Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic: The Society and Its Environment
tion nearly quadrupled. By the mid-1980s, the eligible urban
primary school population was almost fully enrolled; 78 percent
attended public schools. Only 45 percent of those of secondary
school age were enrolled, however. According to the
Dominican census of 1993, 1,602,219 students were attending
primary school and 379,096 attending secondary school;
87,636 were attending preschool (see table 3, Appendix).
These attendance figures for primary and secondary school
amounted to 78 percent of those eligible—81 percent in the
former, a lower percentage than in the 1980s, and 24 percent
in the latter.
Problems have accompanied educational expansion. Teaching
materials and well-maintained facilities are lacking at every
level. Salaries and operational expenses take up most of the
education budget, leaving little surplus for additional investment
and growth. Various recent estimates about the extent of
literacy appear to be unduly high. For example, the 1993
Dominican census reported a national rate of 79 percent (85
percent urban and 72 percent rural) . However, expanded educational
programs and facilities continue to have a backlog of
illiterates. Although there are programs in adult literacy, in
1981 fully one-third of the population more than twenty-five
years of age had never attended school; in some rural areas the
proportion rose to half of the population.
University
Dominican higher education has enjoyed spectacular
growth. At Trujillo's death in 1961, the Dominican Republic
had only one university, the Autonomous University of Santo
Domingo (UASD), with roughly 3,500 students. This fact
explains why for decades thousands of Dominicans went
abroad to earn their graduate and professional degrees in
Europe and the United States. The practice of going abroad
for graduate work continued through the 1980s, but decreased
in the 1990s. Since the end of the 1965 civil war, the number of
universities in the Dominican Republic has increased dramatically,
going from three universities in the 1960s, to seven in the
1970s, to eighteen in the 1980s, and to twenty-seven by 1997. By
the late 1990s, a network of reputable universities had been
established, with the private Pontifical Catholic University
Mother and Teacher (UCMM) at its apex. Higher education
enrollment totaled 176,000 students in 1997.
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