Training
The schooling, which is regulated by a law from 1966, is
highly centralized and very inefficient. Although compulsory
school is compulsory and free, between 40 and 50% of
children never start first grade. The number of rural poor
is even higher. Only half of those who start going out sixth
grade. In the countryside there are no schools and teachers,
so about 90% of the rural population can neither read nor
write. Despite a focus on literacy in the 1980s and 1990s,
45% of the adult population is estimated to be illiterate;
the differences in schooling are large between city and
country. See TOPSCHOOLSINTHEUSA for TOEFL, ACT, SAT testing locations and high school codes in Guatemala.
In 1994, 17% of the state budget was spent on education,
but the figure has since fallen to one of Latin America's
lowest. The political wave of violence, which extended until
the mid-1990s, hit the education system hard. The death
patrols murdered school teachers, students and university
teachers, and thousands of teachers and students have moved
abroad.
The largest university is San Carlos in Guatemala City.
There is also the Jesuit University Rafael Landívar and the
private university Francisco Marroquín. Quetzaltenango and
Huehuetenango have branches at the University of San Carlos.
Stagnation
The La Línea scandal led to the largest mass
mobilizations in Guatemala since 1944. Pérez Molina and
Baldetti had to go to prison. In the election campaign that
followed it won the then unknown comedian Jimmy Morales with
the slogan "neither villain nor corrupt". However, as
president, he has actively cut the wing CICIG, citing that
this cooperation between the UN and Guatemala violates the
country's sovereignty.
Under Morales, the work of building a democratic rule of
law, as the peace treaties suggested, has stopped. Justice
and party politics remain infiltrated by corruption and drug
traffic and gang crime is widespread. With the exception of
a poverty reduction program (Bolsa Familiar) under
Colom, the post-war presidents also failed to follow up on
social and economic reform agreements.
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