With great display, typical of official publicity, as well as the need to calm the spirits of the young people who participated in the national strike in May 2021, the National Government presented its Zero Enrollment proposal, to promote continuity in studies superiors of young people from socioeconomic strata 1 to 3. The offer of President Duque and Minister Angulo indicates that during the second semester of this year and the two of 2022, the Government finances the enrollment of 695 thousand young people, from these strata, in higher education institutions – HEIs – official.

The Government managed to include the issue in the text of the so-called Social Investment Law, better recognized as a tax reform, approved by the Congress of the Republic, and which will allow the Ministry of Finance to reserve the resources to distribute them in the manner and on time. indicated by the Ministry of Education.

With its approval, in the Senate and Chamber, last September, President Duque said that «Zero Enrollment is the greatest educational achievement that Colombia has achieved,» and both he and Minister Angulo have insisted that they have converted it in public policy.

Social Investment Law:
ARTICLE 27 ZERO ENROLLMENT AND ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION. In order to improve access to higher education at the undergraduate level, the State policy adopts gratuity for low-income students.

To this end, the national government will allocate resources annually to meet the needs of the young people of the most socio-economically vulnerable families of strata 1, 2 and 3, by paying the tuition fees of undergraduate students from the institutions of public higher education.

The news is very positive if it is evaluated from the perspective of the increase in state investment in higher education, the maintenance of coverage and the non-abandonment of university classrooms by these hundreds of thousands of young people. Thanks to the different financial support of the National Government for public HEIs, dropout in higher education in Colombia in 2020, compared to 2019, was less than expected.

But…

The government’s measure saves a significant number of Colombians from desertion and non-study, but turns its back on many more. It ends up being inequitable, classist, selective and exclusive.
Technically and socially, the Zero Enrollment proposal is not a public policy. It leaves out the benefit of hundreds of thousands of young people from the official IES themselves and, in an incomprehensible decision, it also closes the door to the support of Colombians who opted for training in private education. Let’s see it in detail.

Although it has been promoted by the Executive and had the support of the Legislature, it is not a public policy. For a social action proposal to be truly considered as a public policy in higher education, it must meet, at least, these conditions:

1) It must benefit, without exception, the entire target population of the same

In Colombia, according to the Ministry of Education’s own data, in SPADIES, the population of students from strata one to three who were enrolled in public HEIs (in 2020), was in the order of 1,125,000, and the Government’s promise seeks to cover 695 thousand. Without any explanation, 430,000 young people from these strata, who are already enrolled in official HEIs, will be left without government help.

In the case of students located in strata 1 to 3, enrolled in the same period in private HEIs, the figure rises to 960 thousand and none of them will receive the benefit. Not to mention the more than one million students in post-secondary training programs in educational institutions for work and human development, both public and private, for whom there is not even any official incentive of this nature.

2) It must be based on technical criteria, duly supported and analyzed

Matrícula Cero collected the name with which the student movements baptized their claim for full gratuity, but took the name for an impartial and incomplete proposal, as seen here. There is no known technical analysis, benchmarking study, expert consultation or the search for international references, on the part of the National Government, to justify, with conceptual arguments, the proposal.

“Without the perspective of rights, without the citizens knowing in depth what corresponds to them by the mere fact of their citizenship, any public policy can be seriously restricted to the experiences, opinions and, eventually, to the interests of public managers and administrators. «, Expressed the Argentine journalist Washington Uranga in his text» Without communication there are no democratic policies»(2012), available on the web.

«The policy, and the study of it, must be accompanied by exact figures, indicators and budget analysis, and in practice, not even the proposal that the Ministry of Finance issued for tax reform (Social Investment Law) presented this information . The government launched the initiative without exact figures, after doing so it began to travel the country to ensure resources that it lacked with governments, mayors and IES, and it cannot assure that they will continue indefinitely giving resources to fund the initiative, ”he recently pointed out. The Observatory of the Colombian University.

