In less good there is inefficiency, little research and interference of the political class. The 32 public universities in the country have had an uneven development in quality, coverage and investigative capacity. To date, eight of them have been credited with high quality standards on a voluntary basis and the 637 undergraduate programs (there are more than 5,000) that they currently have with this accreditation in Colombia, 333 are offered by public institutions. In the case of private ones, are 12 accredited universities, 48 that exist. He says the teacher and researcher Luis Enrique Orozco, today, there are five or six State universities very good, with indexed publications, full-time teachers with doctoral level, but others entrusted in the Pope State, bad gerenciadas and little articulated with scientific development, which translates into bad educational payments and low quality. There are public universities of excellence, but they are the exception, and there are others that aren’t good ones are excellent have managed to create an educational community of quality, be efficient and grow into consolidated research groups, but others still have much intervention by the political class, not clear handlings, perverse trade union processes, and this translates into low quality, says Gabriel Burgos, former Deputy Minister of higher education. One of the aspects raised by the proposed reform to the law 30 is precisely, ask them for greater transparency, since explicit accountability to society and the State. This lack of transparency, adds Burgos, prevented some from reaching the excellence.
Not so many teachers of Chair but the subject of teachers, their formation and their time devoted to teaching also impact on quality. Many universities have opted to recruit teachers of Chair or occasional, and although that is not necessarily bad, nor is good, and is key to have a healthy mix, says Deputy Minister of higher education, Javier Botero. Figures from the Ministry of national education say that 110.488 teachers linked to public higher education and private in 2009, 30 percent were full-time, 13.6 per cent of part-time and 56.2 per cent were university professors.