The numbers from Asturias are stark: failure rates of up to 90% in some teacher exam tribunals 2. While the immediate reaction is outrage from candidates and unions, the real story is not about a single flawed test. It is about what happens when a system designed to select the best becomes a mechanism that excludes the many, and how that pattern echoes across different corners of the educational world.
In Asturias, the competitive exams for teachers have produced a result that is less a measure of candidate quality and more a referendum on the process itself. When nearly every applicant fails, the exam is no longer a filter; it is a wall. The anger is legitimate, but the deeper question is whether the system is structurally incapable of identifying talent, or whether it is simply not designed to do so in the first place. This is not an isolated failure of administration—it is a symptom of an educational apparatus that often prioritizes procedural rigidity over practical competence.
Contrast this with the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, which has taken a different path: eliminating the admission exam for certain campuses and instead relying on the Saber 11 standardized test scores 4. The move is explicitly framed as a way to reduce costs and expand access for students in peripheral regions. It is a recognition that the traditional gatekeeping mechanism—the exam—can be a barrier rather than a bridge. The UNAL is not lowering standards; it is changing the gate. It is betting that a different kind of test, one already taken by students across the country, can serve as a more equitable and efficient tool.
Meanwhile, in the Dominican Republic, the UASD has invested RD$25 million in a new audiovisual system for its School of Communication 1. This is not about testing at all—it is about training. The investment signals a belief that the quality of education depends on the quality of infrastructure, that students learn best when they have modern tools to practice their craft. It is a bet on the formative side of the equation, the part that happens before any exam is taken.
And then there is the Universidad de Antioquia, where Luquegi Gil Neira has taken office as rector after a period of interim leadership 5. The university faces a significant deficit and special oversight. His appointment is a step toward stabilization, but it is also a reminder that institutions cannot function well when they are in crisis. A university struggling to pay its bills is a university that cannot invest in its teachers, its students, or its future.
What connects these events is not a single policy or problem, but a shared tension: the gap between the systems we build to measure and select, and the people those systems are meant to serve. An exam that fails 90% of candidates is not a test of knowledge; it is a test of the system’s own dysfunction. A university that removes its admission exam is not abandoning standards; it is questioning the assumption that a single test is the only valid path. And a new rector taking charge of a deficit-ridden institution is not a solution, but a beginning.
The lesson is uncomfortable but clear: the machinery of education—its exams, its budgets, its hierarchies—often works against its own purpose. The real work is not to make the machine run more smoothly, but to ask whether it is running in the right direction.