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This article shows how the strategic alignment of the purpose with support services and people-based management achieves differentiated access of young rural people to the university in a territory with adverse socioeconomic conditions. Talento Magdalena Program is a solid commitment to breaking the barriers of historical exclusion and poverty that have been present in the Magdalena region (Colombia) through access to higher education at the Unimagdalena. This initiative has the potential to be replicated in other developing countries with similar socioeconomic backwardness conditions to Magdalena: high rates of structural poverty and low rates of higher education coverage.
Introduction:
Education is one of the most significant indicators to promote countries' development and constitutes a fundamental tool for social mobility and the materialization of social equity (Wasserman, 2021; PNDE, 2016). Likewise, education is a keystone of multilateral agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, where education represents the fourth SDG: "Quality Education." Nevertheless, despite the significance of education, achieving equal access to the education system still needs to be solved. Higher education is the educational level with the most unequal access in Latin America and the Caribbean (Celin-Giraldo, 2022). Colombia has the same condition since only 22% of people between 25 and 64 are university graduates (SPADIES, 2020). This situation is intensified in Colombian rural regions, such as the rural Magdalena territory, where only 3 out of 10 young people have access to higher education.
In this context, Universidad del Magdalena - Unimagdalena develops its value proposition of providing high-quality higher education that transforms lives and territories in a sustainable manner. One way to materialize this proposal has been by implementing the Talento Magdalena program as a strategy for free access to university education for people from rural and poor areas.
Talento Magdalena has been working since 2018 as a differential access mechanism that levels the environmental inequities and facilitates access and permanence in higher education for population groups that have been historically excluded from the higher education system: Afro-descendants, farmers, indigenous people, women, and poor youth.
Likewise, Talento Magdalena is becoming a main vehicle for Unimagdalena to create impact in terms of inclusion since today, all the municipalities that belong to the Magdalena region have students admitted to the undergraduate programs in the Institution. In this way, we have trained 2,083 students and graduated five professionals, and expect 68 more to graduate in 2023-II. These graduates will be the seed that will positively and sustainably transform the territories where they come from.
Talento Magdalena: Beginning, Development, and Future
Talento Magdalena program was created based on the Inclusion and Regionalization policy of the 2016-2020 Government Plan of Chancellor Pablo Vera Salazar, Ph.D., justified by the conditions of inequity identified in the admission process to Unimagdalena. In the last decade, it was evidenced a considerable decrease in the percentage of students from marginal groups. Unimagdalena is the only public university in the region, therefore, the only possibility of free higher education for these young people.
Before the program was established, half of the municipalities in this region had not managed to have any of their high school graduates to the university, in some careers of impact for the development of the territory, such as Medicine, Civil Engineering, or Law, due to the academic performance of their high school graduates, who were lagging their peers from other municipalities. This fact further aggravated Magdalena's educational and poverty gap and the possibility of its rural and poor young people pursuing a professional career.
The objectives of the Talento Magdalena program are:
1. To increase the presence of students from Magdalena in the only public university in this region.
2. To promote the quality of education at preceding levels of education.
3. To contribute to the development of the territory.
4. To stimulate healthy competition to obtain good results on the state tests at the end of high school (SABER-11).
Talento Magdalena consists of awarding two scholarships per year to students who obtain the first- and second-best individual scores on the state tests at the end of high school in 156 public schools located in the 28 poorest municipalities of Magdalena, that is, places where families live on less than USD2.7 per day. In total, 308 scholarships have been awarded in each Unimagdalena admission process since 2018.
Here it is worth mentioning that the issue of merit is addressed in this program from the equity perspective posed by Sandel (2021):
"In an unequal society, those who land on top want to believe that their success has a moral justification. In a meritocratic society, that means winners must believe that they have "earned" success through their talent and effort (...), but do all people have a truly equal opportunity to compete for desirable goods and social positions?" (p.16).
The scholarship includes the allocation of a direct place at the university in one of the 47 undergraduate programs offered by the institution, free tuition fees, financial aid for the payment of housing and study materials; access to free lunches and meals at the campus; academic levelling and accompaniment and psychosocial support.
