Cuba maintains that students will be able to access university degrees without taking or passing exams.

The Ministry of Higher Education in Cuba will maintain the same schedule for the delivery of university degrees this academic year, including those who have been suspended and even those who have not even taken the entrance exams.

The organization disseminated this through its Facebook page, mentioning that "there are degree courses and higher education programs available for all young people who wish to enroll in the University."

They ensured that "this process is carried out automatically and will be published in each center."

In a breakdown of the placement schedule, the University of Guantánamo specified that it will consist of eight stages.

The first processing is for those who took the entrance exams, which were held last March.

The second round includes a re-offer for the approved candidates who were not satisfied with the career they were assigned. The applications of the unsuccessful candidates will be considered in the third stage.

In a fourth moment, these disapproved students come back to ask for one of the positions that are still available.

While the following ones follow the same cycle but with those who did not take the exams and students from other levels of education outside of the pre-university level.

Last year, when this method of entry to Higher Education was announced, the Cuban Minister of Education, Walter Baluja García, told the official newspaper Granma that "we do not consider this opening to signify a loss in the quality of the graduate."

Within universities, our faculty assumes the responsibility of filling any gaps in the students' education. Additionally, young people also have access, for example, to moving between careers and profiles according to the results," added the official.

However, criticisms persist even though the regime continues to promote a method full of gaps.

"I have seen students with failing grades in Medical Sciences careers, better eliminate the entrance exams," commented an internet user.

A user who identified herself as a teacher and apparently as a defender of this method mentioned as an alternative that "perhaps it could be improved, trying to find more affinity with the request, for example, mathematics is vital in engineering, biology in health sciences."

And he added that he understands "the anger over the admission of failed students, but no one stops to think that our children, neighbors, and students are the result of a deficient education and failing depends on many factors. Let's think before we marginalize, I prefer failures in careers to prisoners in jails," he stated.

Another internet user's criteria went a little further, seeing gaps in the future.

"Each time, education is losing its value. By filling vacant positions with these measures, labor incompetence is making waves," he wrote.

Last year, almost half of the students who took the university entrance exams were suspended.

The Director of Income and Job Placement at the Ministry of Education of Cuba, René Sánchez Díaz, said that out of the 21,942 applicants, only 50.4% (11,063) managed to pass all three exams, marking a decrease of 8.9 percentage points compared to the previous year, Granma reported.

Among the causes associated with these results, Sánchez Díaz mentioned the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on students from ninth to twelfth grade, the effects on the teaching workforce in pre-university education, and the limitations in student training and support.

The subject of Mathematics had a 52.7% pass rate, Spanish 92.1%, and History 76.4%.