He Ministry of National Education It was established that will not file again statutory bill that sought to make the right a fundamental rightmental in Colombianor will it do so with the entire package of educational reforms that the Former Minister Aurora Vergara to EL TIEMPO, even with a draft already written.
In return, Only a specific reform project will be presented for articles 86 and 87 of Law 30 of 1992, which regulates higher education in the country..
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This was announced by the Minister of the Interior, Juan Fernando Cristoafter meeting for several hours with the New Speaker of the House of Representatives, Jaime Raúl Salamancawith whom he socialized the Government’s legislative agenda for this new legislature.
“The Ministry of Education made the decision that this statutory law would not be reintroduced, I have no explanation for the reasons.“Christ explained.
Public higher education
He added that “What the Minister (of Education, Daniel Rojas) has told me is that a very specific reform of two or three articles is going to be presented that have to do with some modifications to Law 30 on higher education, to guarantee and improve the financing of public universities.“.
This is, therefore, a complete change of approach on the part of the Ministry of Education. And with this decision, everything would indicate that the priority of the portfolio led by Rojas will no longer be a major reform of the national education system.as had been proposed in the first two years of the government of President Gustavo Petro.
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Instead, The focus will be only on articles 86 and 87 of Law 30 of 1992which has to do with the Financing of public higher education institutions (HEIs)a move that may be easier to process in the Congress of the republicsince there is a consensus on the need to modify them, although there is no consensus on the method for doing so,
And for years there has been talk of defunding state universities.. In fact, the various reforms proposed in the Petro government’s program were not included, except for the reform of these two articles. Likewise, this has been a common claim of the rectors who are members of the State University System (SUE, the country’s public universities)and has motivated several student strikes, such as those that occurred in 2018 and 2019.
Teachers marched to protest changes to the education reform project.
Why these articles?
The financial situation of public HEIs in the country is fragile. It is enough to look at the example of the Pedagogical Universitywhich went viral last year after images of its buildings in very poor condition were revealed, with cracks in the walls, roofs about to fall down, among other deficiencies.
It is also worth mentioning what is happening with the country’s main public higher education institution: the National university of Colombiabecause there, every time it rains, fear reigns in the university community of a collapse of the Pharmacy Headquarters or the building of the Institute of Natural Sciences and the Museum of Natural History.
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To understand this problem, we must know how public universities are financed. According to the aforementioned Law 30, The budget that the State allocates to public institutions is equivalent to inflation.
“This has been a problem, because college costs have risen on average 5.2 percentage points more than the CPI.“, he explained to EL TIEMPO Jairo Torres, rector of the University of Córdoba and president of the State University System (SUE)the organization that brings together the country’s 34 public universities.
National university of Colombia
This is explained, among other things, by the exponential growth in the number of registrations.which has required increasing staff, teaching staff and a series of other expenses. The situation has meant that, from covering almost all of the university costs, Now the resources that public entities contribute are 55.25% of the total, while the remaining 44.75 percent are provided by the same institutions..
Thus, according to the SUE, only from 2011 to 2021, Inflation averaged 3.7%, a percentage equivalent to the annual increase in resources for public universities.However, their operating expenses increased by 8.8% annually, and their staff increased by 9.4%, about five percentage points more than they received.
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This increase has been insufficient to sustain the growing number of students in the sector, which requires a strong investment in infrastructure and teaching positions, Not to mention that teachers are increasingly better prepared. (doctoral-trained professors rose from 6.2% in 2004 to 15.5% in 2021, an increase of 481%), which implies higher salaries.
He Increase in students, teachers and infrastructure adaptation This has required public universities to go from covering less than 10% of their expenses 30 years ago to now covering, by their own means, 44.75% of their expenses autonomously, often with great difficulty, and dragging a budget deficit that, accumulated, amounts to 15 billion pesos, according to calculations by the SUE, 3.5 billion being only for operation and about 8.2 for infrastructure.
National University.
To solve these problems, all sectors seem to have reached a consensus that it is necessary to no longer use the CPI to calculate the annual increases of universities, but rather the Higher Education Cost Index (ICES), from Danewhich actually determines how much university spending increases each year in real terms.
However, the calculation would be more complex than just taking the percentage of said index, and for this purpose several proposals have already been presented by the SUE, by the Government itself and by independent sectors, such as the Representative to the House for the Green Alliance and former student leader, Jennifer Pedraza.
BRIEFCASE
*With information from EL TIEMPO – EDUCATION
