The Higher University Council (CSU) of this institution had already met twice – on May 28 and June 6 – to propose actions to improve the financial situation. They also warned, at that time, of the structural underfunding that the UdeA has been experiencing for years.
Photo: Twitter University of Antioquia
After a few complex weeks for the University of Antioquia (UdeA) due to the delay in payroll payment to its employees, this Wednesday, June 12, the Government of Antioquia announced the transfer of 11 billion pesos, corresponding to the department’s contributions for June and July to that institution.
The turn, according to the governor Andrés Julián Rendón, It will be done starting tomorrow, Thursday, June 13, with the values necessary to comply with the payroll payments of UdeA employees.
“In view of the complex moments that the university is going through, (we made the decision to) give cash flow to the Alma Mater,” said Rendón, who also called on the university directors to “undertake a real commitment to austerity that is see represented in the reduction of teaching hour contracts, travel, travel expenses, and excessive bureaucracy.”
In his words, it was mentioned that “If up to 50% of teaching hour contracts were released, the university could save around 60 billion pesos per year. UdeA professors, even those with doctoral and master’s degrees, should allocate up to 30% of their time to teaching,” stated the governor.
The Higher University Council (CSU) of this institution had already met twice – on May 28 and June 6 – to propose actions to improve the financial situation. They also warned, at that time, of the structural underfunding that the UdeA has been experiencing for years. “This situation recently had greater visibility when the payment of the payroll for period 9 of the current year was carried out in a staggered manner, in accordance with the flow of resource availability,” the Council explained in a statement.
For the institution, this point was reached as a result of a structural problem related to Law 30 of 1992, in which it was established that the Consumer Price Index would be the criterion for annually increasing the resources of the universities, which, without However, they have grown in number of students and infrastructure at a much faster rate than that proposed in that law.
“This, despite the efforts and strategies to leverage its own resources that the University has managed in all these years, has generated a historical gap between what the University receives and what it requires to carry out its mission on all its campuses. . Despite this, the institution still has time to promote structural changes and implement actions that allow it to recover its financial health,” they say in the statement, where they highlight three types of action that will be carried out by the university to try to improve its finance.
Firstly, the CSU said that “resource management must be intensified with national and municipal government entities, in order to increase the contributions that are necessary for the functioning of the institution.” Added to this is the impact that the university hopes to have in the construction of public policies that affect the financing of public universities.
Also, and like the governor, they invited the entire university community to take actions to “rationalize” expenses within the institution, such as payments for professor hours, the items that are allocated to travel expenses and tickets. Of transport.
Finally, Rendón announced that he will support the completion of the sports infrastructure of the Bajo Cauca headquarters in Antioquia for a value of 1.1 billion pesos. “In this way we make a real commitment to regionalization,” he concluded.
