DOI: 10.7763/IPEDR. 2013. V60. 33

Implementation of a Deconcentration Strategy in Higher Education in Colombia: The Search for an Alternative to Improve Access to

Education

Yolima Ivonne Beltrán Villamizar1+, YexicaLizethMartinez Fuentes2, and Carlos Guillermo Vargas

Beltrán3

1 Universidad Industrial de Santander, head of the Atenea Educational Research Group of the Universidad Industrial de Santander

2,3AteneaEducational Research Group of the Universidad Industrial de Santander

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to analyze the implementation of the strategy of decentralization of the educational offer of higher education in Colombia, called Regional Centersof Higher EducationCERES (Spanish acronym for CentrosRegionales de EducaciónSuperior) in the department of Santander, located in eastern Colombia, South America. The first part of this document includes some figures about the coverage of higher education according to the level of education, curriculum, knowledge area and geographical distribution of the educational offer.The second part includes the conceptual references underpinning the work done such as the government’s plans for Colombia over the past decade and the formulation and implementation of CERES. The third partshowsthe research methodology, which was qualitative research, with a sample of six of the 15 CERES in the department, selected by convenience. The fourth part shows the results of the study, which analyzes, through a rating scale, the fulfillment of the objectives with which each of the CERES of the sample was created. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the current state of the CERES studied and some recommendations are given for the monitoring and evaluation of the national strategy.

Keywords: Deconcentration, Higher Education, Colombia, Pertinence, CERES.

1. Introduction Colombia has tried to implement various strategies to solve problems such as unemployment, poverty

and social inequality, many of which have targeted the area of education, and the Ministry of National EducationMEN (Spanish acronym for Ministerio de EducaciónNacional) has had a leading role in the development thereof.

The figures of the Education Labor Observatory OLE (Spanish acronym for ObservatorioLaboral de Educación) for the year 2010 show that 76% of college graduates are concentrated in five departments with the highest economic development (Cundinamarca, 40%; Antioquia, 13% , Valle, 8%, Atlántico, 5% and Santander 5%). These departments also have the largest educational offer in technical, technological, undergraduate and graduate programs, while maintaining the historical trend observed in previous decades. [1]

In order to reverse this trend towards concentrating educational offer, since 2002 the Colombian government has focused its efforts on expanding the coverage and improving the quality of higher education according to social demands and requirements of the industrial sector [2][3][4].To achieve this, ithas proposed the strategy of the Regional Centers of Higher Education CERES (Spanish acronym), which has remained as the current government’s policy under the “Development Plan 2010-2014: Prosperity for Everyone”

A CERES is conceived as a place supplied with technological information and communication infrastructure and is located in places with no access to higher education, in remote areas of the country or in very low-income areas of big cities [5]. Through a CERES, the community can have access to higher education programs in the modalities of distance and virtual education offered by different higher education institutions, which send their teachers to these places, sharing the same physical structure with other +Corresponding author.Tel.: +(57)6344000 Ext 1165; fax: +(057)6359963. E-mail address:yolibel@yahoo.com.

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educational institutions, which are generally the grounds of a public school. The academic programs offered must meet specific the requirements of the zone of influence, be pertinent to the region, according to the labor market and should motivate young people to stay in their homeland. To ensure quality educational offerings, all academic programs must have the relevant registration issued by the MEN. In support to this initiative, the national government provides preferential educational loans for low-income students who enroll at CERES.

Every CERES is the result of a regional partnership that involves the government, the industrial sector and the academia, with different and complementary contributions. The contributions of each partner can be financial, human, technical, academic, logistic, communication, promotion or management.In each partnership, any higher education institution assumes the role of “operating” institution, which is in charge of providing the CERES and facilitate the academic offer of the other institutions [5]. To support the creation of the CERES, the MEN brings to the partnership financial or management resources for the initial provision of equipment and its connectivity, but it does not support the normal operation of the CERES, as the project is expected to be self-sustaining. Additionally, the MEN follows up and assesses those CERES that want to do so voluntarily. For this reason not all these centers have been assessed, and their overall impact on the educational system is unknown. Hence the present study has been conducted, which seeks to investigate the level of achievement of the objectives of this educational modality in the Department of Santander, Colombia, as after a decade of operation of these centers in the different regions of the country, there is not any assessment of this policy.

2. Methodology This research is qualitative. Hernández Fernández and Baptista [6] note that qualitative studies are based

on data collection methods without any numerical measurement, such as descriptions and observations, which allow a flexible process of formulating questions and hypotheses as part of the research process. The purpose of this research approach is to understand the phenomenon of study andto “reconstruct” reality, as it is observed by the actors in a previously defined social system, thus seeking to understand this phenomenon in its usual environment.