Why strata instead of Sisbén? Why in this way? Why leave out low-income students from private HEIs? Why depend on the resources of territorial entities and their own Public HEIs, already financially hit? It is enough to speak with rectors and public officials close to the subject to discover that the proposal took the Ministry itself by surprise, which had to begin, groping (and has not yet finished) to build or justify the project, without technical references.

Some of the warnings found in the guide documents prepared by the Ministry to operationalize the program reflect worrying restrictions and limitations that can cause dramatic impacts among the student population.

“The Ministry of National Education, in pursuit of the financial sustainability of the strategy and in consideration of the available resources, may inform the Institutions that have not completed their enrollment process, of restrictions on the number of students, maximum enrollment limits. , among others, that must be fulfilled in the implementation of the strategy »
Taken from the texts presented by Ministry of Education to public HEIs, on the operation of the program.

3) It must be fixed and sustainable over time

Although the current, and in its last stage, Government wants its proposal to be extended for the next mandates, the approved legislative development does not assure it either. The country remains in the hands of the will and interpretation that the next Presidency and Ministry of Education decide on the matter: Keep it the same, increase benefits or suspend it. This also means that many of those who will benefit now could possibly lose the announced gratuity, if the next president decides to cut or end the program, so that studies of between 6 and 10 semesters would be fully funded only in three.

4) It must ensure the growth of the sector, in any of its essential variables (quality, or coverage, or relevance, or social impact …)

Zero enrollment is not full gratuity as some have also wrongly sold the idea, and for now it is a temporary proposal (as was Ser Pilo Paga at the time). It takes public resources to finance students in official HEIs, but seems to forget that higher education in Colombia is a service of a public nature, also provided by private HEIs.

The program, more understood as an alternative to possible desertion due to the economic situation of students aggravated by the pandemic, does not consolidate public higher education.

The rectors of the universities and official HEIs celebrate the support of their students, but they know that it is not full free, that they could have a “time bomb” if the program is not extended in 2023, they are left with installed capacity at maximum operability and the additional resources, in the case of public universities, committed by the Duque Government end with the end of its mandate.

Although quality is not the axis of the proposal, it will demand that public institutions rethink many of their goals and strategic plans due to the “explosion” of enrollment, while private institutions will also have to rethink their goals and, even, their investments to obtain accreditations. and reaccreditations, by virtue of the already seen gradual disappearance of its students.

And while it protects the continuity in the system of 695 thousand students, it does not contemplate any similar or complementary action for the rest of Colombians who are left without the benefit, both in public and private HEIs. This could translate into social unrest, feelings of abandonment and exclusion.

To complete this, it does not promote positive mobility between levels, systems, HEIs or typologies, maintaining those criticized and demonstrated as unequal forms of inertial allocation of resources (larger HEIs receive more, regardless of their results, and smaller HEIs receive less. , even if they try hard). It maintains a status quo more created by economic than academic conditions, according to which the technician or technologist is not necessarily there by vocation but by necessity, cost or absence of supply.

Then worrying questions appear in the sector: If the government announces full gratuity, why does it benefit only some? Why does it leave out the entire private sector, if its HEIs complement the limited coverage of the educational offer by of official HEIs, and because students from private institutions are also Colombian and there is no reason to exclude them? What will happen to the thousands of students from private HEIs who are dropping out with the desire to go to public institutions to study free, and that they will not be accepted? Why can’t a T&T migrate to a university-level program, with State aid ?, … and what will happen to the other thousands of Colombians from strata 1 to 3 who even Now they have not accessed higher education and would they like to?…

5) It must be analyzed, agreed, accepted and legitimized with the sector

According to article 2 of the 1991 Political Constitution of Colombia, one of the essential purposes of the State is to facilitate the participation of citizens in the decisions that affect them in the economic, political, administrative and cultural life of the Nation.

This did not happen. The Government assumed that it was a fortunate response to meet the requirements of the youth who protested the national strike and, without consulting the sector, announced the program. Paradoxically, despite the significant economic investment that it means and the government’s intention to respond to an apparent social claim, none of the associations that were behind the strike, nor the public opinion, came out to congratulate the government. Opinion polls have punished the Ministry of Education itself, and the political actors behind the youth protest have summarized the fact that the announcement is not enough and that the Zero Enrollment program must be definitive and with universal coverage.

