The educator Maria Sixta Quispe is the first in her family to set foot in a university. Her mother, a Quechua speaker with education up to second grade—forced to flee her town, in the Apurímac mountain range, in the eighties to avoid being kidnapped by terrorists or the military—always wanted for the third of her five children what she was denied. Architect Ángela Anchante, daughter of a military technician and a nursing technician, has worked her entire life to acquire intellectual capital that would allow her to emerge and look after the decaying huacas of her native Chincha.
Maria Sixta was admitted this year to the Autonomous University of Barcelona to study a research master’s degree in education, while Ángela Anchante was accepted to carry out a doctorate in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Both planned for years to build a solid profile to apply for the Bicentenario Scholarship—the most difficult in the Peruvian State—: diplomas from recognized institutions, teaching classes, work experience in the State, publications in indexed magazines, a year of volunteering and language proficiency, among other requirements.
Maria Sixta and Ángela Anchante are just two of the 350 young people admitted to the best universities in the world who are currently in limbo. Without any advance notice, the National Scholarship and Educational Credit Program (Pronabec), an institution attached to the Ministry of Education, suspended in 2026 the 150 places granted each year by the Bicentennial Generation Scholarship. A program that covers all postgraduate expenses: studies, accommodation, board and transfers.
In its twelve years of creation, the Bicentennial Generation Scholarship—previously called the President of the Republic Scholarship—has awarded 2,785 scholarships, allowing the social mobility of high-level professionals who, due to their limited resources, could not afford postgraduate studies abroad, which in some cases amount to around $80,000 annually. Faced with the silence of Pronabec, the students organized themselves: they raised their voices on social networks, sent emails and letters to the competent authorities, investigated the fate of the budget and contacted congressmen.
Only after media pressure did Pronabec issue a statement announcing that the Bicentennial Generation Scholarship was undergoing “reengineering” and that a new call was not launched in order to “guarantee the financial sustainability” of the current beneficiaries. The detail is that the applicants have already incurred admission costs, gathered documentation after cumbersome paperwork, but above all they have invested years of academic preparation to meet the requirements.
“I gave my word. I committed and now I have lost credibility with the University of Pennsylvania. They responded that thank you very much, to try again next time. It’s a shame, but that’s how the country behaves with education. It hurts,” says Ángela Anchante from California, where she studies conservation. She studied on a scholarship for all eleven years of school, in addition to a partial scholarship during her undergraduate studies. Without funding, where would I be now?
Maria Sixta Quispe is disappointed to be shipwrecked in uncertainty and postpone a master’s degree with which she could be the support of other people who, like her mother, have suffered exclusion for being Quechua speakers and not having completed school. “A world that doesn’t handle your language is not your world. You are misunderstood. When I went to the hospital, my mother couldn’t even read the signs. That’s why I care so much about language teaching in bilingual contexts. But now I don’t know. I don’t have a way to pay for my studies abroad. They are taking the possibility out of our hands,” says this high school teacher from a school in Uripa, a town in Apurímac, one of the poorest regions in Peru until a few years ago.
In the middle of the week, Pronabec issued a statement ensuring that the Bicentennial Generation Scholarship has not been canceled and confirmed that it will not exist this year due to a budget deficit. This was denied by some organizations such as the Center for the Analysis of Public Policies of Higher Education (CAPPES), who maintained that until February the budget was available and that it all boils down to a lack of political will.
The firm Apoyo Consultoría explains that this program has the real capacity to transform the lives of Peruvians and that it represents a much smaller investment compared to Congress, one of the most discredited institutions in the country. It points out that between 2021 and 2025, the five annual calls for this scholarship required a budget of 45 million soles (12.7 million dollars), three times less than the budget Congress assigns in a single year to the payroll bonuses (schooling, bonuses, perks, productivity bonus and economic growth bonus). “With that money they would have financed 580 master’s degrees or more than 320 doctorates abroad,” they note.
Juan Montriuel Berrocal, who at 25 years old works as a data analyst for a bank, entered the National University of Singapore a year ago, in April 2025. But he postponed his enrollment because he did not have funds. He managed everything to apply for the Bicentennial Generation Scholarship and start his studies in 2026. With the suspension, he is now thinking about going to a bank to go into debt to meet his goal. What irritates him most these days is the news that the Government signed a contract with the United States to acquire fighter jets for 3.5 billion dollars. “What direct impact does buying airplanes have on the development of the country and not addressing a fundamental need like education?” he criticizes.
The president José María Balcázar has declared that it is managing a supplementary credit before Congress to cover this type of financing. However, he has made it a condition that the beneficiaries return to Peru, since he has been informed that more than 90% of scholarship recipients who go abroad do not return. Sociologist Nicole Enrico, who leads the student group, refutes what the president said. “The same Pronabec reports indicate that 75% of students do return. In any case, vacancies must be secured in the State and universities to make our compensation. We do not want to be confrontational, but we need a solution,” he says. The Congressional Education Commission has summoned Minister María Cuadros for this Monday to respond to this crisis. Expectations are not the best: Cuadros has missed two calls.