2.1. Population This studio was constituted by the 15 CERES with students enrolled in Santander, distributed in different

municipalities of the department. Sampling was done forconvenience, taking into account the availability of CERES’s information, and the accessibility to municipalities. The CERES selected were: Bucaramanga, Floridablanca, Piedecuesta, Cimitarra, Cerrito and Mogotes, which will be identified in this document as CERES1, CERES2, CERES3, CERES4, CERES5and CERES6, respectively.

2.2. Tools The techniques and data collection instruments used were the observation of academic and

administrative activities of the CERES, semi-structured interviews with coordinators and representatives of the operating institutions and the documentary analysis of information provided by each CERES and the MEN. The information generated from observations, interviews and document analysis was organized thematically, categorized inductively and coded. The categories were generatedthrough strategies of grid and edition [7]. Validation of the results was done by triangulation [8]. These techniques were used for contrasting the official information registered by the MEN, the versions and perceptions of the direct participants in the CERES in each municipality and the data found by the researchers in their investigation. For the processing and analysis of the results, the objectives proposed by the MEN for the CERES were broken down; a cardinal number was assigned to each of the 17 CERES registered at the MEN (active and inactive), assigning numbers 1-6 for the municipalities under study and a rating scale was applied for the fulfillment of the different objectives.

3. Results According to the MEN, Bucaramanga, the capital of Santander, recorded 80.6% of enrollments in higher

education programs, followed by other municipalities with 9.3% of total enrollment (Barrancabermeja 4.3%, San Gil 3.6%, and Vélez 1.4%) [9].The following figure shows the geographical location of the CERES in Santander and the municipalities that have a highereducational offer but do not offer academic programs

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1: Low level of achievement 2: Partially achieved objective 3: Significant progress in achieving the objective 4. Fully achieved objective

Table1: Rating of the Fulfillment of the CERES’s Objectives

OBJECTIVE Ceres 1

Ceres 2

Ceres 3

Ceres 4

Ceres 5

Ceres 6 SUBTOTAL

1. To decentralizethe educational offer 0 2 2 4 0 2 1,7 2. To offer higher education programs to remote communities 2 2 2 4 1 2 2,2

3. To contribute to equity by reaching the low-income population with a low-cost offer

2 2 2 2 1 2 1,8

4. To provide education credits giving priority to low-income population 2 2 2 3 0 2 1,8

5. To promote efficiency by sharing resources 2 2 2 2 0 2 1,7

6. To support participation of the academia and the industrial sector by offering programs that contribute to the productive effort and meet the requirements defined by the alliance

0 0 0 0 0 0 0,0

7. To contribute to strengthening the technical and technological education. 3 3 3 2 0 3 2,3

8. Tosupport the dissemination and use of new methodologies in higher education through the supply of information and communication technology, which facilitatesthe offer of virtual content programs

1 1 1 2 0 1 1,0

9.To contribute to the welfare of communities by offering an alternative for young graduates of primary and secondary

2 2 2 3 2 2 2,2

10.To enforce the quality conditions in the programs offered 2 2 2 1 2 2 1,8

Total 1,6 1,8 1,8 2,3 0,6 1,8 1,7 According to this assessment,it was found that the CERES analyzed in Santander are not

achieving the established objectives. Six of the 15 active CERES do not reach the level of partial achievement 2.The three objectives that got the highest scores as a group were: “to offer higher education programs to remote communities”; “to contribute to strengthening the technical and technological education”;and“to contribute to the welfare of communities by offering an alternative for young graduates of primary and secondary”. However, none of these objectives showed significant compliance gains as they were below the grade of 3. Similarly, the objective “to support participation of the academia and the industrial sector by offering programs that contribute to the productive effort and meet the requirements defined by the alliance” was not reached in any

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of the cases assessed, which results in the predominance of weak and short-lasting alliances among the academic, governmental and industrial sectors and in low relevance in the offer of academic programs. Although the CERES seek to support the diffusion and use of new technologies in higher education through the supply of communication and information technology, the real application of these technologies is very limited by connectivity problems and equipment with obsolete technology. For that reason, lectures are predominant, and they are hampered by the teachers’ difficulty to access the remote places where some CERES are located.

CERES 4 obtained the highest achievement of the objectives with a grade of 2.3. It is located in a municipality with no presence of higher education institutions and it operates in the premises of a public school. The computer room provided by the MEN was located in that school and it is used by the students of the school. Despite the existence of a partnership without actual presence of the productive sector, there is evidence of municipal government support for the improvement and adaptation of the facilities and the availability of a grant to students for the payment of tuition costs in vocational training programs.

