Almost a month after the arrival of Gustavo Petro to the presidency and after the appointment of Alejandro Gaviria as Minister of Education, the education sector presents different challenges and expectations of management in the next four years. Portfolio spoke with the different rectors of universities in the country, to offer a overview of the state of higher education.
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The Minister Alejandro Gaviriawithin the framework of the First National Virtual Meeting of Secretaries of Education, stated that in matters of higher education, “aspects such as the expansion of coverage, quality and relevant education, strengthening of the educational infrastructure and teacher training must be taken into account”.
In the case of education in the public sector, the Rector of the National University of Colombia Dolly Montoya Castaño ensures that the challenge of higher education is to train comprehensive citizens as agents of ethical change and social awareness.
“We have to continue opening new expectations for the intermediate population in our border campuses, where we need to pursue careers in ecotourism, agriculture and where we can have an ecosystem in which each student can choose their life project and find an environment to develop it.”.
In the economic sphere, the rector assured that “we are a State university and each government assigns us a budget, but half of it is allocated by them and we place the other half with our missionary activities. I wish we had much more because universities need professors, not buildings”.
Education, one of the social programs to finance.
For his part, the rector of the Rosario University, Alejandro Cheyne, He stated that one of the challenges in higher education is the discovery of new ways of teaching different from traditional classrooms, with digital transformation, access and quality of education.
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“In Colombia, unfortunately, there is still a lot to work on in terms of access and quality, especially in the regions, for which it is necessary to have the support of all the actors: public, private and civil society to guarantee an education for our young people and thus contribute to the formation of their life projects“, he claimed.
Alfonso Meisel, rector of the University of the North in Barranquilla, He spoke about equal opportunities in quality education, assuring that “equal opportunities in access to good quality education will be, in the 21st century, an issue as central in the national political debate as it was in the last century agrarian reform”.
Faced with the challenges of education in economics, the rector of the University of America, Mario Posada Peña, He said that “the main challenges lie in proposing affordable tuition fees and funding sources that meet the needs of young people, adults and families who want to enter academic programs; This implies recognizing that each region of the country has different costs of living and average income levels”.
For Father Harold Castilla, General Rector of Uniminuto, the challenges influence, “a proposal for students to have significant learning in perspective of quality and knowledge generation”.
Other challenges are in terms of virtuality, According to the rector of the Grancolombiano Polytechnic Juan Fernando Montañez, “We tend to have the student connected 100% remotely and not working offline, we hope that the students are working on the platforms.”
According to Héctor Bonilla, rector of the Antonio Nariño University (UAN), after the pandemic, the challenge was to “work with a university without borders with programs that could be extended not only in the country but in different places.”
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educational sciences
Cecilia Dimaté, dean of educational sciences at the Externado Universityassured that the challenges of education are based on “the articulation between higher education, the labor market and the social needs of the country”, in addition to “offering basic, secondary and higher education in which the development of knowledge is guaranteed. , skills and abilities that reduce the difficulties of entry and permanence of students in higher education.
In economic matters, it states that the Ministries of Education, Science, Technology and Finance should promote research, with an impact on the productive sector and economic growthwhich transfers a percentage to higher education in its missionary areas of training, research and knowledge.
Diana K. Rodriguez T.
