This article is written by Tatiana Gómez Tibasosa on behalf of Icare Sustainably to create awareness on the effect of COVID-19 on education and to give youth a platform. The mission of Icare is modelled on the SDG goals.  This article focuses on ‘How COVID-19 affected higher education in Colombia.’

This article is part of a series about education and COVID-19. Find other articles about COVID and education in the series here:

• Colombia: How teachers continued education in rural regions during COVID-19
• Trinidad and Tobago: Focus on the power of students to continue education during a pandemic
• Documentary Standby students: Impact of COVID-19 on education
• Kenya: The widening gap between rich and poor, education, and COVID-19

Introduction: How COVID-19 affected higher education in Colombia and how students kept going

It has been 2 years and a little more since the news about the appearance of a virus that, against all odds, invaded the world in a matter of weeks and the habits of societies, whatever their customs were, were drastically modified to generate in an accelerated way new activities that avoid (expected) new infections.

Access to higher education in Latin America turns out to be a challenge for a significant percentage of the population at a young age, who do not have enough resources (sometimes) to pay tuition and curricula without having the need to acquire a bank loan or with a state entity; and in the adult population, represents a challenge when it comes to fulfilling work responsibilities and filling academic activities through double days that involve a consummate effort years later.

However, this article aims to visualize the current state of university education in Colombia, where students and teachers have overcome countless obstacles and challenges to continue the learning and teaching processes in fields such as research or science, after the unexpected blow of the COVID-19 pandemic that, without a doubt, generated abrupt changes in the lifestyle, habits, and customs of population groups around the world.

Remembering the educational landscape

According to the Colombian Ministry of Education (2016) “The higher education system is one of the five in Latin America that managed to rank among the 50 strongest in the world, according to the “QS Higher Education System Strength Rankings”, which was published on May 18 in London.

Colombia, meanwhile, ranked 34th in this ranking, which measures how strong higher education systems are global. The ranking compares the performance of countries’ higher education based on four measurement criteria: system strength, access, flagship institution, and economic context.”

However, and despite the apparently successful statistics, access to higher education fell, by 1.5% in 2018, representing a total of 38,000 fewer enrolled than in 2016. That is, the magazine Portafolio indicated in December 2019, according to the aforementioned studies, 570,000 students who on average enrolled annually in Colombia, decreased to 477,000 by 2018.

The above could be attributed to different causes that frame, as mentioned at the beginning, the difficulty of economic access to pay tuition and subsequent semesters, once it is understood that private education is inaccessible to some fronts of society; however, other areas are presented in the decrease in access to higher education, such as the lack of motivation in the currently defined programs, the absence of virtual modules and the regulation of labor competitiveness, since some traditional companies in the country are opting for the hiring of unskilled or poorly trained labor, to occupy positions that in theory should correspond to university professionals.

Effects of COVID-19 on higher education in Colombia

On the other hand, the spread of COVID-19 also affected among many spheres that of higher education in Latin America and occasionally in Colombia. Specters such as school dropout, the obligatory jump to virtuality in some of the most archaic pedagogical practices and the imperative need to look for new economic sources that allow collaborating with the household economy, stood out significantly.

Although access to higher education in Colombia is not easy for a large part of the population, the coronavirus also added conditions not previously contemplated.

Some universities did not have virtual platforms that offered long-distance programs except for those specialized in the subject and others, definitively suspended various careers to cover the expenses of the campus. Faced with this, the challenge became greater.

The increase in school dropout due to the same number of infections of their own and of relatives sought to visualize new panoramas in medical care and the prioritization of the state of health of social groups, which required new economic investments in hospital treatments and experimental medicines.
Finally, the informal economy due to the growth of patients with COVID-19 increased to cover the expenses that increased due to the absence of providers at home given the high number of death of adults.

The higher education landscape in Colombia today

With a scenario as bleak as that caused by the pandemic, Colombia is characterized by being an enterprising and hard-working country, which despite the circumstances seeks mostly the materialization of projects and new companies to comply with the demand of economic and competitive internal patterns, and of course, university education was no exception.