4. Conclusions The decentralization of the higher education offer is crucial to the development of Colombia, where the

offer of higher education is concentrated in 5 of the 32 departments in the national territory, which have always distinguished themselves for promoting the country’s economy. This makes it necessary to provide alternative training to villagers in remote areas, maintaining high standards of quality and in this sense, the strategy of CERES is relevant to achieve decentralization of the educational offer.

It was found that some of the CERES in the department were located near easily accessible municipalities with a diverse offer of higher education. The CERES that actually were located in remote regions showed limited operation due to the lack of students, which made them unsustainable. This shows that the objective of reaching remote regions was not achieved. The lack of a real commitment among participating institutions and operating college resulted in an educational offer detached from the needs of the municipalities. There was apredominance of administrative programs, and a few programs oriented to the production of goods and innovation in the agricultural sector, which is the economic basis of most of the municipalities in the area.The implementation of information technology as a strategy of decentralization of the educational offer was not effective: there was no culture of appropriate use of technological tools by the students, which was added to the problems of connectivity and the obsolescence of the equipment at some of the CERES. The previously shown aspects prevented the implementation of virtual training programs.

From the above, it is concluded that there are structural conditions that make it difficult to maintain high standards of quality in the education imparted in CERES. These conditions include: poor roads that prevent teachers from arriving at the distant CERES’s operations centers on time, limited access to resources that support the learning process such as library materials, laboratories and computer equipment, connectivity problems for the implementation of virtual programs and limitations on the supply of credit to benefit low-income populations.As Marchesi points out [10],true equality of educational opportunities is achieved when, besides equal access, similar educational programs are provided to all students, and low-class students are prevented from enrolling in programs oflow social and academic value. It is therefore concluded that CERES in Santander, as they operate at present, do not contribute to the reduction of social inequality, as the quality and pertinence of the programs they offer put their graduates at a disadvantage compared to graduates from other institutions; this is coupled with the limited contribution of these centers to the latent needs of the places where they are created.

5. Recommendations 1) It is essential to establish a system of continuous nationwide assessment that can identify possible

deficienciesin the operation of the CERES. 2) The success of the CERES is linked to the effectiveness of alliances between the academic,

governmental and industrial sectors; therefore, it is necessary to establish verifiable objectives and commitments that generate real participation of the partners, in such areas as: the operation of the CERES, the participation of students through practices and the participation in academic aspects related to the supply of relevant programs to fulfill the development needs of the regions.

3) It is imperative that the MEN’s System of Quality Assurance in Higher Education verifies the development needs of the regions at the moment of approving the technical, technological and

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professional programs offered in the CERES, as there is a tendency to the extension of the programs that apparently require less infrastructure without their actual meeting the training requirements.

4) It is necessary to organize a strategy of information centralization at the CERES, which makes it easy to track the graduates and maintain reliable and timely information on the activities and processes in order to facilitate the evaluation and enforce the real fulfillment of objectives.

6. Acknowledgments The authors of the present study are grateful to the Universidad Industrial de Santander for its support to

the project “Design and Validation of an Evaluation System of the Regional Centers of Higher Education, CERES in Santander” and to the coordinators of the CERES that supplied information for the completion of this work.

7. References [1] Observatorio Laboral de Educación. Estadísticas. http://www.graduadoscolombia.edu.co/html/1732/propertyvalue-

40075.html. 2011.

[2] Departamento Nacional de Planeación. Plan de Desarrollo 2002-2006 Hacia un Estado Comunitario. Bogotá, Colombia.: Imprenta Nacional de Colombia, 2003.

[3] Departamento Nacional de Planeación. Plan de Desarrollo 2006-2010 Estado Comunitario: desarrollo para todos. Bogotá, Colombia.: Imprenta Nacional de Colombia, 2007.

[4] Departamento Nacional de Planeación. Plan de Desarrollo 2010-2014. Prosperidad para Todos. Bogotá.: Imprenta Nacional de Colombia, 2011.

[5] Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Centros Regionales de Educación Superior. Bogotá, Colombia, 2006.

[6] R. Hernández, C. Fernández, and P. Baptista. Metodología de la investigación (5ª edición). México.: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

[7] C. Marshall and G. B. Rossman. Designing qualitative research. Thousand Oaks California: Sage Publications, 1999.

[8] R. Yin. Case study research. Design and methods. Sage publications. International educational and Professional Publisher. London, 1994.

[9] Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Perfil de Educación Superior. Departamento de Santander. Bogotá, Colombia, 2011.

[10] A. Marchesi. Un sistema de indicadores de desigualdad educativa. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación. 2000 (23):135-163.

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