Americas > South America > Colombia > Colombia Education Profile 2011

Colombia: Colombia Education Profile 2011

2010/10/31

Primary education is free and compulsory. It begins at age six and lasts five years. Secondary education lasts up to six years—four years of general studies followed by an optional two years of vocational education. Public education is financed jointly by the national, departmental, and municipal governments. About 85 per cent of the people are literate.

The National University of Colombia (founded 1867) is in Bogotá. There are more than 40 other institutions of higher learning in Colombia.

Over the past few years, the government achieved some progress in education, especially in primary enrollment rates. However, enrollment rates in secondary and tertiary education are still unsatisfactory. In a public opinion poll (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida), nearly 50% of the interviewees cited a lack of money as the reason for not going to school. The quality of public education is still relatively poor. Children achieve neither the aims set by the curriculum nor by international standards. Studies found that children in primary and secondary schools learn only half the things they are supposed to. Critics argue that pedagogy is based primarily on evaluation and measuring, leaving less room for creativity and autonomous learning. According the last census (2005), the overall illiteracy increased somewhat compared to years previous, reaching a rate of 9.6%. The displaced are limited in their access to the education system by the dire situation in which they live. The attrition rate of schoolchildren is higher in conflict regions than in urban areas, the lack of security being one of the main reasons.

Education in Colombia is fraught with several other problems. Regions and municipalities complain of a shortage of funds for education and the disparities in transfers to regions and municipalities. According to the latest Human Development Report, education expenditure stood at 2.4% of GDP in 1991, 3.1% in 1995 and 4.8% between 2002 and 2005.

Education for work and human development is regulated by Law 1064 of 2006 and the decree 2888 of 2007. Education for work involves developing labor competences by teaching technical skills and includes the education provided by businesses to their employees. Despite some government efforts, Colombia still faces a shortage of technicians and a poorly developed technical education sector. In addition, the lack of language teachers has resulted in a relative scarcity of bilingual students, which, in turn, has increased the need for other methods such as distance learning. Public schools in particular need increased Internet access if they are to modernize their education programs.

There are more than 40 different universities in Colombia with spin-offs in various cities. Most public universities lack sufficient funding. Nonetheless, only a few of the elite private universities can be compared with the most important state universities in Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. Access to the top universities – private or public – is difficult. For private universities, this is because of high fees; for public universities it is because of the high standards set in entry exams. Meanwhile, numerous private, so-called “garage universities” produce a large number of poorly qualified graduates. Only 20% of university programs are officially accredited.

Enrollment in higher education increased from 673,000 in 1996 to 1,212,000 in 2005, which means that according to UNESCO, Colombia has reached a medium level of development. In 2005, 131,300 persons obtained a university degree. A majority (86%) of those with university degrees belongs to the 40% of the population with a higher income (quintile 4 and 5). An even greater majority (90%) of those with a master’s degree belong to the richest strata of society (quintile 5).

Colombia is lagging behind in the science, technology and innovation sector (STI), even in the Latin American region. Despite the government’s decision to double the budget for the National Science Foundation (Colciencias) in 2008, the STI sector remains underfunded. There is simply not enough public and private investment in R&D and the capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship in companies remains limited. Whereas the use and cost of claiming intellectual property for local innovators is high, the protection of these rights is deficient. There are few alliances between universities and companies. In contrast to the OECD countries where more than 60% of researchers are employed by firms, in Colombia, only 5% of researchers find employment in the private sector. Only 1.5% of researchers in Colombia with an advanced university degree are conducting basic research (Mexico: 10%).

A lack of funding and a lack of infrastructure account for significant shortcomings in scientific research. In addition, some Colombian researchers have been threatened and, in some cases, assassinated. Despite the tenuous situation at some of the public Colombian universities and research institutes, outstanding research is still possible, but often only with the help of external financing since local funds are very limited. There are 22 universities offering Ph.D. programs, and the number of Ph.D. programs rose from 32 in 2002 to 92 in 2007. About 4% of the researchers hold a doctorate, well below the Latin American average. There are only 2.2 researchers for every 1000 citizens (data from 2006); Brazil has twenty-four times more researchers per 1000 citizens than Colombia, Chile seven times more.

In addition, there is a generational change currently underway in the Colombian higher education system, which primarily affects the number of professors with a doctoral degree. New, similarly qualified professors are urgently needed in order to close this gap. As a result, the Colombian government is planning to open 152 Ph.D. programs at 29 national universities in order to have 3,600 new doctoral graduates by 2019. It is also planning to increase co-financed programs in order to enable Colombian citizens to finish a Ph.D. degree abroad.

In 2005, President Uribe launched two plans aiming to improve education and raise expenditures for R&D and technical innovation so as to reach internationally recommended standards by 2015: the Colombia – Visión 2019 plan and the national education plan (Plan Nacional Decenal de Educación 2006-2016). A new bill passed in the Senate in December 2008 (Ley de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación) targets the situation of researchers by giving Colciencias greater financial and intellectual independence and importance. The authors of the law also proposed to increase the budget of the education sector from 0.37% to 1% of GDP in 2010 (Latin American average: 0.5%). Colombia ranks 76th out of 137 countries with a score of 4.42 in the World Bank’s 2008 Knowledge Economy Index (KEI). This constitutes a decline by 13 positions in the KEI ranking during the last two years, and of 9 positions compared to 1995.