Autonomously, the higher education campuses resorted to three (3) major strategies to resume their student flow and be able to help students at the completion of their careers:

1. In the first instance, they tried to generate virtual programs so that teachers and students could continue with their classes without interruption. However, it produced a drastic change in the way in which knowledge was imparted, not all academics were satisfied with the measure, although there were no alternatives in the cities with the highest number of infections, more when not all students have access to internet service.
2. Secondly, transition measures to face-to-face attendance were adopted through biosecurity standards framed in self-care, and the intermittent attendance of students and teachers to avoid the increase in infections.
3. Finally, mass vaccination was key in the possibility of resuming daily activities, which, by August 2021, in Colombia generated the total reopening of educational spaces in the hope of improving the dropout figures and the motivation to enroll in the programs that gradually returned to normality.

Closing remarks: future higher-education in Colombia

Now we know how COVID-19 affected higher education in Colombia.

The challenge now is to not lower our guard against possible outbreaks or modifications of the initial virus that may put the world population on alert and that structure new isolation prevention measures. And meanwhile, educational entities are in a maximum effort to capture the attention of students through promotions, modules and educational accesses that allow increasing the number of current professionals, so that in the future, there is no shortage of experts.

Universities in particular require large state economic incentives to give attention to a possible increase in demand if the outlook is favourable later and why not, maintain hope in the improvement of the national educational quality?

This article is written by Santiago Arias R. on behalf of Icare Sustainably International. Edited by Rianne Doller.

The bicycle has the enormous potential to establish points of contact with almost all SDGs: This is not an exaggeration. It contributes to economic independence in contexts of poverty, as it breaks spatial gaps in terms of mobility in urban or rural contexts while presenting itself as an economic income tool and promoting a culture of healthy habits. It operates not only as a tool but as a language in itself to discuss with actions gender gaps, inequality in access to knowledge, smart and sustainable forms of mobility that reduce our carbon footprint. It strengthens collectives that think of innovative ways to design and plan our cities, it strongly questions our culture of production and consumption, and if that were not enough, its democratic principle links it with a discourse conducive to the promotion and construction of peace in contexts of war, as is the Colombian case.

The case study of this article was successfully implemented in Bogotá Colombia in 2020. Icare Sustainably plans to replicate the project in Kenya in 2022.

Find other articles about progress towards the SDGs here:  Articles Icare Sustainably.

1. Introduction: Changing the world one pedal at a time

“The bicycle is probably the most democratic means of transportation there is.”

-Santiago Arias R.

Sixty-seven days after his inauguration, Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States of America, signed an executive order confirming at the political and governmental level what had been only a marginal element of the speech that would help him win the election: a “new era” in energy production is beginning, and government intervention in the fossil fuel industry is being reduced.

Through the public and private sector, it will no longer be an obligation to take climate change and its effects into account in decision making. The tap of CO2 emissions is more open than ever.

Rent maximization will cover the entire spectrum in which corporate social responsibility, ethics and environmental preservation have scope for action.

Despite Trump’s protectionist discourse, many analysts refused to predict that such an undertaking would imply a deliberate denial of climate change, since the environmentalist discourse is progressively gaining followers beyond the non-governmental organizations that take it as a banner, under the impulse of the platform represented by the UN. They were wrong.

Despite the historic agreements reached at the COP21 in 2015 held in Paris, continued in Marrakech in 2016, to which even the United States, a deviant agent in Kyoto, embraced; the Trump administration turned in the opposite direction and makes it evident today more than ever, that the fight for humanity and its coming generations is the terrain for others. Those who will live in an unbreathable future, wondering what the humans of this century did or omitted to do.

1.2: Bicycles to the rescue; 600.000 trips a day in Bogotá

2. Santiago and Bogotá; two cities, similar problems 

A Chilean university students remarks about public transport in the Chilean capital, Santiago:

“the cost of the service is too high in relation to the minimum wage. It is almost 20% of the minimum wage. In terms of user comfort, it can be said that it meets the minimum requirements for all types of people who use transportation. The main flaw of the system is the frequency of the buses and the small number that circulate around the city, which in turn leads to over-occupation of the metro.”

