Mission Sucre

Mission Sucre (launched in late 2003) is one the Bolivarian Missions (a series of anti-poverty and social welfare programs) implemented by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. The program provides free and ongoing higher (college and graduate level) education to the two million adult Venezuelans.

Mission Sucre was originally referred to as El Plan Extraordinario Mariscal Antonio José de Sucre, shortened as Misión Sucre. Named after the 18th century independence leader Antonio José de Sucre, Mission Sucre establishes as a strategy the mass education and graduation of university professionals in three years, as opposed to the traditionally mandated five or more years. The mission is thus an attempt to popularize, reform, and expand Venezuelan higher education beyond its traditional role of educating the children of a proportion of Venezuelans that can pay for collateral costs involved while studying in a college or university, due to uneven geographically distributed high education institutes (transportation expenses, housing). The program is thus geared especially towards economically excluded high school students and the poorest and most marginalized segments of society, providing an opportunity for all people desiring a higher education.

In this mission, certain matters and subjects, such as foreign languages, are mostly left out of the curriculum. The program functions mostly at the margins of the Venezuelan tertiary education system, although several key institutions, such as Simon Bolivar University, have endorsed the program. For example, thousands of non-traditional, mostly low income students are currently undergoing training to become licensed physicians in a unique and accelerated curriculum.

Mission Sucre imparts tertiary education; other educational missions include Mission Robinson (for instructing the illiterate) and Mission Ribas (for obtaining secondary studies, classes, and graduation certificates).

The objectives of Mission Sucre are officially stated as follows: 'To harness institutional synergy and community participation to guarantee access to university education for all undergraduates and to transform the condition of those excluded from the subsystem of higher education. To combine a vision of social justice with the strategic character of higher education for sustainable all-round human development, national sovereignty and the construction of a democratic and participatory society, for which purpose it is indispensable to guarantee the participation of the whole society in the making, transformation, diffusion and creative exploitation of knowledge and deeds.'

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