The Technological University (UTEC) of our country doubled its student enrollment this year, to 1400. The counselor Pablo Chilibroste, told LA REPÚBLICA that "this is in line with the project that we presented to Parliament and these numbers are what we expected. He also explained that in two years time they expect 3,000,000 students to be enrolled.
"It is the size that we have sized the project, it is the number of students that we are prepared to serve with quality education, with a well-defined profile of graduation and with all the characteristics that we are trying to transmit and incorporate into this educational model," said the counselor.
Chilibroste added that "it's not about accumulating students but that if they enter, they graduate. It wouldn't do us any good to have 10,000 students and then have 1,000 graduate. We'd rather have 3,000 and have 2,000 graduate," he concluded. "Access is for everyone. He added that 15% of those 1500 students are from Montevideo.
On the other hand, in the Regional Technological Institutes (ITR) located in Durazno, Rivera and Rio Negro, Mercedes (Centrosur, North, Southwest), the counselor said that next year the number of students per ITR will be balanced, since there are about 500 students in the Centrosur. "The idea is to expand the number of students".
Some of the careers it has are Logistics and Industrial Mechatronics, in Rivera; Mechatronics, in Fray Bentos; Jazz and Creative Music, in Mercedes; Dairy, in Colonia; and Renewable and Environmental Energies (irrigation), in Durazno.
He noted that there are more than 100 graduates, which have to do with careers that began in 2015. "Up to 90% of those who graduated are working," Chilibroste reported. "We insist that they don't drop out and that they finish in a timely manner. It's part of the project."
Information Technology
When asked about which career is most in demand, he said that it is "Information Technology (IT)". "Then in the area of engineering are all very even (mechatronics, renewable energy, logistics, biomedical engineering, food analysis)".
Half of UTEC's first graduates graduated in IT. In total, 16 of the 32 graduates from the new university graduated this year. The rest took a degree in Dairy Science and Technology, a degree in Food Analysis and Dairy Production Systems Management.
IT consists, according to the counselor, of a "technical degree with some of the skills demanded by the market, software and hardware, and they leave in the second year and it allows them to enter a job that is in high demand.
Meanwhile, he announced that next year he will start a degree in IT, which "allows you to study for two years and become an IT graduate.
On the other hand, in December of last year a gratuitous bailment was signed by which the Ministry of the Interior ceded to UTEC the property located in the urban area of San José de Mayo. The Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology will be taught there. The courses in San José will begin in 2019.
Jazz and creative music
The Technologist trains musicians interpreters of Jazz and other areas of its influence, with an open vision of the genre; approaching as an introduction the areas of composition, arrangements and orchestration. According to Chilibroste, the plan proposes to develop a modality of work in a space of learning, appreciation and valuation of music as an artistic expression, with a creative and integrating character.
Finally, for him, UTEC is "a fundamental challenge that is to develop a second public state university and to do so with two or three central fundamental characteristics that strongly differentiate it. One is to offer university tertiary education to students from the interior, to do so with an internationally recognized level and to work with a very high criterion of professionalism and efficiency, which in our opinion is the best way to honor the public state character of the university.
Process to UTEC
The former Minister of Education and Culture Ricardo Ehrlich recalled to THE REPUBLIC how he managed to reach an agreement with the opposition to vote the bill on the UTEC and thus create study centers in the interior.
He stressed that in the five years of the administration of former President José Mujica "there was an enormous effort of the institutions, the Executive and Parliament". "With UTEC we achieved coverage and opportunities in the interior, to which was added the flexibilization, both of UTEC and of the components and the flexibilization of university careers, and others that only exist in the interior".
"I particularly value the effort as a whole". "We are moving towards a very powerful model for educational development. This is the way forward. It not only has an impact at the educational level, but also at the social level," he concluded.
Source: La República
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