Minister René Ramírez Gallegos: We Must Overcome the Cognitive Gap

Posted On 30 Jun 2016

Ecuador is one of the countries in the Latin American region that have demonstrated the most rapid growth and notable improvement in the access to and quality of education. Over the last decade, the country has put educational reforms among its top priorities and as a result, local students now enjoy unprecedented opportunities for international mobility offered by the Ecuadorian government itself.

What particular programmes for education abroad are currently available for Ecuadorian students and on what conditions can they participate in those?

The answers will be given to you by none other than Minister René Ramírez Gallegos himself – the next speaker on our stellar agenda for the upcoming ETN Talks: LATAM.

René is the Minister of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT), the Ecuadorian Government Scholarships programme launched in 2010. He is also the current Chairman of Yachay, the City of Knowledge, and also Chairman of the Ecuadorian Higher Education Council (CES).

Among his many areas of expertise are social public policy, inequality, citizen participation and the knowledge economy.

René has contributed tremendously to the process of transforming Ecuador’s higher education system and to the advancement of knowledge, technological innovation and infrastructure development necessary to achieve Good Living (Buen Vivir).

Latin America is the most biodiverse as well as the most urbanized developing region in the world. There has been an enormous wealth of untapped resources, but also a lot of new challenges: it is still the place with the most unequal income distribution in the world. Urbanization opens the door to new services and gives rise to new hopes and aspirations, but at the same time it also demands for the formation of human talent to attend these needs. The fundamental task in this scenario is to overcome the cognitive gap, and for that purpose SENESCYT has framed STEM promotion policies in six areas:

Policies of academic mobility (Excellency Scholarships and Group of High Performance for international education);

Policies of cognitive transmission (Prometeo and Ateneo Projects for transfer of knowledge);

Research policies (Bank of ideas: funding for vanguard and relevant scientific projects);

Policies for institutional formation (Yachay, City of knowledge for Innovation and technologic production; ITT for practical professional formation);

Incentives policies (New formula for distribution of public funds that reciprocates results); and

Regulatory policies (INGENIOS Code to articulate the impulse towards STEM with a social economy of Knowledge that projects its results for the benefit of the whole society).

René will be talking about scholarship programmes as a driver of student mobility with particular focus on Ecuadorian scholarships in higher education, science, technology and innovation at the ETN Focus Workshop on 12-13 Sept in Quito, Ecuador.

In the meantime if you’re interested in reading more about Rene and his activities, you can check out his official website and LinkedIn profile.