Tertiary Education in Colombia : Paving the Way for Reform

Education is a major instrument for economic growth and poverty reduction. Rapid changes in technology, globalization and economic reforms are creating dramatic shifts in the structure of economies and labor markets throughout the world. The challenges of the future lie with confronting traditional limitations within a rapidly changing environment. This transformation has already occurred in advanced economies and increasingly so in Latin America. Colombia's great challenge is how to become an active member of this new global society, the information and knowledge society. These changes imply that the role of tertiary education must also shift. While tertiary education's traditional role has been to train students for employment through the transmission of knowledge and by providing basic research, it must add to these tasks the training of adaptable workers and supporting the continued expansion of knowledge. An enhanced tertiary education sub-sector enabled to respond to society's increasing needs for high quality human capital must count on dynamic capacity for monitoring and evaluation, and disseminate to all stakeholders information about tertiary education its opportunities and costs, and include information about labor market perspectives; it must cater for students from all groups of the society by promoting greater equity in access to university and technical tertiary education and training.