page_title: University of Los Andes (Colombia)
section_title: Historical context
hierarchical_section_title: University of Los Andes (Colombia) / History / Historical context
caption_attribution_description: English: Alfonso López Pumarejo, president of Colombia (1934-1938/1942-1945)
context_page_description: The University of Los Andes, also commonly self-styled as Uniandes, is a private research university located in the city centre of Bogotá, Colombia. Founded in 1948 by a group of Colombian intellectuals led by Mario Laserna Pinzón, it was the first Colombian university established as nonsectarian. Los Andes has consistently been regarded as the best Colombian university and has been considered one of the top 5 Latin American universities and one of the top 250 world universities, according to both the QS World Top University Ranking and the Times Higher Education Classification.
  The university is academically composed of nine schools, three special academic entities—the Alberto Lleras Camargo School of Government, the Center for Research and Training in Education, and the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies —and a joint academic venture with the medical institution Santa Fe de Bogotá Foundation, offering 31 undergraduate, 18 doctoral, and 38 graduate degree-granting programs in areas of human knowledge such as medicine, engineering, science, law and others.
context_section_description: In 1930, the Colombian presidential elections resulted in the appointment of Liberal party candidate Enrique Olaya Herrera to an office that had been, since 1880, under Conservative control. The latter years of this Conservative Republic were punctuated by events such as the Banana massacre, which may have been a contributing factor to the Colombian Conservative Party's loss of the presidency.
  During this new period of Liberal government, known as the Liberal Republic, the administrations of Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934-1938 and 1942-1946) implemented changes intended to modernize the country. Restructuring of higher education, in particular of the National University of Colombia in 1935, agrarian reform in 1936, and general promotion of industrialization resulted in rapid economic changes and growth. According to some estimates, around 50% of existing Colombian corporations in 1945 were founded between 1940 and 1945, promoting the accumulation of wealth and the creation of a new middle class with political interests and international aspirations.
  However, in order to continue industrial development, there was an urgent need for skilled labor, reflected in the speech given by the Colombian Minister of Education to the Congress of Colombia in 1946:
  We have a lack of engineers, architects, physicians, dentists, agronomists, veterinarians, chemists and even lawyers (...) in sufficient quantities to attend to the country's needs, and the only solution lies in the enlargement of the universities... in the creation of a university for the country, that responds to what the country calls for.
  — Germán Arciniegas, Memoria del señor Ministro de Educación Nacional, Germán Arciniegas, al Congreso de 1946, Bogotá, 1946
  These words echo the suggestions made around 35 years earlier by liberal leader Rafael Uribe Uribe regarding the need for the modernization of the educational system. These intellectual currents were coherent with previous educational developments such as the foundation of the Gimnasio Moderno in 1914. Amid the political tension and violence caused by the loss of liberal power in the 1946 elections, social unrest, and industrial growth, leftist liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated on April 9, 1948, in an event that shook the country and was taken by the founders as "the best argument for the foundation of the university".
caption: Liberal president Alfonso López Pumarejo started the Revolución en Marcha in 1934.
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