Yanetsy León González, an official journalist graduated from Universidad Central de Las Villas, published a reflection on social media this Saturday that accurately captures the disillusionment that today’s young Cubans feel towards higher education.
The text, titled , marks her 19 years since graduating in Journalism and circulates at a time when the crisis in the Cuban university system has reached unprecedented levels.
The author, who works at the official newspaper Adelante in Camagüey, describes how she mentors a young woman who has just begun her studies and is already working to pay for her rent, an image that contrasts sharply with her own student years in Santa Clara, when she survived on the money transfers sent by her parents and spent weekends in the dorm eating bread with timba or candy.
"From the scholarship, I remember those weekends, the loneliness, the frogs in the bathroom, the cold, and the friends who ended up becoming the siblings time gave me," he writes.
But the heart of his reflection points to a deeper transformation in Cuban society: "Now knowledge no longer seems profitable. Many children no longer dream of a profession, but of a job that will allow them to earn money as soon as possible. They settle for a counter, any small stand, a sales position. The same exploited seller they've always had."
The official journalist acknowledges that "in Cuba, it has become normal to say that studying is not worth it", a statement supported by statistics: according to data from the Union of Young Communists, in December 2022, around 800,000 young Cubans were neither engaged in studies nor in work, a figure nearly eight times higher than in 2019.
The salary crisis explains much of this discontent. Professionals in the Cuban state sector, such as teachers, earn between 4,000 and 9,400 pesos per month, equivalent to between eight and 20 dollars at the unofficial exchange rate, while workers in hotel construction can earn between 32,000 and 40,000 pesos, significantly surpassing the income of doctors and engineers.
In that context, in May, the regime suspended the university entrance exams for the 2026-2027 academic year due to the energy crisis, exacerbating the perception of system collapse.
Additionally, in June, students from the University of Havana demanded answers with the slogan "We will not attend classes until there is a response."
However, the author points out a paradox that clearly defines the situation: "That same document that here seems worthless travels in suitcases, is legalized, is translated, is validated. It crosses borders because, even though we have learned to distrust it, in many places it still serves as proof of knowledge, effort, and history."
That contradiction has concrete figures: Spain accredited more than 5,551 university degrees from Cubans only in the first half of 2025, which confirms that the Cuban diploma retains value outside the island, even though it does not guarantee even mere survival within it.
More than a million Cubans have left the country since 2021, most of them young people aged between 20 and 40, many of whom are university-educated and whom the system failed to retain.
The journalist concludes her reflection with a defense of knowledge that transcends the material: "I still believe that a degree is not valuable for the paper it’s printed on or for the salary it guarantees —if it guarantees any at all— but for the way it taught us to see the world. Perhaps that remains its deepest utility. And that is something that no one has been able to devalue."
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