This he told to EDP and seems to describe the Bogotá transport system as well.

Transmilenio is the mass public transportation system of the Colombian capital, and it is in crisis. To the serious problems of overcrowding (stations with circulation of between 30 and 50 passengers per minute), overdemand (40 percent increase in the number of users since 2012), and route delays; add the fare increase, one of the most expensive in Latin America, which increased 22 percent between 2016 and 2017, costing more than 75 USD. An average Bogotano (the city’s popular gentility) who earns a monthly minimum wage close to 257 USD (2017 data), would have to allocate almost 15 percent of it for daily transportation in an unbearable and potentially unviable system in the future.

The problem is particularly complex, given that the system registers more than 2,600,000 trips per day. It mobilizes almost a third of a city with more than 8 million inhabitants. In addition, Bogotá, unlike other large cities in the region, does not have an elevated or subway metro system. A major backwardness in terms of mobility in this century.

Thus, it seems that public policies promoted from the spheres of local power and pressured in their execution by civil society, have partially complied in terms of alternatives and multimodality, but seem to be failing in everything else.

3. Death in the air: the most polluted cities in Latin-America 

Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) presented a study comparing air quality in almost 3,000 cities in more than 103 countries. One of the worrying assertions made in the study, entitled Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database, reveals a major environmental problem: 80 percent of people living in urban areas around the world breathe air that is too polluted. The WHO expects that a city should not exceed an annual average airborne particulate matter concentration of 10 microns (PM10 on average) and 2.5 microns (PM10 on average).

The study shows the top 10 most polluted cities in Latin America, from which the Chilean protagonism stands out: five of its cities have air pollution levels that exceed 75 PM10 in Roncagua and Coyhaique. The complete list is as follows:

The curious thing about the relationship between cities with internationally recognized good mobility systems and pollution stands out particularly in the city of Medellín, Colombia: the city’s metro and Metrocable manage to connect even the most marginal points and their peripheries with the center. The system is an example of mobility for the chaotic example of Bogotá, discussed here earlier. Even so, Medellín is the most polluted city in Colombia, largely due to the city’s exponential growth and the increase in a vehicle fleet dependent almost exclusively on fossil fuels such as gasoline. With 2.5 million inhabitants, some areas of the city have been put on orange alert, and a few others are on red alert, due to the imminent negative effects of breathing the air of what is known as the “silver bowl” and which some are now beginning to call the “filth bowl”.

4. How bicycles can solve transportation issues: Beyond infrastructure 

Lima in Peru, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil, and Caracas in Venezuela present, like Santiago and Bogota, considerable mobility problems, but public policies have bet on the use of bicycles as a solution strategy to achieve more friendly,  livable and humane cities.

In 2015, the Inter-American Development Bank conducted a study on 56 Latin American cities in order to promote the use of bicycles in the region.

Bogota in Colombia, Santiago in Chile and Rosario in Argentina have the highest rates of bicycle use. The study also mentions which cities have the greatest cycling infrastructure in terms of number of kilometers:

Even when public policies support infrastructure and public access, building a culture around the use of bicycles involves many elements, in which only one Latin American city stands out according to the independent study Copenhagenize Index 2015: Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Ranked 14th in the index, the city stands out for its vehicle rental system, the implementation of 140 kilometers of bicycle lanes, the safety of cycling in the city and the widespread social acceptance of bicycle use. Buenos Aires’ commitment has been more complete than in other cases in the region, and that is why the Argentine capital is considered the most bicycle-friendly city in Latin America.

4.2: The bicycle as democratic weapon

The bicycle is probably the most democratic means of transport that exists. It can be accessed from USD 50 and up, which represents a financial strategy in itself in the face of the income, environmental and mobility issues discussed here. It is democracy and equality on two wheels.

That is why in Latin America one does not buy a bicycle: one invests in it. You invest in it because it does not require the use of gasoline and, given the exponential trend of increase of bicycle users in the countries of the region, the environmental impact in improving air quality may not take many years to be relevant. Not to mention that with its use, cities bottled up by endless lines of cars moving at 20 kilometers per hour, or less, breathe a little. We invest because we combat stress, we exercise, we take care of the planet and we save money, all by pedaling.

