Discourses of (In) equity in higher education: dual scenarios in the Ser Pilo Paga program - Colombia

• In Event: Equity issues in Latin American higher education

Proposal

Equity is at the center of higher education policies worldwide. It is increasingly common for countries—United States, Turkey, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Colombia—to develop public policies fostering equal access to higher education for vulnerable groups (Blok 2016; Bragg & Durham, 2012, Clancy & Goastellec, 2007; Dowd & Taing, 2013; Dundar & Lewis, 1999; Hillman, Tandberg & Sponsler, 2015; McCowan, 2016; McDermott, Frankenberg & Williams, 2013; Pedroza & Villalobos, 2009).
With this objective, the Colombian National Development Plan (2014-2018) established a public policy program called Ser Pilo Paga (hereinafter, SPP). This program seeks to support people who classify, by means of a standardized test known as Saber 11, as “smart and with potential, but of low resources”. Yet the program excludes poor people obtaining low scores in the standardized exam.
The “smart-poor-with-potential” classification is a powerful image that justifies providing advantages to the SPP target group—the beneficiaries—in comparison to the rest of the potential students—the excluded ones. SPP discourse is dual. On the one hand, it demands access with equity, but, on the other hand, it generates inequality in access to higher education for low-income students.
The theories of justice of Rawls (1997; 2002) and Sen (1998; 2010) influence the concept of equity: a possibility of fair distribution of opportunities to access education and reduce social gaps (Briceño, 2011, McCowan, 2016). In contrast, inequality does not appeal to the theory of justice, since it does not involve the heterogeneity of conditions of each individual, given their particular social context.
In this context, the purpose of this paper is to identify dual equity and inequity scenarios generated in the discourses of the SPP program. In order to achieve this objective, the following guiding questions were asked: How are SPP discourses communicated? What discourses of the SPP program represent languages of equity or inequity? What meanings are constructed from the discourses of equity and inequity of the SPP program?
To fulfill the proposed objective, we selected 383 publications produced and disseminated in six representative media of the Colombian press (newspapers, magazines and web portals) that have published speeches of the SPP program, between 2014 and 2018. For the selection of these media we took into account three political approaches—liberal, conservative and independent, in order to analyze different discursive perspectives on the program. These data were analyzed in the Atlas.ti software, version 8.
The discourse constituted the specific unit of analysis of this research. By using a critical discourse analysis, we interrelated language, context, action, ideology and power relations. Following Fairclough (2013), we identify three elements of the information in the social context: gender (forms of interaction), discourse (forms of representation) and style (forms of identification).
Among the main findings, we highlight five dual equity and inequity scenarios in the SPP program: 1) Inclusion and socioeconomic exclusion: there are the pilos (the smart), those chosen to access the program, but also the non-pilos (non-smart), and non-selected. 2) Education as right and privilege: a discourse of the right to education yet only 2% of young people with scarce resources access the program, measurement by score and competence. 3) Pilos to graduate and to borrow: scholarships are not granted but forgivable loans, many graduate and they forgive their loan, others remain indebted. 4) Philanthropy and selfishness: there are sponsorships, donations, commitments to adapt students to diverse environments, but also claims for their access to elite universities and derogatory denominations. 5) Happiness, gratitude and fear, uncertainty: beneficiaries express happiness for the program, others feel vulnerable due to their mobility, due to possible drop-out, in addition to complaints from public universities for the bias of the program favoring private higher education institutions.
This research seeks to contribute to the field of study of higher education and allows to controvert about the fulfillment of public policy objectives, from the implementation perspective of neoliberal policies that generates dual scenarios of equity and inequity.

Authors

• Lina María Valencia-Salazar, Universidad EAFIT

• Isabel Cristina Montes, Student

• Carmen Alejandra Ocampo-Salazar, Universidad EAFIT