The perils of trying to transform HE too quickly

“Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

These words from the Queen of Hearts to Alice in Through the Looking Glass illustrate what many countries around the world are facing in terms of higher education policies. Changes are coming fast and governments and universities are usually ill suited to adapt quickly.

This challenge is particularly difficult for developing countries and Colombia is no exception.

Recent proposals from the government are ambitious. Experiences from other countries demonstrate that reforms can take decades; but the tenure of most presidents is brief.

'The most educated country’

Colombia has been a leader in innovative and progressive educational policy. ICETEX, the government’s student loans agency, was the first one of its class in the world, and Colombia was among the first in Latin America to establish an accreditation agency.

However, Colombia is now struggling to introduce policies that keep pace with the changes in higher education. President Juan Manuel Santos’ National Development Plan, or NDP, for 2014–18 dedicates more attention to education than any previous NDP. In chapter six, titled “Colombia, the Most Educated”, the government sets forth its strategy for education.

Higher education and research play an important role in the NDP, which prioritises a more fluid interplay between education, research and the productive sector. This is not a new idea: a fruitful relationship between academia and the productive sector has been elusive for decades.

A coherent and integrated system

Santos’ NDP is proposing new initiatives toward developing a more coherent tertiary education system, many of which have been implemented successfully in other countries. These include the creation of a national qualifications framework; the creation of a system for the accumulation and transferability of [academic] credits; and the creation of a national system for quality.

While the reform of the quality assurance system, which points toward the reorganisation of many pre-existing structures and processes, may not require much time to be implemented, some of the other components will take many years, perhaps more than a decade, to materialise.

National qualifications frameworks provide a structure to organise educational levels in terms of their corresponding qualifications, including learning outcomes. These frameworks have proven successful in the regulation of qualifications in education and training in countries such as Australia and Ireland. In Latin America, Chile and Ecuador have embarked on similar projects with mixed results. Experience indicates that this is a long-term enterprise.

In other countries, the whole process has taken a couple of decades to reach successful implementation. The qualifications framework proposed for Colombia includes all levels and types of education (similar to the Australian model).

Currently, the distinctions between the different levels of the higher education system are unclear. For example, the difference between the academic programme leading to the degree of 'técnico profesional' and the one leading to the degree of 'tecnológo' is not clear to the public, and sometimes not even to experts.

Something similar happens with some specialisations (graduate-level programmes) and masters degree programmes. If the qualifications framework helps to define clear distinctions between each type of programme while contributing to mobility across them, it will be an important contribution.

The system for the accumulation and transferability of academic credits is another strategy that poses challenges for its prompt implementation.

Mexico and Chile recently developed tools for the transferability of academic credits. In Mexico, an initiative by ANUIES – the National Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions – provided a framework for academic mobility among its university members. Similarly, in Chile, the CRUCH – Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities – created the Transferable Credits System.

Not only did both initiatives take years to develop, but they only included those institutions that participated voluntarily, and neither included non-university institutions.

Colombia’s approach is more ambitious and adds complexity: the system aims to facilitate mobility across different sectors, including non-formal, vocational education and training, as well as universities. Participation is also intended to be compulsory, although this is not yet settled.

The announcement in the NDP of the “creation” of a tertiary education system has caused confusion, particularly because of a broad consensus in Colombia that a higher education system already exists. The differences between the current “higher education system” and the proposed “tertiary education system” are not clear.

The Ministry of Education claims that the purpose of this change is to strengthen the status of technical education in the country by creating two interrelated paths (called pillars) of instruction: the university education pillar and the technical education pillar.

The differences and similarities between the two pillars might be simple to express in theory, but the practical implications of integration have proven more complex.

The politics of change

The relevance of most of the strategies and systems that the Colombian NDP proposes is undeniable. Yet, implementation is another matter. Some of the ideas and initiatives will take time – both to mature and develop and to gain the acceptance of diverse stakeholders.

This level of reform is not compatible with a government with only limited time remaining in office and certainly not with the pace at which academia accepts change.

The Santos government is under pressure to set in motion this ambitious reform before 2018 (Santos cannot be re-elected again). Yet, the government faces an additional challenge: the minister of education and the vice-minister of higher education who crafted the proposal recently resigned.

The new minister has vowed to continue these efforts, but the learning curve is steep and time is running out.

Interestingly, the leadership of the project seems to be shifting from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Labour and the National Learning Service, or SENA, a government institution that provides vocational education and training and higher education.

The government will not be able to execute many of the components of the reform without engaging many other stakeholders, including, of course, universities. However, the Santos government has not been successful at communicating the intended reforms, even though some institutions support certain elements of the plan; and the full scope and potential impact are just not yet fully understood.

The Santos government has less than two years left. The Ministry of Education has launched an effort to achieve the goals of the development plan, but this is extremely ambitious for the time remaining. It is time to evaluate what can be achieved in this short period and focus on that. A more ambitious approach may cause the reforms to fail.

“Haste is a poor counsellor,” said Alexandre Dumas, or, in the words of the White Rabbit, “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get”.

Ivan F Pacheco is a research fellow at the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, USA, and consultant for the World Bank and the Colombian Ministry of Education. Email: ivanfpacheco@ gmail.com. This article first appeared in the current edition of International Higher Education. Disclaimer: The opinions appearing in this article are the author’s sole responsibility and do not necessarily reflect those from the World Bank or the Colombian Ministry of Education.