The president of the Senate, Ramón Alburquerque warned that the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo cannot become a bottomless barrel and should justify the investments made to prepare professionals. He said that the university cannot boast having 120,000 students, which makes it the largest in the DR, when its graduating classes are small relative to total number of students. "We have to break the vice of mediocrity and jump towards excellence, because we are competing and with mediocrity one does not go anywhere," said Alburquerque. The UASD authorities submitted a budget for RD$1,300 million, of which the Executive Branch approved RD$850 million. The Senate later increased this amount to RD$900 million. This is more than the RD$730 million budget of the city of Santo Domingo, a city of about three million inhabitants. The UASD says it will suffer a deficit of RD$252 million in 2000. The UASD has a monthly payroll of RD$71.2 million. The university is said to be run by politicians, with hundreds on its payroll.
