Haiti Education Profile 2012

The Haitian education sector has suffered acutely from deterioration in service quality. The state’s lack of regulatory capacity, exacerbated by the influx of private service providers, is a major cause of this deterioration. Free public education exists for barely 20% of school-age children, causing considerable problems with respect to efficiency, accountability and equity. Children’s access to education is limited by the impact of poverty, violence and high education fees. In many cases, parents simply cannot afford to send their children to school. UNICEF recently estimated that nearly 500,000 children were out of school in Haiti. The literacy rate narrowly exceeds 50% of the adult population, which is far below the Latin American average. Access to higher education remains a big problem in Haiti and thus represents a serious further obstacle to sustainable progress in democratic and economic transformation.

Every year approximately 100,000 to 150,000 students obtain their baccalaureate. Of this total, only 10% to 15% can continue their education in any meaningful way. Lack of financial means to pay for fees and tuition represents a major constraint, but so too does the paucity of available institutions offering a solid higher education. The majority of higher education institutions are concentrated in the capital, which increases inequality of opportunity in terms of access. About 2,000 young women and men have left to pursue higher education in the United States, Canada or European countries. Another constraint in this field is the near-total absence of specialized institutions for technical vocations which could serve as a base for national research and product development.