Unimagdalena's senior management leads the development of the Talento Magdalena program. In addition, there is an interdisciplinary team of professionals: psychologists, education graduates, economists, and managers, who accompany the process of personal development and academic training of the beneficiary students.
In conclusion, we estimate that out of the total % of Talento Magdalena students, 82% represent the first professional person in their families and, most likely, the first in their municipalities. All this shows that this program is a valuable tool to close the gap in access to higher education and to overcome the poverty trap in the Magdalena region and Colombia. To date, Talento Magdalena students represent 12% of the undergraduate student population at Unimagdalena.
As a long-term goal, we expect that by 2030 the Talento Magdalena program will award 3,938 scholarships and graduate 2,525 young rural people, including, for example, 209 new Systems Engineers and 225 Doctors who will have a positive impact on the competitiveness and social capital of the poorest municipalities of Magdalena.
How Social Innovation is Created: Talento Magdalena
Our social innovation is carried out through three main activities, which reflect our institutional commitment toward engagement:
• Funding: There is a fund called ‘Talento Magdalena’, which is supported by revenue from a special tax granted by the Colombian state to Unimagdalena. Since the launch of the Talento Magdalena program in 2018, there has been an investment of close to USD 2,898,340.96, which represents an average annual investment of USD 579,668.192. Each scholarship has an annual cost for Unimagdalena of USD 1,500, which is more than double the per capita transfer (USD 695 million) received from the national budget. In this way, Unimagdalena shows how an engaged university plan and manages its investments with engagement orientation.
• Differentiated admission process: The admission process for Talento Magdalena students is carried out considering the individualities of the young rural people presented at each admission, particularly their academic performance, geographical origin, and vocation.
Comprehensive support: The beneficiaries of the Talento Magdalena program receive professional support and advice to maintain excellent academic performance without neglecting their process of adaptation to university life and graduating as professionals. Among the comprehensive support actions are: psychosocial support (psychological counseling), academic support (teacher advocating), and socioeconomic support (support for housing, study books and materials, and meals).
In this process, we develop the potential of young people's talents to gain access to higher education as a tool for transforming their lives and the territory itself. This generates a natural creation of social value. In particular, the criteria that should be considered to replicate this experience are differentiated academic merit, the inclusion of all populations traditionally excluded from the higher education system (farmers, indigenous people, women, and afro-descendants), and comprehensive student support, not only financing tuition but also psychosocial and economic support schemes are required so that students do not fail in their efforts to become professionals.
In short, Unimagdalena, with its Talento Magdalena Program, has managed to open its campus to the most outstanding and, at the same time, most needy students of Magdalena, a young population that historically has seen its professional training expectations truncated, which has perpetuated for decades circles of poverty and social backwardness in the territory. Thanks to this initiative, 73 young people have already achieved their academic and professional goals. However, many more are on the way to becoming leaders and agents of positive transformation in their communities.
Unimagdalena will continue seeding hope in the territory through high-quality education and fulfilling its role as an institution that articulates the private and public sectors and civil society in favor of Magdalena and Colombia's positive and sustainable transformation. Unimagdalena is an agent of positive change in the regional ecosystem and highly influences its stakeholders to support regional sustainable development.
Celin-Giraldo, (2022). Equidad y acceso a la educación superior en Colombia: análisis de los programas Ser Pilo Paga y Generación E. Bogotá, Universidad del Rosario.
Naciones Unidas (2018). La Agenda 2030 y los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible: una oportunidad para América Latina y el Caribe (LC/G.2681-P/Rev.3), Santiago.
Plan Nacional Decenal de Educación. (2016). Ministerio de Educación 2016-2026. Retrieved from: https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1759/articles-363197_recurso_8.pdf
Sandel, M. (2021). La tiranía del mérito. Editorial Debate.
Wasserman, M. (2021). La educación en Colombia. Bogotá, Editorial Debate.
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https://investigacion.unimagdalena.edu.co/