Raquel Bernal, rector of the University of Los Andes, spoke to the microphones of La W about the draft statutory law on Education that will be presented this Tuesday in the Congress of the Republic.
According to Bernal, “we are now waiting for the filing of the project, we appreciate very much the intention of the Ministry to move towards guaranteeing the right to education because it is the only way to reduce these many inequalities in Colombia. “We call on the Ministry to strengthen this bill in four directions.”
1. Protect the mixed system
2. Protect the comprehensive education funding system
3. Quality assurance
4. Make the system more agile
Also, he indicated that all the universities are in contact with the Ministry of Education to give them the observations they have about this project.
“However, the following versions that we got do not show these four points that we think are very important for this reform to have value in this country,” he said.
In the same line, he assured that “this proposed law on the fundamental right to education is combined with a couple of other important things, which are free public universities, regardless of socioeconomic stratum, and others are the suggestion that The Icetex reform is still in draft form, which means its withering. This means the weakening of the private university over time.
For this reason, he called to “protect this mixed, public and private system that we have existed for many years. The private university drives innovation and the quality of the entire education system and we provide half of the coverage. Statutory law alone does not mean that, but combined with the free and withering of Icetex that has very serious implications.”
In response to this, Mauricio Toro, president of Icetex, assured La W that “it was never intended to end the entity, which is not in the articles of the draft circulating.”
“We will continue to fund the careers of young people who enter private universities. “Icetex will not end,” he said in conclusion.
