“It is a debt that I believe the Nation owes to those young people. Boys and girls who had the right to higher education and had to sign out of their pocket for a loan with which they were left in a situation of absolute vulnerability. That credit disappears and we pay it,” said Gustavo Petro.
“Today I have to announce that all the credits that have been inherited from the ‘Ser Pilo Paga’ program, by the students who are still studying their degrees at universities, we have assumed that the Nation is going to pay for them; between 100 and 50%, an amount that can reach up to $134 billion.”
This was stated by President Gustavo Petro at the end of the Security Council held in the town of Kennedy within the framework of the first Government with the People in Bogotá, where he gave details of the actions for the country’s capital, and making education a fundamental variable in a peaceful society.
The Cambio government is going to finance the leap towards public higher education, contrary to programs like ‘Ser Pilo Paga’ that have ended up subsidizing, with public money, private universities and generating debt for the student, explained the head of state.
“It is a debt that I believe the Nation owes to those young people, boys and girls who had the right to higher education and who had to sign a loan for their own money with which they were left in a situation of absolute vulnerability. That credit disappears and we pay it.”
Education for childhood
President Gustavo Petro indicated that the government will help co-finance the construction of 70 schools in the country’s capital, which will generate 60 thousand new places, which have all three years of preschool.
“It increases by an important proportion the district’s capacity to achieve what is a constitutional order and that is that children, early childhood, after the age of three can begin to acquire educational processes. “That is what has worked in peaceful countries today, to lower crime rates,” he added.
Other bets on education
The President also referred to the development of the multi-campus project in Suba, located on the land of Avenida Longitudinal de Occident (ALO) in the northern section, which will offer tens of thousands of higher education places in different areas.
You can “transform the ALO into a green university campus and they have called that here the Suba multicampus, so it is worth $317 billion that the Nation is going to put in, so that it becomes a reality for the local youth, especially in its western sector which is the poorest.”
Regarding Kennedy University, with the help of the Central Technical Institute (ITC) School of Technology, the head of state assured that with the objective of materializing a multicampus in this area of the capital, the expansion and improvement of this public university center, on land that has 10 thousand square meters available ready.
Regarding the Francisco José de Caldas District University, Porvenir headquarters in Bosa, he pointed out that, after its inauguration, “there was still half a lot left there, which is for a second project that we have now decided to do, which was the Faculty of Sciences of the Health of the District University in Bosa. The lot is there so we are going to finance the project.”
