Review of The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela Ginsburg, M. (2025, January 15). Review of The alternative university: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela, by M. P. Ivancheva. Education Review, 32. https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v32.3961 January 15, 2025 ISSN 1094-5296 Ivancheva, M. P. (2023). The alternative university: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503636026 Pp. 216 ISBN: 9781503634749 Reviewed by Mark Ginsburg University of Maryland United States This fascinating volume is definitely worth a careful study by scholars and political activists interested in learning about one of the major reform efforts undertaken in Venezuela following the Bolivarian revolution led by Hugo Chávez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Ivancheva, an anthropologist who came of age in Bulgaria and conducted her PhD fieldwork in Venezuela during 2008-2011, draws on documentary analysis as well as her extensive interviews and observations. Her field work focused on the Ministry of Higher Education and at some of the campuses of the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (Bolivarian University of Venezuela or UBV) and other decentralized sites (aldeas). The higher education reform initiated in 2003 as part of Misión Sucre (named in honor of Antonio José de Sucre, a leader of the 18th century independence struggle) dramatically increased access to higher education, particularly among rural and lower-class youth and adults. Ivancheva describes the goals and accomplishments prior to 2011 of this ambitious reform to democratize and socialize higher education in Venezuela. More than 500,000 students received free access to decentralized higher education sites, free books, scholarships for living expenses, and free food at campus canteens. Ivancheva’s contribution is strengthened by examining some of the limitations and contradictions encountered in implementing this reform. She notes how this reform was resisted by many faculty members, even those who were former politically left student activists, who taught at the traditional universities. She also notes how these academics, whom Ivancheva labels “radical nobility,” also played a part in the system that devalued and denied accreditation of the programs at UBV, reinforcing the dominance of the elements of a neoliberal world system of higher education. The lack of accreditation and the general devaluing of the UBV programs meant that its graduates had extreme difficulties in https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503636026 Review of The Alternative University 2 gaining access to graduate programs or obtaining jobs, even in the Bolivarian government. Ivancheva also analyzes how at UBV the faculty reflected a two-class system, with the administrators and faculty members with “academic” and “radical” capital dominating decision making about curriculum, student evaluation, and faculty hiring in contrast to the younger members of the staff who did not possess such capital. One of the major elements of the reform was the requirement that students undertake community projects under the supervision of professors. Ivancheva raises doubts about how much impact these projects had in terms of improving the quality of life of community members, although her data sources are limited to a few such projects. However, she does note how the experiences she reports were a source of learning for the students and faculty members. Ivancheva indicates, moreover, that these community projects, often dependent on the non-remunerated labor of women in the communities, contributed to legitimating the socialist orientation of the Bolivarian government. The volume ends with an “Epilogue: (De)colonial Silences in the Hierarchy of Knowledge Production,” in which the Bulgarian author explores some issues she encountered during and after her field work in Venezuela. She recounts how few of the faculty members and Ministry of Higher Education personnel in Venezuela seemed interested in what she views as similar higher education experiments in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe or even in social welfare states of Western countries. Interestingly, she also discusses how her comparative research was not really valued internationally, because she wasn’t a “local” (i.e., Venezuelan) scholar and because she wasn’t recognized as having the academic capital, like those in Western Europe and North America, to be able to contribute to broader theoretical discourses. I urge readers of this review to make time to learn from Ivancheva’s valuable contribution in which she not only provides insights about a significant Venezuelan higher education reform, but also integrates her findings with an impressive range of social scientific literature. About the Reviewer Mark Ginsburg retired in 2016 from FHI360, an international NGO. He is a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland (USA) and was a faculty member at other universities: Aston (England), Houston, Pittsburgh (1987-2004), and Columbia (USA) as well as a visiting professor at George Washington University (USA), Kobe University (Japan), and University of Oslo (Norway), and Universidad de Ciencias Pedagógicas “Enrique José Varona” (Cuba). Mark has traveled to Cuba more than 20 times since 1993, including participating in Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravans (1993 and 2021), international solidarity conferences, sister-city trips (Pittsburgh-Mantanzas), and Búsquedas Investigativas (an educator exchange program). During September 2017-February 2018 and December 2018- June 2019, he served as a visiting professor at the Universidad de Ciencias Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 3 Pedagógicas “Enrique José Varona” in Havana. At the local level, he was an active member of the Pittsburgh-Matanzas Partnership as well as the DC Metro Area Coalition in Support of the Cuban Revolution and currently participates in the (San Francisco) Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network, the Pittsburgh-Matanzas Partnership, and the (Maryland) Friends of Latin America. Nationally, he has been active in the Saving Lives Campaign, the US-Cuba Normalization Conference Committee, and the National Network on Cuba, and the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, Arizona State University. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. Readers are free to copy, display, distribute, and adapt this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Review, the changes are identified, and the same license applies to the derivative work. More details of this Creative Commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Disclaimer: The views or opinions presented in book reviews are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of Education Review. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0