A city that is transported by bicycle is a city that is constantly rethinking and evaluating itself, that is giving time and manoeuvring space for the design and execution of public policies on mobility and citizen culture, impossible to carry out when, as in the case of Bogota, CDMX or Lima, everything seems to be overflowing.

According to Juan Pablo Bejarano, founder of the Colombian organization Fundación Tortuga, whose main objective is social transformation based on the use of bicycles, this represents a fundamental tool for democratizing cities, but at the same time presents latent challenges:

“Even if the city is heavily polluted, the health benefits outweigh all the polluted air a cyclist has to breathe.  Cycling is seen in all social classes. We should really focus on working with low-income populations, both in terms of promotion and good service. As an example, a study conducted in Bogota by the National University, indicates that a person of socio-economic stratum 1 to 3, on average must travel 1.5 km to find a suitable space to park his bike; on the other hand, a person between stratum 5 to 6, must travel 500 meters. And although the bike is a trend, it is also the way in which many people decide between their daily food or mobility.”

Every political scientist should be a daily user of the bicycle to get around because it symbolically and practically controverts the traditional mandate of the automobile as a means of transportation, in times where climate change is the prelude to an uncertain future, which despite what we thought, will not come due to the effects of a catastrophic world war or the nuclear threat of the cold war story. Air that cannot be breathed, water that cannot be drunk, great migrations due to floods caused by polar melting. Calculating the immediate effects would not be so difficult.

5. CASE-STUDY: Recovering bicycles to save the world

The covid-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. Faced with the novelty of a fact that neither my generation (nor others) had experienced in life, living in Argentina, I met virtually (as it could not be otherwise in this new normality) with two old friends living in Colombia and Spain.

We asked ourselves, what can we do so that uncertainty, fear and paranoia do not freeze us? Juan Pablo Bejarano (political scientist like me), creator and director of Biciclaje (a play on words in Spanish between bicycle and recycling), had already brought with him for years the experience of collecting disused bicycles, recovering them with the greatest possible reduction of costs, and putting them back into circulation through the mechanism of donations to vulnerable populations in various parts of his country and mine, Colombia.

And finally, me, wanting to add the muscle of digital communication through my platform Es De Politólogos (EDP) (the closest translation to English would be something like ‘about Political Scientists’). EDP is a digital political communication platform that disseminates, within the discipline of political science, urgent debates regarding politics, history, economics and culture to large organic niche audiences in Spanish-speaking countries.

5.1: How we mobilized the bicycle to close the political-economic divide increased during the pandemic

These three diverse forces and expertise came together for the single purpose of contributing ideas that would somehow resolve the physical distancing measures and biosecurity measures that this new pandemic world posed. We recognized that the pandemic deepened the contradictions of the hegemonic political-economic system. The deep socio-economic, knowledge and digital gaps became more obvious than ever. But, if the diagnosis is over portrayed by media, researchers, academics and intellectuals, the really important question was for action: What can we do from our micro universe of activism?

The bicycle was again presented to us as the obvious answer. Think for a second: if so many people are being affected economically in countries where, as we saw, the food-mobility dilemma is a gigantic daily weight on the shoulders of the average citizen, then the bicycle can arrive with its Superman cape to a) ensure that the physical distancing and biosecurity measures so promoted by the WHO are met in the face of the impossibility of reopening major public transport systems, and with that b) reactivate the economy despite the isolation measures and programmed quarantines in force. Health, mobility and economy, not solved, but at least thought of with very cheap solutions.

5.2: Reaching people where they are during the pandemic: In front of their screens

In the end, 70 people were able to receive the recovered bicycles and the training workshop with its four axes, completely free of charge.

It was very gratifying to see that we contributed from a small space but with great potential to the decommodification of access to mobility: The cocktail between a giant demand for bicycles together with the scarcity of raw materials required for their production has skyrocketed their commercial price. This growth in demand has been met with the greatest production difficulties that the bicycle industry has faced in recent history. To give just one example. Aluminium (the main material used to manufacture bicycle frames) has become a difficult material to acquire on a large scale. One reflection of this is the aluminium futures market, which is about to reach a 10-year high and which, since April 2020, has increased in price by more than 60%.

