Public higher education funding in Colombia: inefficient, inequitable, and outdated
Cristian Román-Palacios1, Francisco Henao-Diaz2, Alison Hamlin Harrington1
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0088, USA. Email: cromanpa94@email.arizona.edu; aharrington@email.arizona.edu
2Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4, Canada. Email: fhenaod@zoology.ubc.ca
Colombia has recently been recognized as one of seven nations with high potential to become significant players in global higher education1. This follows recent changes in the political and social arena that have enabled prioritization of investment in education over the civil conflict that characterized Colombia’s recent history. Yet, according to recent official reports, Colombian public higher education is currently underfunded by ~$18.2B COP2 (~$6B USD). Today, backed by multiple sectors of society, Colombian students and professors from public universities are on strike, demanding resources to safeguard equitable access to quality education.
In 1992, the Colombian government determined that annual adjustments to the 1993 education budget onwards would be based on inflation3. Because inflation has grown considerably more slowly than demand for education, this policy has left most if not all public universities barely covering operational costs, with almost no resources left to invest in infrastructure, faculty hiring, research, and student wellness. While public universities have grown around 9.7% since 1992, funding has only increased by 5.7% in that time2.
With little agreement from stakeholders in the public education system, Colombia’s current administration proposed solutions intended to strengthen and expand the use of student loans, making students responsible for financing most of the public education system. These solutions are not adequate for a country with one of the highest levels of inequality in the region. In sum, the funding policy enacted in 1992 for Colombian public universities is rigid, anachronistic, and perpetuates inequality by restricting lower- and middle-class access to quality education. New state policies designed to resolve the current funding crisis should result from a consensus between the administration and public university stakeholders. This would promote the implementation of long-term solutions to the long-standing problem of public education funding while fostering both social and economic equality.
References 1worldbank 2utp.edu 3cna.gov
This write up was submitted (and rejected) for publication in Nature correspondence (December 2018)