A Discussion with Ariel Rivera, Vice Dean of Administration, Rafael Landívar University, Guatemala City, Guatemala
With: Ariel Rivera Berkley Center Profile
June 9, 2015
Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice
Project, in June 2015 student Nicolas Lake interviewed Ariel Rivera, the vice
dean of administration at Rafael Landívar University (Universidad Rafael
Landívar, URL). In this interview,
Rivera talks about the financial structure of the university and the prospect
of sustainability for the university’s regional campuses.
Can you talk about the campus system the
university has set up and the difficulties that go along with it?
We have a system set up now with a number of regional campuses: Zacapa, Cobán, Huehuetenango, Quiché, and Quetzaltenango. When the Germans [development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, KfW] financed and equipped the regional campuses, they told us to maintain them. The buildings, landscape, security—everything was on us. In the regional campuses, the students only study on Fridays and Saturdays, and the rest of the week, there’s nothing. Obviously, then, it’s difficult to achieve sustainability, but we’re trying to get there. Since we are Christians, we believe in a society without discrimination and racism that doesn’t exclude members.
How did you select the different regional sites? Did you look at poverty rates across the country?
No, definitely not. We had maps with poverty rates across the country from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. So we started to have information about the poverty, but the places we chose were Mayan locations. The west and the east are Mayan, and the places we chose are important locations for them.
Can you talk about the regional campuses that you’re closing?
Yeah, they’re not closed yet, but 2017 will be the last year for the campuses in Coatepeque and Escuintla. In Guatemala, everywhere has poverty, but in Coatepeque and Escuintla people have a little more money, so we’re closing down those locations. Unfortunately, they don’t have enough students and are the most expensive locations, so it doesn’t make sense to keep them, but we’re not abandoning the students and poor populations. The people may be able to study in Quetzaltenango, which is sustainable and covers its costs because it has a lot of students.
Why is Quetzaltenango sustainable and the other regional campuses not?
Quetzaltenango is sustainable because in total it has about 5,000 or 6,000 students. The other largest regional campus has 2,000. Those campuses aren’t growing because they’re limited by the population, which is why we have to subsidize them. With Quetzaltenango we’ve never had to do that. They’ve always been able to accumulate enough funds to cover their costs. Central campus, by the way, has 10,000 students, which is why it’s able to subsidize the others.
Do you plan on having to close any other campuses in the future or starting any new ones?
I don’t think we’ll have to close any more. We are looking at starting two new campuses, one in Jutiapa and one in Antigua. Both those places we think have a strong potential population that would benefit from the program, and we know there are a lot of people who are interested.
Is it possible for the other regional campuses to become financially sustainable?
That’s what we’re working on. It’s not possible in an economic sense with them only being used on weekends. One way we’re trying to sustain them is through high schools. We started high schools in Huehuetenango, Cobán, Zacapa, and Quiché to fill the campus during the week. But because of our Jesuit identity and external limits, the fees are controlled, so we can’t cover more than a certain level through that. We want to achieve co-sustainability where the regional campuses cover their own costs.
How do you determine how much money to set aside for each regional campus?
There’s not a set amount that we go in with each year. We, the central campus and the Germans, support the costs they have and make sure the scholarships are fully financed, and that’s how much we end up spending. We think that we could arrive at co-sustainability, which means that the regional campuses would cover all their direct and indirect costs, like the workers and infrastructure.
So then what would the central campus need to pay?
We pay the professors from here. Complete sustainability is covering all of the costs that we have incurred from here, with all the people working on it and all the work we’ve done. It’s a long-term goal; the short term is co-sustainability. We can’t continue like we have been. We have a task force now for sustainability that’s focusing on how to generate more funds. The key is that when we do have more resources we need to improve our offerings, and make better majors and better programs.
Could the regional campuses be co-sustainable in five years?
We hope so. We’re not a commercial university; we are not about making profit, but other universities are. Here, everything goes back to the university; we don’t have financial support. The number of students in each campus has risen in the past few years, so now we have 10,000 at the central campus, 5,000 or 6,000 in Quetzaltenango, and about 2,000 at all the other regional campuses, so we have about 26,000 students total. I do think that we’ll reach a point of financial competency in the future, but it is difficult because we don’t have the same resources as other universities. Our objective is excellence with values. That’s why we have two different departments for research with tons of people when other universities don’t have any.
The URL has the Jesuit mission as part of its identity. How is it that this identity influences the [Development with Justice scholarship] project and your work?
