Lima, March 21 The authorities of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru, the oldest higher education center in America, backed down and accepted the partial results of the admission exam that they were going to annul after denouncing that the test had been leaked that took thousands of applicants. The University Council agreed this Monday “to validate the results of the exam on March 12 corresponding to the area of Health Sciences, with the exception of the Professional School of Human Medicine,” according to San Marcos on Twitter. The university authorities also decided to accept the results of the exam in the academic areas of Basic Sciences and Economic and Management Sciences, which was taken on March 13. In addition, they decided to reschedule the exams for the Human Medicine career and for the academic areas of Engineering, Humanities, Legal and Social Sciences for Saturday, April 2. The decision was made by the University Council after the rejection and criticism received by the rector of San Marcos, Jeri Ramón Ruffner, after announcing this weekend the cancellation of the entire admission process. The rector emphasized that the cancellation of the exam, to which more than 11,000 young people took part, would be taken to safeguard the prestige of San Marcos after denouncing in local media a possible leak of the exam. After learning of this measure, numerous applicants expressed their rejection and demanded that the university’s internal regulations be respected, which, they said, establishes that once the results of an admission exam are published, they cannot be reviewed or changed. This Monday, the former Minister of Education and current parliamentarian Flor Pablo asked the president of the Education Commission of Congress to summon Ramón Ruffner to report on the irregularities that occurred during the admission to San Marcos. Although it began to offer general studies around 1548, the University of San Marcos was founded in 1551 by Royal Decree of King Carlos I of Spain, and in 1571 it received the title of “pontifical” granted by Pope Pius V, with which it became be called “Royal and Pontifical University of the City of the Kings of Lima”. In its cloisters, great personalities of Peruvian history have studied, such as the 2010 Nobel Prize winner for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, the writers César Vallejo and José María Arguedas, and the historians Jorge Basadre, Raúl Porras and Pablo Macera, as well as renowned scientists, doctors, politicians and professionals. EFE dub/cpy
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