Investigating the Colombian University System: What Does the Future Hold?

Ali Sakkal

doi:10.4995/head18.2018.8088

Abstract

While there are encouraging recent narratives of Colombia as a booming center of innovation and economic growth, this positive commentary does not always match accounts regarding the country’s universities. This study investigates Colombia’s drastically changing university system through an analysis connecting larger policy initiatives to the sentiments and perceptions of stakeholders at the ground levels of university functions. The focus here is on recent policy decisions, what they look like at the ground level, and how some of these revisions compare to university trends elsewhere. This investigation of various stakeholders at a large public university in Colombia sheds light on growing student and university debt, modifications in university funding, the rapid growth of low-quality private universities, changing roles of faculty, and issues of student access. Recommendations include a more concerted use of student loan disbursement and sustained investment in the public universities.

Highlights

Colombia is a unique context for investigating grand and recent educational policies at the ground level
Ser Pilo Paga, would be another policy change affecting the status quo in that student funding that had traditionally only followed students going to public universities could follow students to the private university of their choice (Asmar & Gómez, 2016)
Participants went on to partially condemn Dicreto 1279 (2002), which generated a significant cash flow to professors based on their publications as an unsustainable reform that further stressed the budgets of public institutions

Summary

Introduction

Colombia is a unique context for investigating grand and recent educational policies at the ground level. It is believed to have caused much strain on public universities to pay the salaries of professors and has caused a growing debt shortfall Another reform, Ser Pilo Paga, would be another policy change affecting the status quo in that student funding that had traditionally only followed students going to public universities could follow students to the private university of their choice (Asmar & Gómez, 2016). Ser Pilo Paga, would be another policy change affecting the status quo in that student funding that had traditionally only followed students going to public universities could follow students to the private university of their choice (Asmar & Gómez, 2016) All of these monies are administered and controlled by The Colombian Institute of Educational Credit and Technical Studies Abroad (ICETEX) which, in a recent 2017 reform, has been in charge of distributing monies to public institutions rather than the monies going directly to the public institutions as had been done previously

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Results

Conclusion