How Austerity Is Making It Harder And Harder To Get Educated In Puerto Rico

Earlier this year, social work student Coraly León arrived at her research assistant job at the University of Puerto Rico to find her salary abruptly cut in half due to budget cuts. “Not only do I have to find another job in order to support myself,” she told ThinkProgress, “but I still have to somehow complete my required 25 volunteer hours a week in order to graduate, on top of my research assistant work, on top of studying, on top of being an activist. I really don’t know if I can go on like this.”

León has managed, in a diminished capacity, to continue her research comparing the social work models of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. But one friend in her program, after losing her research funding, had to drop out and return to her family’s village. León worries many more could follow, like her friend Neftalí Sánchez Cordero who told ThinkProgress: “I depend on aid from the university. I work as a TA for 15 hours a week in order to pay my costs inside and outside of school. If I lose this work, I can’t continue my studies.”

The U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico is currently facing a $72 billion debt crisis fueled by Wall Street vulture funds, corruption, and wasteful spending. Now, the austerity the government has imposed to deal with the crisis has hit students especially hard. Deep, repeated cuts to public education have come at a time when the island already spends less per student than most states, and more than 45 percent of the population live in poverty.

The island’s hedge fund creditors are demanding further austerity, including firing more teachers, closing schools, and further cutting the budget of the University of Puerto Rico.

“Every year, a degree is a less accessible, especially for working-class families,” León said. “The university is about to make a substantial cut to its budget, which is going to dismantle the services we need as students. That’s coming at the same time the cost of living is going up — food, housing, transportation, books — everything we need to survive.”

A poster at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan reads, “Here we need more professors. Take back the UPR!”

CREDIT: ALICE OLLSTEIN

Aaron Gamaliel Ramos, a professor of Caribbean Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, bristles at the thought of U.S. hedge funds demanding cuts to his university.

“Education is so important that it should be free,” he told ThinkProgress. “It’s not a waste of money, it’s an investment in the future of the country.”

Ramos feels that Puerto Rico is trapped in a “clash of visions” between Latin America, where higher education has historically been free, and the U.S., where most students graduate deep in debt and professors have to scramble for research funds. Though tuition is much lower at the University of Puerto Rico than most U.S. universities, it’s high enough that 92 percent of students depend on financial aid, including Pell Grants, federal loans, and work-study programs.

“In my vision, students who are poor who meet the requirements shouldn’t have to pay a cent,” said Ramos. “Those who come from families with money should pay something, but everyone should be supported.”

To pay for this vision, he proposed raising taxes on foreign corporations and wealthy investors, who currently use the island as a tax haven.

But instead of taxing corporate profits, the struggling Puerto Rican government decided to implement policies that disproportionately target the poor. In July, they raised the sales tax to 11.5 percent — the highest rate of all U.S. states and territories. The country is also on the verge of raising the price of tap water in the middle of a brutal drought — in order to please its hedge fund bond holders.

Deep cuts have hit public transportation as well, and in San Juan some buses no longer run on certain days. Fares have climbed to 75 cents per ride, a burden for many of the island’s working poor and unemployed. For students who drive, like Francisco Santiago, a hike in the gas tax has made everything from getting to class to visiting his family in Guayama much more difficult.

“This is part of the whole neo-liberal model that’s being imposed on Puerto Rico: cutting social services from the people little by little,” he told ThinkProgress. “We have this debt, but not everyone is paying it. The poorest class is the one paying, and the middle class. Since our quality of life is getting worse, we have to fight not just for ourselves but for future generations of students.”

Student Coraly León walks by graffiti that reads, “Look into my unemployed face.”

CREDIT: ALICE OLLSTEIN

As the debt crisis worsens, the president of the University of Puerto Rico recently reassured local press: “The University is serving the country well, and you can see the evidence of that every day.”

But the students who spoke to ThinkProgress shared concerns that this may not be true if austerity continues. That’s why they held a 48-hour strike in May to protest the budget cuts, tuition hikes, and threats to the retirement benefits of faculty and staff. More and more, they see their fellow students graduating with debt into a job market with 12 percent unemployment. With their government defaulting on its debt and projecting its cash to dry up by this November, the students are calling on their U.S. mainland counterparts to stand with them in solidarity.

“The problems that workers, students and the poor are facing in the U.S. are the same that we face here in Puerto Rico: access to education for the poor and working-class,” Enrique Fortuño told ThinkProgress. “My message is that our fight is the same fight. In some cases, we’re even fighting the same people, the same multinational companies and banks who are exploiting us.”

Fortuño wants U.S. students to pressure Congress to approve a bill that would allow the island to restructure its crushing debt. Yet the Republican-controlled Congress has not shown any willingness to pass — or even take up — the bill. Puerto Rico’s sole member of Congress Pedro Pierluisi introduced the measure this year, but cannot vote on it even though he represents more than 3 million U.S. citizens.

“We can’t declare bankruptcy, but we also can’t get bailed out,” lamented León. “So we’re stuck in limbo, where our hands are tied and we can’t do anything.”

CREDIT: Alice Ollstein

Student activists at the University of Puerto Rico stand by a portrait of Antonia Martínez -- a student killed by police in 1970 while protesting the Vietnam War

by Alice Ollstein

How Austerity Is Making It Harder And Harder To Get Educated In Puerto Rico