summary of the chapter ....................................................................................... 50 Chapter 3. Theoretical Embedding .................................................................................. 51 3.1 Education and social inequality: The premises of Pierre Bourdieu ............... 51 3.1.1 Forms of capital .............................................................................................. 53 3.1.2 Habitus ............................................................................................................. 64 3.2 Us vs. them: Norbert Elias and the relation between established and outsiders ................................................................................................... 67 3.2.1 Elias approach: Figurational sociology ....................................................... 67 3.2.2 The theory of established- outsiders’ relations (Elias and Scotson, 1994) 68 3.2.3 Why do I use Elias to analyze higher education inclusion reforms? ...... 71 Chapter 4. Methodological framework ............................................................................ 75 4.1 Biographical research ............................................................................................ 76 4.2 Data collection ....................................................................................................... 78 4.2.1 Biographical Narrative Interviews following Rosenthal (1995; 2011) ... 78 4.2.2 Sampling strategies ......................................................................................... 83 4.3 Data analysis: Biographical case reconstruction ............................................... 86 4.3.1 Analysis of biographical data (data of events) ........................................... 86 4.3.2 Text and thematic field analysis (sequential analysis of textual segments from the self-presentation in the interview)......................... 87 4.3.3 Reconstruction of the case history (life as lived) ....................................... 87 4.3.4 Detailed analysis of individual textual locations ........................................ 88 4.3.5 Contrast of the life story (narrated life) and life history (lived life) ........ 88 4.3.6 Formation of types (typology) ...................................................................... 88 4.4 Further methods .................................................................................................... 89 4.4.1 Short-Term Multi-Sited Participant Observations in Venezuela ............ 89 4.4.2 Ethnographic interviews ............................................................................... 90 Contents 7 4.4.3 Social networks and other unofficial information sources ...................... 91 Chapter 5. (Higher) education expansion as a sociopolitical issue............................. 93 5.1 Background............................................................................................................. 94 5.2 The Fifth Republic: 1999 –2013: Venezuelan’s Participatory Democracy .. 100 5.2.1 Understanding the Bolivarian revolution ................................................. 100 5.2.2 The beginning of a new paradigm of social policy in Venezuela ......... 102 5.2.3 Venezuela’s radical turn and its consequences ........................................ 106 5.3 The Bolivarian Missions ..................................................................................... 111 Chapter 6. Municipalization of higher education through Mission Sucre ............... 123 6.1 Mission Sucre ....................................................................................................... 127 6.2 An ethnographic approach to Mission Sucre .................................................. 132 6.2.1 Access to a polarized field........................................................................... 132 6.2.2 A new argot ................................................................................................... 132 6.3 Summary of the chapter ..................................................................................... 149 Chapter 7. Case reconstructions and typology ............................................................. 151 7.1 Type A: Chance seekers/Opportunity driven................................................. 152 7.1.1 Case reconstruction: Luis Jiménez............................................................. 152 7.1.2 Case reconstruction: Petra Pérez ............................................................... 190 7.2 Type B: The overwhelmed/the helpless .......................................................... 226 7.2.1 Case reconstruction: Yenni García ............................................................ 227 Chapter 8. Results: The biographical meaning of inclusion to higher education ... 261 8.1 Implication of the creation of Mission Sucre .................................................. 262 8.1.1 Background ................................................................................................... 262 8.1.2 Empirical findings ........................................................................................ 262 8.1.3 Further discussion of findings .................................................................... 265 8.2 The inclusion experience of Mission Sucre participants ............................... 273 8.2.1 Background ................................................................................................... 273 8.2.2. Empirical findings ....................................................................................... 275 8.2.3 Further discussion ........................................................................................ 277 8.3 Theoretical discussion ......................................................................................... 