Public higher education in colombia is in crisis.

Plus de détails

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Public higher education in colombia is in crisis.

Underfunding

public universities have a deficit

of

public universities need resources

the growing costs of new information technologies, laboratories, professional training, internationalization, and maintenance of the physical and administrative infrastructure

It has worsened

the already precarious disequilibrium between the resources provided by the government and the expenditures necessary to guarantee minimum quality standards.

the government’s contribution to public higher education

equaled

0.55 percent of GDP, since 2015 that number has fallen to 0.40 percent

The growing deficit has led to a process of

“informal privatization:”

this means

that universities have to finance themselves

by selling consultancies, market-oriented extension courses, and graduate programs at market rates, and, increasingly, by establishing research partnerships with large corporation

What does the university community do in the face of the crisis?

The state

threat

During those days Alejandro Palacio, quoted in the epigraph, a spokesperson for the student movemen

to protest

Since November 8, students, professors, clerical, and service workers have been joined by the public school teachers’ union (FECODE),

along

with the country’s progressive trade union federation (CUT), which has called for nationwide marches

On October 10, with the support of rectors, administrators, and professors, Colombia’s students called an indefinite strike

students are demanding

to re-open negotiations with the government, specifically with President Duque himself,

to

ensure the current semester will not be canceled, and to secure guarantees for the exercise of civil rights.

$1.4 billion dollars from the government in the course of ten years,

a doubling of its research budget

a freeze on tuition fees

the refinancing of student loans at a zero percent interest rate

preservation of funding for vocational and technical schools

respect for the right to protest and voluntary rather than mandatory accreditation

Colombia’s 1991 Constitution

Guarantees

Public education as a universal right

free

BUT

Articles 67-69

which state that the role of the Colombian state is to help individuals and families by regulating markets between public and private universities

private institutions are systematically favored

accreditation

based on

criteria for “academic excellence”, in order to create a fiction of a meritocracy in one of Latin America’s most unequal societies in the world’s most unequal region.

privatized

through

Imported from U.S. universities and pervasive in Colombian private universities

The job of the state, in this vision

is

to provide

property rights

subsidizing the entry of the poor intro competitive markets to determine quality as well as the ability to pay tuition and fees.

security

credit

commodified

what the students done to halt it

high-quality