CONCLUSION: Recommendations for a better world

Reversing the processes that mark history is possible to the extent that citizenship is built around the tools we have. Everyday life offers us elements to subvert the enforcement dynamics that surround us in an effective way: the bicycle fulfills this function, as it is a valuable alternative from the local level, to generate a sustainable and alternative culture in our societies. To put in place a discourse coherent with the training received and the global challenges of which we are aware as political scientists, is intrinsic to the use of different ways of doing things, and using a bicycle on a daily basis is coherence in movement.

Donald Trump and the irresponsible turn that he is taking with a frank ignorance of the current climate phenomena can be reversed with Political Science. The public agenda is set. It only remains to understand as political scientists, that power can also go on two wheels, and driven by nothing more than ideas, and legs.

This article is written by Tatiana Gómez Tibasosa on behalf of Icare Sustainably International. Edited by Rianne Doller and Carolyne Nyarangi.

This article is part of a series where we look into the effects of the pandemic on Sustainable Development Goal 4, quality education for all. In previous articles, we looked at it from the perspective of Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago and we made a documentary. Icare is committed to working on the SDGs despite the Pandemic. These articles are part of our research to find out which projects are necessary.

Download the article here.

Introduction

1: Shift in focus to study teachers’ initiatives in Colombia to mitigate effects of the pandemic

In previous articles we focused on what the government is doing, should do and can do to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on education for marginalized people. In this article, we shift the focus from the government to put three Colombian initiatives by teachers in the limelight. We shift the focus to show that overcoming the pandemic is not only in the government’s hands. We should also focus on the power of the people and the value of localized initiatives. Local people know best what fits in their specific situation and it puts less dependency on governments who don’t always respond quickly and effectively enough. One example of this need is regulations that both take into account hand-washing, together with the reality of water shortage.

The overwhelming and drastic changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the possibility of rethinking and reconfiguring habits, customs and treatments (1). This is based on the measures and associated new ways of socializing that include, among others, different commute times, working from home and, of course, unimaginable challenges in the education field.

Our article will show that the switch in education is not unilateral, but location dependent. This by discussing some of the biggest challenges that the educational system has had in Colombia: a country that struggles with all its might to maintain a quality standard that is competitive with its neighbouring countries, despite the economic and infrastructural helplessness of the National government.

The pandemic exposed the realities of the involvement of the Colombian government in the living standard of the majority of the population. State aid is not available for a lot of people and all economic, educational and social success is through the people’s own efforts and interest. Some notable areas the government is lacking are: providing public services (electricity, natural gas, aqueduct, sewerage and internet) and social services (health, education, housing, transportation and recreation).

In this article, the effort of the Colombian government is compared with that of the people regarding their respective solutions to continue education during the pandemic.

1.1: In this article we will cover the following topics:

1. Introduction: Shift in focus to study teachers’ initiatives in Colombia to mitigate the effects of the pandemic

2. Colombian education is in quarantine together with the people 

2.1: Context of Colombia

2.2 Action taken in Colombia to prevent the spread of Covid-19

3. How is education organized in rural Colombia?

3.1 Case-studies: impact Covid-measures on rural education

Case-study 1: When students can’t come to school, school comes to the children

Case study 2: Teachers take over the radio

Case-study 3: Education in shifts to save water

3.2: Take away case-studies

4. Conclusion: Lessons from the teachers during the pandemic

2: Colombian education is in quarantine together with the people

2.2: Action taken in Colombia to prevent spread of Covid-19

Governments around the world were forced to take preventive measures in a matter of hours to contain spread. There were some sceptical governments who stated that it was only a political strategy of the countries with greater economic development. Other governmental bodies quickly banned crowds, motivated constant handwashing and the use of a face mask.

