Over 1,200 professors were fired from Nicaragua’s confiscated universities. Others would rather look for other jobs or emigrate instead of politically indoctrinating students
HAVANA TIMES – Luis knew that the time had come to leave the classroom following the closing and confiscation of the Central American University (UCA), ordered by the Ortega dictatorship in mid-August 2023.
The professor is not sure if it’s a definitive retirement, but he does know that he will not return while the regime remains in power.
“I have already retired from academia. I gave it up for lost,” he says emphatically.
The professor, with more than ten years of university experience, feels hopeless about the higher education crisis in Nicaragua. In addition to the UCA, 26 other universities have been closed and confiscated between December 2021 and August 2023. Following the theft of the higher education institutions, the dictatorship has imposed the partisan indoctrination of the Sandinista Front.
Luis says he is not willing to teach under the administration of FSLN political operators, falsely described as “academics.” He prefers to take up another profession or migrate.
More than 1200 laid off from confiscated universities
It took the Ortega dictatorship four months to resume the functionality of the confiscated UCA campus, renamed the Casimiro Sotelo National University. Its plan included the dismissal of 710 professionals, of which 418 were professors and 292 worked in other areas.
At the Universidad de Occidente (UDO), also confiscated, another 115 professors were left unemployed and at the Universidad Evangélica Nicaragüense Martin Luther King (UENIC-MLK), taken over by the regime, 207 were put out of work.
In total, more than 1,200 people working in these three universities became unemployed, according to the 2022 statistical yearbook, published by the National Council of Universities (CNU), in December.
The removal of teaching and administrative staff from the UCA and other universities had been forewarned by education expert, Ernesto Medina, who assured that the regime would surely review student and teacher files and that many of them would not be able to continue at the UCA. “I am afraid that many professors, in the current conditions of the university, are not willing to work either,” added Medina.
