With Cuts, Free Education Is No Longer a Cuban Birthright HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba is cutting back its hallowed free education system and moving students into more practical careers to reduce costs and fill needs in its work force, recently released government statistics show. Enrollment in the communist-run country's many types of schools fell to 2.2 million students last year from 3 million in 2008, a drop of 27 percent, according to the National Statistics Office. The reductions include cuts in some of the most vaunted programs of the Cuban revolution, which from its beginning in 1959 emphasized the importance of education for all. Soon after succeeding his brother Fidel in 2008, President Raúl Castro warned of coming budget cuts in education and health care because, he said, the debt-laden country could no longer afford to maintain a bloated state bureaucracy. "What we need to root out definitively is the irresponsible attitude of consuming, with nobody - or very few people - worrying about how much it costs the country to guarantee that and, above all, if it can really do so," he told the National Assembly. "Social expenditures should be in accordance with real possibilities, and that means cutting those expenditures it is possible to do without," he added. Among the hardest hit were universities, where the number of students dropped almost 50 percent to 156,000 in 2011, from 300,000 in 2008, as admission standards were raised and liberal arts careers slashed. Adult education also fell drastically. Only 145,000 students were enrolled last year in university extension classes, a fraction of the 578,000 who signed up in 2008. Enrollment in adult education courses, designed to improve work skills, dropped to 129,000 from 373,000 in 2008 as the longstanding practice of paying state workers and farmers their full salaries to study during the day came to an end. The state runs the entire education system for the country's 11.2 million citizens and sets the number of places available in each area of study based on what kind of skills it thinks Cuba needs. These days, that means more skilled workers and private farmers to boost stagnating production, and fewer professionals. At the high school level, emphasis is being put on sciences, pedagogy, agriculture and skilled trades. The number of places for students in pre-university schools declined by some 50,000, or more than 20 percent since 2008, the report stated. More students were channeled into the skilled trades, where slots jumped to 74,000 from 26,000 in 2008. The data did not include provincial high schools run by the military. "Opportunities are shrinking and competition increasing," said Sonya Perez, a single mother. I make my daughter study two hours every day and pay one of her teachers 30 pesos each week to tutor her. The changes can be jarring to Cubans who have taken a full, free education as a birthright. "It used to be that a university education, in one form or another, was almost a sure thing," said an architect in Havana, Alejandro Padron. Now you have to struggle. I understand that it was impossible to maintain everyone studying, but I still want to see my son go to the university.