282 8.4 Limitations of the research project ................................................................... 292 The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion 8 8.5 The road ahead? ................................................................................................... 294 8.5.1 Future research suggestions ........................................................................ 294 8.5.2 Epilogue ......................................................................................................... 295 Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 301 References .......................................................................................................................... 307 List of Tables Table 1. Typology of social exclusion definitions ....................................................... 35 Table 2. Trow’s typology of higher education systems .............................................. 39 Table 3. Interview partners who participated in the study......................................... 84 Table 4. List of Missions and their goal by the time of writing .............................. 120 List of Graphs and Figures Graph 1. Venezuelan states visited: Zulia, Lara, Carabobo, Guárico, Miranda Anzoategui, Bolivar .......................................................................................................... 80 Graph 2. Higher Education enrollment rates in Venezuela between 1998 and 2012 ................................................................................................. 130 Graph 3. Territorial Distribution of Higher Education Institutions in 2008 ....... 131 Figure 1. Computer room at Aldea Universitaria in Carabobo ............................... 133 Figure 2. Study programs at one Aldea Universitaria in Bolivar ............................. 134 Figure 3. Poster of the I cohort of Comprehensive Community Doctors at one community hospital in Guárico........................................................................ 136 Figure 4. Presentations of one community project at one Aldea Universitaria in Miranda ........................................................................................................................ 137 Figure 5. Community Project in Carabobo ................................................................ 138 Figure 6. Community dentist at Aldea Universitaria................................................. 138 Figure 7. School used as Aldea Universitaria in Bolivar state ................................. 141 Figure 8. Classroom at a school where Mission Sucre students take classes in different Venezuelan states....................................................................................... 141 Figure 9. Aldea Universitaria built for Mission Sucre exclusively........................... 142 Figure 10. Community Hospital in Guárico state where the Comprehensive Medicine Study Program is offered ............................................................................. 144 Figure 11. Multipurpose building where different Missions coexist in Bolivar .... 145 Figure 12. Expropiated/invaded building that operate as Aldea Universitaria in Carabobo ..................................................................................................................... 146 Figure 13. Political positioning of Mission Sucre ...................................................... 147 Figure 14. Invitation to participate at the University Electoral Campaign Command to support Hugo Chávez’s reelection in 2012 ........................................ 147 Figure 15. Poster of the graduation of 8.152 medical doctors of the alternative Comprehensive Community Medicine program ....................................................... 149 Acknowledgements It would be an illusion to expect that I can mention all those individuals who supported, inspired and/or motivated me over the course of this 5-year doctoral journey. There is a popular self- help quote that goes “life is what happens while you are busy making oth er plans” or something like that. Indeed, life happens in unexpected ways while you are trying to develop a research project. During my PhD, many people entered and left my life, some passed away, some were born. The world and my country changed, so did my family and my friend circles. I had many satisfactions as well as disappointments and frustrations. Fortunately, the dissertation became something stable in the fast and changing life that I have in Germany. It provided me with something to hold on to during bad times and to look forward to during good ones. In the following pages, I will mention some people, though, whose existence around me made this possible for a variety of reasons. This dissertation would not have been possible without my doctoral supervisor or as they say in Germany, my doctoral mother. I am almost speechless to express my appreciation to Prof. Dr. Gabriele Rosenthal from The Center of Methods in Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen. When I look at what became of that initial proposal I had, I think that I will always be indebted for her trust, patience, consideration and support. The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion 12 Another person without whom I would have probably given up is Prof. Dr. Georg Krücken. I was in the preliminary planning process when we first met and he embraced my ideas and made me feel as a member of his team along the way. The fact that I could join the PhD Colloquium at INCHER-Kassel on regular basis and that I had a workstation in the institute were two necessary conditions for me to succeed. I would also like to thank Dr. Thomas Kailer, who was responsible for making sure that I remained