I think that here at the university we have the same objectives as KfW. There isn’t much publicity about what we do, but it is powerful work. With projects like Development with Justice, we’re able to seek the goals of the university and try to reach justice and a social equality. We’re really seeking access for the people who don’t have opportunities and to strengthen their educational and other resources.
We have a system set up now with a number of regional campuses: Zacapa, Cobán, Huehuetenango, Quiché, and Quetzaltenango. When the Germans [development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, KfW] financed and equipped the regional campuses, they told us to maintain them. The buildings, landscape, security—everything was on us. In the regional campuses, the students only study on Fridays and Saturdays, and the rest of the week, there’s nothing. Obviously, then, it’s difficult to achieve sustainability, but we’re trying to get there. Since we are Christians, we believe in a society without discrimination and racism that doesn’t exclude members.
How did you select the different regional sites? Did you look at poverty rates across the country?
No, definitely not. We had maps with poverty rates across the country from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. So we started to have information about the poverty, but the places we chose were Mayan locations. The west and the east are Mayan, and the places we chose are important locations for them.
Can you talk about the regional campuses that you’re closing?
Yeah, they’re not closed yet, but 2017 will be the last year for the campuses in Coatepeque and Escuintla. In Guatemala, everywhere has poverty, but in Coatepeque and Escuintla people have a little more money, so we’re closing down those locations. Unfortunately, they don’t have enough students and are the most expensive locations, so it doesn’t make sense to keep them, but we’re not abandoning the students and poor populations. The people may be able to study in Quetzaltenango, which is sustainable and covers its costs because it has a lot of students.
Why is Quetzaltenango sustainable and the other regional campuses not?
Quetzaltenango is sustainable because in total it has about 5,000 or 6,000 students. The other largest regional campus has 2,000. Those campuses aren’t growing because they’re limited by the population, which is why we have to subsidize them. With Quetzaltenango we’ve never had to do that. They’ve always been able to accumulate enough funds to cover their costs. Central campus, by the way, has 10,000 students, which is why it’s able to subsidize the others.
Do you plan on having to close any other campuses in the future or starting any new ones?
I don’t think we’ll have to close any more. We are looking at starting two new campuses, one in Jutiapa and one in Antigua. Both those places we think have a strong potential population that would benefit from the program, and we know there are a lot of people who are interested.
Is it possible for the other regional campuses to become financially sustainable?
That’s what we’re working on. It’s not possible in an economic sense with them only being used on weekends. One way we’re trying to sustain them is through high schools. We started high schools in Huehuetenango, Cobán, Zacapa, and Quiché to fill the campus during the week. But because of our Jesuit identity and external limits, the fees are controlled, so we can’t cover more than a certain level through that. We want to achieve co-sustainability where the regional campuses cover their own costs.
How do you determine how much money to set aside for each regional campus?
There’s not a set amount that we go in with each year. We, the central campus and the Germans, support the costs they have and make sure the scholarships are fully financed, and that’s how much we end up spending. We think that we could arrive at co-sustainability, which means that the regional campuses would cover all their direct and indirect costs, like the workers and infrastructure.
So then what would the central campus need to pay?
We pay the professors from here. Complete sustainability is covering all of the costs that we have incurred from here, with all the people working on it and all the work we’ve done. It’s a long-term goal; the short term is co-sustainability. We can’t continue like we have been. We have a task force now for sustainability that’s focusing on how to generate more funds. The key is that when we do have more resources we need to improve our offerings, and make better majors and better programs.
Could the regional campuses be co-sustainable in five years?
We hope so. We’re not a commercial university; we are not about making profit, but other universities are. Here, everything goes back to the university; we don’t have financial support. The number of students in each campus has risen in the past few years, so now we have 10,000 at the central campus, 5,000 or 6,000 in Quetzaltenango, and about 2,000 at all the other regional campuses, so we have about 26,000 students total. I do think that we’ll reach a point of financial competency in the future, but it is difficult because we don’t have the same resources as other universities. Our objective is excellence with values. That’s why we have two different departments for research with tons of people when other universities don’t have any.
The URL has the Jesuit mission as part of its identity. How is it that this identity influences the [Development with Justice scholarship] project and your work?
I think that here at the university we have the same objectives as KfW. There isn’t much publicity about what we do, but it is powerful work. With projects like Development with Justice, we’re able to seek the goals of the university and try to reach justice and a social equality. We’re really seeking access for the people who don’t have opportunities and to strengthen their educational and other resources.
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