Although this might be news to third world — including India — politicians, enforcement of law and order is a precondition of quality education delivery.
In downtown Medellín — once a global symbol of drug-related violence in the cocaine trade — stands the bright yellow San Ignacio building. Built in 1803, this first campus of the University of Antioquia survived Colombia’s colonial rule by Spain, which ended in 1810. And 200 years later, it is witnessing Medellín’s recovery from the drug cartels that ruled by terror and, for a time, made the city the most dangerous in the world.
Investment and improvements in security in the past 20 years have allowed it to shed its reputation as a murder capital. In a recent study of the world’s most dangerous cities, it was ranked only 49th, and is likely to fall out of the Top 50 this year.
Those in Antioquia’s Office of International Affairs say the city’s transformation has helped efforts to internationalise the institution. With an investment of more than £460 million (Rs.4,547 crore) from sources including local and national governments, Antioquia now has international agreements with 46 countries.
Last year, the number of foreign visiting professors reached 860, almost tripling in just two years. And for the first time, the proportion of Antioquia students on exchanges abroad reached 1 percent, the average across Latin America. “Medellín was (once) the most dangerous city in the world,” says Carolina García, from the university’s Office of International Affairs. “Now we have to devise summer programmes because every one of our partners is asking for programmes in Colombia.”
The university’s new rector, Mauricio Alviar Ramírez, has made internationalisation a priority. He intends to increase the number of Antioquia undergraduates and postgraduates studying abroad and to raise enrolments of foreign students in Medellín. “We have to be realistic, but we can say that the number of international students in the university has grown,” says García.
With 39,000 students at 11 campuses, the university has the largest concentration of students in the country. In the past two decades, it has expanded beyond the city to include satellite sites in all subregions, including the troubled area of Urabá, where guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have clashed with the government.
Of the goals the university has set itself, that of increasing international mobility may be the most challenging. More than half of Antioquia’s students, 55 percent, come from the least well-off social classes and don’t pay tuition fees. “Our students don’t have the economic resources and economic capacity (to go abroad), so we are trying to get a lot of resources not only via our office but with other departments of the university to create a fund to help our students,” says García.
(Excerpted and adapted from )