By Hernan A. Olano Garcia
A few days ago, the SUE State University System expressed its collaboration to the national government in the sense of contributing sixty thousand places to the goal of 500 thousand necessary to fulfill the campaign promises. Public Higher Education Institutions correspond to 11.6% of the total 193 (151 private and 43 public) that make up the higher education system in Colombia, either with the character of universities or university institutions.
What happens to the other 88.4%? If we only applied mathematics, private HEIs could provide 457,241 places at a lower cost than public higher education; however, on October 14, 2022, the Ascun National Council of Rectors offered the minister 200,000 places, which are available, in at least 60 private institutions that are part of that Association.
Access to higher education in Colombia for 2021, in terms of total enrollment, was 2,448,271 students, which represents an increase of 3.93% compared to 2020, but it is only 53.94% of the total. population of high school graduates access, according to figures from the National Higher Education Information System of the Ministry of National Education (Snies).
This means that almost 47 out of every 100 high school graduates in Colombia do not have the possibility of accessing higher education, but they are not absorbed by the labor market either and, according to the Observatory of the Colombian University, there are almost three million young people among them. 14 and 28 years old who do not study and do not work.
The figures are worrying, since Colombia has international commitments, which show that our condition as a cultured society represents 23.5 percentage points below the average of the OECD economies, which is 75.1%. that is, we only reach an elite that, although it is not in strata 5 and 6, does represent the opportunity for strata 1, 2 and 3 that correspond to the bulk of the population of higher education institutions, thus complementing the State work in access to knowledge.
Efficiency, equity and the establishment of quality goals, in terms of higher education, is achieved with the help of state and private companies, but incentives are also required for the modernization of educational institutions and to promote economic sustainability. which is required by decree 1330.
Alerts on the behavior of enrollment in higher education, being part of a public service, requires government support; It is worth demystifying that, according to a study by Carlos Rincón Quiñones and Andrés Felipe Espitia Suárez from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, the hypothesis of a demographic change as an explanation for the drop in the number of new students in higher education is not consistent, but it is there are changes in the preference of young people for higher education and the perception of utility of the university, as a cause to understand the drop in the admission of new students.
The entrance Only 60 thousand seats? It was first published in news.