Golden Triangle is an informal expression used to refer to the top three public universities of Colombia, which are the National University of Colombia at Bogotá, and the Universities of Antioquia and Valle.[1] These three institutions suffered in the 1950s and 1960s, a quick and radical transformation from small colleges to large modern universities, focused in research and postgraduate education. This transformation was possible because of large donations from several North-American foundations, like the Rockefeller, Kellogg, and Ford,[2] and their location in the three main cities of the country, Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín, which account for the 70% of the national GDP and 52% of the population.[3]
Nowadays, these three universities account for the 57% of the recognized research groups by COLCIENCIAS,[4] and they are consistently ranked among the top five universities in Colombia.[5][6][7] The Universities of Antioquia and Valle, have also obtained a high quality accreditation by the Ministry of Education for 9 and 8 years respectively.[8]Meanwhile the National University of Colombia currently has a high quality accreditation for 10 years(the highest period of accreditation given by the Ministry of Education).