there despite many changes and transitions. Being a member of two research institutes was quite an honor and a privilege for me through all these years. I can proudly say that I was surrounded by the best of the best in higher education and biographical research respectively. Without the support that I received from my colleagues (and friends), I would not have reached these results. The Center of Methods offers a doctoral educational approach that is based on cooperative learning through a mentoring program, a doctoral colloquium and regular research workshops. The following colleagues deserve my appreciation for having read (and constructively criticized) most sections of my dissertation. Thanks to Eva Bahl, Hendrik Hinrichsen, Miriam Schäfer, Nicole Witte, Arne Worm, Ahmed Albaba, Johannes Becker, Dominique Heyberger, Tina Maschmann, Katinka Meyer, Niklas Radenbach, Anna Ransiek, Johanna Sigl, Ute Zillig, Ina Alber and Rosa Brandhorst. I did not only profit from their intellectual sharpness and critical comments, but also from their work. At the INCHER-Kassel I found a second home and without the great colleagues and friends that I had by my side, it could have been a less pleasant experience than it was. Thanks for your feedback (even if I could not answer many questions), coffee breaks, PhD Colloquia and so many lunches, dinners, barbecues, and so on to Georgios Athanassiou, Rosalba Badillo, Janosch Baumann, Michael Borggräfe, Nicolai Götze, Anna Kosmützky, Lars Müller, Christian Schneijderberg, Tim Seidenschnur, Vera Wolf and Isabel Steinhardt. There are some individuals, who left the institute to pursue other life and professional paths. I am greatly indebted for their support at the beginning of this journey: Peter Kretek and Žarko Dragšić. The administrative staff of the INCHER-Kassel also deserve my appreciation, given their willingness to help me in many ways. I financed this research project on my own, which means that I must acknowledge my sources of financial funding for the successful culmination of this endeavor. During most of my time as a PhD candidate I worked at the International Office of the University of Kassel. My work there was a perfect bridge between research and practice. As a higher education researcher I profited from my experience with international students from the whole world. I would like to thank all my colleagues but especially those who made sure that my financial stability was never compromised: Carmen Muresan, Sarah Guttenhöfer and Anke Ickler. The Welcome Centre would have not been as successful as it is Acknowledgements 13 without our tutors and student assistants. Thanks to all those who took over my duties while I was away at conferences or presentations of some sort. Apart from my work at the University of Kassel I worked as a freelance Spanish trainer for Finer English and Natives. I would like to thank the team of both companies as well as my students from the companies that I worked for. For confidentiality issues I cannot mention their names here. Another project that I passionately worked for was the GeTIn program, which can be understood as an international cooperation program for capacity building between Mexico and Germany. Thanks to Lydia Raesfeld and Rosalba Badillo for having given me the chance to participate in such a wonderful experience, from which I profited both professionally and personally to a large extent. I would also like to thank the rest of the team and the participants for making me forget sometimes that I was actually working. I feel Mexico as a third home now and I can undisputedly argue that I have a strong social capital there. When it comes to the development of the project it would not have been possible without all those individuals who opened their doors and encouraged me to deepen on the topic. First of all, the members of all the institutions that I visited who allowed me to learn and observe the work that is being carried out there. I cannot mention their names, due to anonymity concerns. I must also express my gratitude towards all the students who participated in my interviews. I spent years thinking and reflecting about our encounters and have listened to the recordings hundreds of times. It was a pleasure for me to treat their biographies as something precious and it was a great responsibility to be able to reconstruct the lives, struggles, dreams, frustrations and hopes that they went through for the purpose of answering my own research questions. Apart from the interview partners and staff of the universities that I explored I had the pleasure to share my views with a variety of experts about the topic. Thanks to María Cristina Parra Sandoval, Jochen Hoenow, Minerva D'Elía, Carmen García Guadilla, Leonardo Carvajal, Luis Fuenmayor Toro, and Ramón Uzcategui, among others. There are also some individuals who helped me during my field phases, with the transcription of interviews and the organization of my references. Thanks to Luz Arteaga, Karen Parra, Mariángel Olivieri, Elisa Mendoza, Tomás Medina and his family. Without the great effort of my editors, it would have been harder to understand what I mean. A special appreciation to David Grill, Leslie Kay and John Billings for proofreading hundreds of pages with the aim of detecting flaws, ambiguities and English usage problems. There are so many people who joined me through this path that I won’t be able to mention. I mean my friends, relatives and significant others who might have not contributed to the content of this work per se but without whom it would not have made sense to do this in the first place. If you read these lines and The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion 14 do not find your name there but you ever listened or challenged my ideas, you have deserved to be thanked, too. Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1 The genesis of the research project Historically, higher education used to be to prepare the elites to run any given society. Nowadays, it could be argued that this view has radically changed to perceiving higher education as some sort of a magical force with a variety of functions, uses and benefits for both individuals and society at large. One could ask how this paradigm shift occurred from a view on education to respond to society’s needs and to assure the maintenance of the status quo to a much more complex, individuals oriented and multidimensional vision. From the perspective of social inequality, the most debated issue when it comes to observing higher education expansion waves across the globe is whether or not the lack of access to higher education leads to poverty and underdevelopment or the other way around1 . In other words, there seems to be an expectation that offering access to higher education to groups that have been traditionally separated from this level of education would improve their social and financial position. This expectation has been partly a consequence of debates and statements spread by international organizations such as UNESCO, The World Bank and others. One could argue in 1 By this I refer to the common debate on whether people from disadvantaged environments are excluded from education because of their background or if they are precisely in that financial position due to their distance from education. The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion 16 these regards that one dogma (higher education must be only for the elite) was replaced by another one (higher education is a right). One can trace back some similarities (and differences) in different regions of the world where through different approaches higher education has been widened to include all groups. By doing this, the governments in charge of these reforms try to close gaps among social groups, eradicate poverty, and promote development. My dissertation seeks to address this issue in light of recent developments in Venezuela, where a major transformation of the system has been implemented since the early 2000s 2. The issues of social exclusion and access to (higher) education in Venezuela could be traced back to the colonial times. The university was an elitist institution within a complex social system based on castes 3. Given this historical context, the university had only a social function limited to training the few students coming from the economic and political elite to form part of either the clergy or the State (Parra et al., 2010). Eventually, the system started to open its doors for a variety of reasons, with the aim of effectively facing different historical and political challenges. My analysis suggests that the Venezuelan higher education system has gone through different sociopolitical phases in which it has been forced to fulfill different functions such as during the independence movements, the establishment of the new republic, the beginning of democracy and lately the Bolivarian revolution 4. My research deals with the last process of change, though, namely the transformation of the system between 1998 and 2013. One can observe nowadays a pragmatic approach to higher education for all with the coexistence of different kinds of institutions, a complex student body and staff as well as different ideas of what the university is for. However, the literature on the transformation of the Venezuelan university follows a quantitative logic in which different periods are compared in terms of the number of universities and students that were enrolled at a given time 5. My dissertation seeks to analyze the long process that certain social groups have gone 2 Note that this transformation is still ongoing. 3 During this period, social class was not based on economic capital but rather on race, color and privileges. The hierarchy was Blancos Peninsulares (Spaniards), Blancos Criollos (Spanish Americans), Blancos de orilla (Inmigrants from Spain), mixed races, Indios (American indigenous) and Negros (African slaves). This implies that once a person had a specific skin color or origin there was (or only limited) no social mobility. 4 In chapter 5, I explain in depth what the Bolivarian revolution is but for explanatory purposes one could briefly mention that the Bolivarian revolution is the name of the historical phase that started in 1998 with the rise of Hugo Chávez to power. 5 In general, the indicators used by the Bolivarian revolution highlight the dimensions of the reforms as well as the speedy effectiveness of the initiatives. Examples of this can be found with the literacy program “Mission Robinson”, which announced two years after its creation that Venezuela was a country free of illiteracy. Another example is the announcement that Venezuela is nowadays the fifth country in the world in higher education and the second in Latin America in terms of enrollment rates. Chapter 1. Introduction 17 through to gain access to (higher) education and the meaning that these experiences of exclusion and inclusion has for them. My interest in studying the Venezuelan higher education system started in 2 009 while I was doing my master’s in higher education research and development at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel) of the University of Kassel. During my time in Kassel, I joined several academic and non-academic debates about Latin America and engaged in discussions about Latin American phenomena from an international perspective. My academic interest developed into the analysis of higher education from a human capital perspective, which emphasized the value of a perso n’s education for his 6 skills, competencies and