The government program was surprising, even for the rectors of the public SUE State University System and RedTTU, who do not understand the logic that led to the proposal, nor the technical criteria that the Ministry is using in this regard for its regulation. Likewise, associations such as ACIET and ASCUN were not consulted either.

Meanwhile, the private sector is trying to bear the burden of neglect. The Solidarity Fund for Education, created by the Government with the pandemic, also allocated resources only for public HEIs and nothing for private ones, and the rules of the game ended up being asymmetric: Public HEIs, with higher tuition costs Low and partially or totally subsidized, they grew in the midst of a pandemic, and private HEIs fell, without State support for students and with budgetary limitations to grant enough discounts and scholarships.

It was well pointed out last August by the rector of the traditional and accredited Central University of Bogotá, Jaime Arias Ramírez, when he stated that (with Zero Enrollment) “there has been less awareness that private universities are the ones that host a very significant percentage of undergraduate students from strata 1, 2 and 3, who also mobilized and expressed themselves in the recent national strike; that these households have also been severely impacted on their finances by the effects of the pandemic; and that thanks to their enormous effort and that of private universities, not only has a good part of the share of the expansion of higher education coverage in Colombia in the last 30 years been put, but the dropout rate has not been greater than suffered”.

Ignorance of the private effort

Even if it is administered by individuals, private higher education responds to a public service of a social nature; It helps to fulfill the aims of the State and, in complement, support and sometimes substitution of the impossibility of public higher education, it reaches the most remote corners of the country to provide training. And for this it is accountable, it adjusts to the demands and requirements requested by the Government, and although the diplomas are headed with «Republic of Colombia», private HEIs have to support themselves and finance themselves.

“Private higher education in Colombia is not, as some Olympians have wrongly asserted, a business. It is not for profit, and when license plates drop, your operation can be significantly affected. As contemplated in Law 30 of 1992 (art. 98), HEIs are not for profit. This situation, which for many is complex and difficult to understand, exalts the vocation and commitment of IES that for decades have hardly been able to survive with the enrollment income, which must be constantly managed to reach levels that allow the balance and sustainability that each semester guarantee their continuity and permanence in the regions where they have a presence ”.

This is how the rules of the game have been. But the pandemic has hit everyone without exception. Thanks to the financial effort of the Government, the vast majority of public HEIs have grown in this year and a half of the pandemic, but the private ones have not. The detailed analyzes of EL Observatorio de la Universidad Colombiana show how between 2019 (without pandemic) and 2020 (with pandemic) the country fell from 297 to 264 HEIs with students, and how 79% of Colombian public universities gained students (for government support), while 93% of private companies lost.

In the accurate diagnosis of Dr. Arias, it should be specified that private universities host 26% of all enrollment in the higher education system, but that there are also university, technological and technical institutions that have 20%. 54% corresponds to public HEIs.

Without financial help from the Government, the private sector runs the risk of continuing to see the disappearance of HEIs, and this not only means a severe blow to private initiative, but also the absence of higher education in many municipalities, increasing transaction costs of educational interaction, the pressure on public HEIs, and the disappointment of hundreds of thousands of Colombian students who consider themselves discriminated against for not being able to have been received in public HEIs, or for often paying higher tuition fees in private HEIs, lacking state support.

Where are we going?

Zero enrollment is a valuable opportunity for the country and its higher education system … as a first step. If it is optimized in coverage, rules of the game and real projection over time, it can be consolidated as a successful program.

It is in time to adjust, before the misunderstanding and confusion of the student body and public opinion, the inequity and discrimination of the sector, and the absence of clear rules, turn it into a pressure cooker that the next government will inherit, whoever it is. successor of Iván Duque.

From ACIET we offer the will, technical capacity and articulation as an association to support these efforts.