President Juan Manuel Santos presents plans to reform Colombia’s education system, by bringing in public-private alliances and making the curriculum more international so that young people are competitive in the world market, the presidential website reported Thursday.
The four main categories of the Higher Education Reform Project are: to improve the quality of education, to increase resources available for higher education, to provide education that is regionally adequate and internationally competitive, and to guarantee good government management of the educational system.
The president said “We will promote the internationalization of the curriculum and of the quality of our system, so that our professionals may have doors open to them in many other countries.”
The president plans to increase resources through the creation of profit-making higher education institutions, which would contribute resources to grant and scholarship funds for under-resourced students. He is also considering the utilization of contributions from public-private alliances.
The president said that 10% of contributions will be used to fund regional science and technology programs.
Said Santos, “Public education, if it wishes to be competitive, cannot deny itself the possibility of having sources of private investment. And that, it remains clear, does not mean privatizing, but rather investing.”
In the 2011 budget approved by Congress, education was to set be one of the highest expenditures, at $11,363,200 (COP21.2 trillion).