knowledge acquisition that eventually will lead to finding employment. This was the beginning of a process of comparison and reflection about higher education processes and challenges in developing countries. At this point of my analysis, I found a contradiction. Precisely in many Latin American countries there are many economic challenges, lack of industrial capacity and a high amount of informal workers without social security, which means that the higher education system must face roles different to the ones in developed societies. I wrote my master’s thesis on the transformation process that the Venezuelan higher education system had gone through since 1998 after the start of the Bolivarian revolution. One could summarize the transformation of the system, as I perceived it back then, in the following manner: a new legal framework for education 7, an accelerated increase of study places, new institutional schemes, new actors 8, free higher education for all as an explicit goal 9 and a parallel nature between mainstream and alternative systems 10. The transformation of the 6 Please note that my dissertation uses the masculine form in order to maintain the simplicity of the text for the reader but without implying an intended exclusion of women from my discourse. I had initially written his/her but during the editing process I found those formulations too complicated both for the reader and for me as a non-native writer. The debate on gender inclusive language has been an important development in both German and Spanish literature and daily use in the recent past. However, up to this point, there has not been a solution for this matter in the English language. 7 This includes a constitutional amendment, new education laws, a new Ministry of Higher Education, among others. 8 By this I mean not only the inclusion of non-traditional students for the Venezuelan higher education system but also a new generation of higher education staff. 9 In the last decades the proportion of private higher education institutions had progressively increased. 10 One must point out the fact that the higher educational system was divided into a traditional system and a newly established system that can be seen as an alternative even when it comes to the implementation of new management and execution processes that did not exist before the reforms. The Transformational Potential of Higher Education Inclusion 18 Venezuelan university 11, however, could not be analyzed as an educational phenomenon per se because of its importance in the framework of a radical sociopolitical process in the country and perhaps in the region. I noticed this fact when I conducted my first data collection phase in the country. In the framework of my research, I visited Venezuela and conducted interviews in different universities in Caracas, both the so-called traditional ones and the newly established. What I observed at the time was a process of massification, consistent with an ongoing transition from mass 12 to universal higher education throughout the globe, as Martin Trow (1973) had anticipated in the 70s. Something that surprised me, though, was the conflictive nature of this change process. I had been abroad for some time and by the time I went back to Venezuela for research purposes I had the impression that there were two parallel worlds and the same was true for the institutions I visited. Depending on who I talked to I would get a different picture of where the country was headed and that was precisely my interest at the time. Therefore, I was convinced that Venezuela was going through a different path compared to the mainstream higher education systems 13. Given the scope and the time constraints I only managed to explore the phenomenon and focused on the policies itself and their repercussions for a paradigm shift of higher education in the country. Using the metaphor of the chameleon 14 I can say that I had to learn how to interact with both extreme polarized interpretations of reality not only in informal conversations but also in the literature. I faced the conflict of trying to understand the change process of the higher education system while at the same time trying to make sense of the much more complex sociopolitical panorama. Something interesting was that during the analysis of data for my master’s thesis I found a com mon pattern in my interviews where people would talk about the value of being at the university as a personal achievement instead of an academic one. I, indeed, noticed a difference between students from different social class backgrounds. Whereas for middle and higher classes, going to the university was a taken-for-granted, logical step, it seemed to me that for a member from the lower classes it represented a dream. The perspective of this set of interviews contradicted my ideas about the professional and academic value of 11 This transformation is still ongoing but for analytical reasons I will be addressing in this dissertation what happened until 2013, which was my last empirical data collection phase in Venezuela. 12 According to García Guadilla (1991), Venezuela’s higher education system became a mass system by the 80s. For more information about this issue see chapter 2. 13 It is possible that this observation stems from my experience in the transformation that I had experienced in Europe in the framework of the Bologna Process where there was a commitment towards regional integration and unification of educational policy, whereas in Venezuela the educational system was in the middle of a polarized society both as a result and as a trigger of polarization. 14 I owe this idea to Prof. Dr. Anita Engel, who used it to describe her role as both a woman and a professor during a study on women in excellent research in Germany.