Additionally, without hesitation, some of the state budgets were aimed to improve hospitals, create tests to detect the virus, and purchase Intensive Care Units (ICUs) to provide care for as many people as possible. Consequently, education programs became less relevant in a time when education changed drastically because students and teachers don’t meet in person anymore but through a screen with virtual classes(3). These circumstances demand even greater creativity and innovation  to work for all students for every region of Colombia. This article sheds light on this issue with the following three questions in mind:

1. What happens in areas where virtual schooling is not an option (4)?
2. How will the uneducated underage population, or the kids with special needs, get access to virtual learning?
3. What are the impacts on education in a country like Colombia, for the rural regions specifically?

3: How is education organized in rural Colombia?

3.1: Case-studies: impact Covid-measures on rural education

Once the pandemic “season” began and the national media announced the first prevention measures included the closure of roads, quarantine in the biggest cities and the mandatory social distancing that included the closure of events in bars, shopping malls and restaurants. 

The main challenges in rural areas is a  limited opportunity to buy and sell agricultural products, suspension of transport services to crowded areas to visit health centres, and of course, in-person classes were stopped throughout the country. The last point meant that boys and girls in the most remote areas  would be left without receiving any classes or assistance unless they would think of some strategy together with the teachers that would allow them to continue learning while protecting themselves from the contagious COVID-19. We will discuss examples of some of those initiatives below.

Case-study 1: When students can’t come to school, school comes to the children

In some municipalities of Tolima department (Colombia), Rural Educational Institutions (REI) are located in the middle of dense forests and areas which are  difficult to access by road. Some teachers from these schools have designed a series of guides that they printed and photocopied to take to each property where children reside who cannot go to educational centres directly (5).

The teachers in charge of their respective village school travelled  by motorcycle to take these guides to each house. The journey is long and risky, but still the teachers chose to undertake it. This also enabled them to offer a brief explanation of the guide and its contents to the student and caretakers. At the end of the week they went to each house again to give feedback to the materials and to answer questions of the students.

Case study 2: Teachers take over the radio

Case-study 3: Education in shifts to save water

The Eastern region of Colombia is characterized by its wide plains and desert areas. In this area, mainly peasants and indigenous people reside. Here schooling in shifts was chosen as a solution to continue education of both the underage and adult population. Lessons were planned in time frames and in a weekly schedule. Students attend classes in small groups with their parents. This enabled everyone to keep distance and also to not run out of water in the sanitary units. With the schedule the students receive class at least three times a week. This is enough to maintain pre-pandemic academic levels. 

Water is scarce in the Eastern region, so a solution had to be found that also diminishes pressure on the scarce resource, so the schools don’t run out of water or deplete the water for other uses.

3.2: Take away case-studies

Teachers from all over the country have created instruments, methodologies and tools to continue educating the learners. Each method is adapted to the students and regions’ specific challenges and needs. One thing is apparent: none of the solutions uses electronic learning despite the fact that it is offered as the best solution for schooling during the pandemic. There is a simple reason for that.

There is no internet coverage in most areas and students also lack access to computers or other electronic gadgets. If they have access, student and teachers lack the knowledge to use online schooling materials.  Therefore, it is important to also focus on other alternative ways to continue education. We can learn from the spontaneous effort of the teachers if we don’t fixate on the one-case fits all solution of online learning.

Another takeaway from the case studies is that a one-solution fits all approach can cause more problems. If teachers in Eastern Colombia had allowed all students and parents to visit the school without a schedule it could have caused a water shortage.

4: Conclusion: Lessons from the teachers during the pandemic

Creativity is an endless resource used by teachers to ensure schooling continues.  But, shouldn’t the National Government be the one who provides the resources for the improvement of the educational system in pandemic times? Because the alternatives provided by the educators from the three rural areas we discussed were all done without government involvement, be it by providing educational resources, knowledge or money. 

Teachers need new and better educational instruments that allow them to strengthen their teaching methods, their technological skills and their didactic instruments to motivate and strengthen learning in each learner. The government should assist the teachers by providing those resources. Examples of resources they should provide are:

This is also in the benefit of the government. When students from rural and remote areas have a means to continue their education the overall standard of education in Colombia increases. Consequently, this will create more competitive human beings with better social and economical skills. And well-educated people are vital to overcome the pandemic and to rebuild the world afterwards.