Inequalities In Colombian Higher Education

Inequalities in Colombian Higher Education
(Draft of publishable paper, 2007)

Jorge Enrique Delgado

In the last decades, with the accelerating process of globalization of the word economy, countries are forced to become more competitive. In these circumstances, most sectors frequently have to be reformed in order to support the nations’ efforts to have a significant participation inthe global markets. In this context, and when it is analyzed from an economical perspective, the function assigned to the education sector, in particular the tertiary level, is that to prepare students with the high-quality knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in the labor market. This is a phenomenon affecting higher education worldwide; however, the challenge is harder for developingcountries because they have to overcome problems such as economic underdevelopment and dependence, worsening poverty, and weak government systems. That is the case of Latin America where many countries have been taken by surprise and unprepared to face the recent pressures.

There are several economic and political factors that make difficult for the Latin American countries to make progress inthe global arena. Arnove et al. (1999) described some of them: 1) an associate-dependent development; 2) the built of education policies and programs upon alliances among the state bureaucracy and state managers, the multinational corporations, and the highest strata of the national bourgeoisie; 3) a concentrated economic system that is inherently less redistributive and increasingly excludes thesubordinate classes; 4) the unwillingness and/or inability of governments to mobilize resources for public education; 5) the inability of the private production sector and the state to provide sufficient waged employment to absorb those with average education. These factors contribute to create adverse conditions for certain groups in the society to get access to opportunities for a better qualityof life. Those conditions are usually called inequalities.

The author is interested in the role that higher education can play in the development of the Latin American countries, particularly Colombia. The purpose of this paper is to describe the inequalities in the Colombian higher education that have been identified in the literature. It starts outlining the structure of the nation’seducation system and then describes the inequalities: first, those in primary and secondary education that affect higher education, and second, inequalities in access, knowledge production, and outcomes and labor market. To conclude, some of the measures that the Colombian government has taken to solve the problem of inequalities in higher education are introduced.

Education in Colombia from theprimary through the tertiary level
The Colombian education system is composed of four levels, preschool (two or three years), elementary or primary school (grades 1 to 5), secondary school (grades 6 to 11), and tertiary or higher education. Grades 6 to 9 in secondary school are made up of basic courses, and grades 10 to 11 are vocational, arranged according to the emphases of each school.That model of high school is called classic, traditional or academic.

In the last decades, there has been an expansion of the secondary education in terms of numbers. However, according to Arnove et al. (1999), quantitative change generally has not been matched by a qualitative change in the aims, content and pedagogy of secondary education, which developed long after university andprimary school education. Secondary education has become an integral part of an introductory or compulsory cycle of six years of schooling. The trend is toward homogenization of the different branches of secondary education with regard to content and function up to grade nine. General, university-preparatory studies have become standard (80% by 1988). And students are ill-prepared to enter the...