Ser Pilo Paga
National program of the Ministry of Education (2014-2018) of forgivable loan-scholarships so that low-income high school graduates with high scores on Saber 11 could study at accredited high-quality universities.
illustrative atlas image · Valentin Ivantsov / Pexels01 The context
Four cohorts, ~40,000 beneficiaries. The regression discontinuity evaluation (Londoño-Vélez, Rodríguez and Sánchez, AEJ 2020) found increases of 56.5-86.5% in immediate enrollment and a closing of the socioeconomic gap. It ended in 2018 and was replaced by Generación E.
02 How it works
03 What it stands on
The evidence 2 ›
04 Lessons learned
Three documented lessons: (1) more than 70% of beneficiaries chose private universities, draining public resources and generating political conflict with public universities; (2) the fiscal cost was underestimated (550 billion pesos in 2018 alone), which made the design unsustainable; (3) the forgivable loan-scholarship mechanism left unpayable debts to more than 4,000 young people who dropped out (ICETEX puts the figure at 4,347 dropouts). Even so, the causal evidence of impact on equity is among the most solid in the region: the failure was one of fiscal sustainability and political economy, not of targeting or effect.