The school is one of 24 privately owned universities that have received a failing grade from the Ecuadorean government, meaning that if they do not make major improvements they will be closed. Two government-run schools also received failing grades and may be shut down.
The police and education officials on Thursday moved to shut down 14 universities that the government determined did not meet basic academic standards. The schools, with a total of about 38,000 students, were on a list of failing universities, sometimes called “garage universities” because of accusations of their low quality.
Some blame the problem on for-profit universities that have proliferated in the past two decades as a reaction to increased demand for higher education. The universities, which offer as little as one degree, have earned the moniker ‘garage universities’ because they often operate from houses, where each room is a ‘faculty’.
However, such programs could be hit hard by the proposed law, which would cap government support to subsidized private institutions such as Loja. The university, which has some 22,000 students, was founded in the 1970s during a government campaign to expand access to higher education in provincial areas.