Guatemala
Universidad San Carlos (USAC)
Consejo de la Enseñanza Privada Superior (CEPS)
Background:
The higher education establishment of Guatemala consists of one public and nine private universities that operate with official State recognition. The Guatemalan Constitution grants the Universidad San Carlos (USAC), the nation’s one public university, complete legal autonomy and control over the development of State sponsored higher education. USAC, rather than the Ministry of Education, oversees all public research, professional development, the recognition and quality assessment of degrees both national and foreign, and has the right to initiative of law to govern these responsibilities.
Regulation of Guatemala’s private higher education sector is the responsibility of the USAC as well as the Council of Private Higher Education (CEPS). CEPS is the closest thing Guatemala has to an accreditation body outside of the USAC, but neither organization facilitates an accreditation or quality assurance process as it is commonly understood in the United States. The council was established in 1987 with the charge of authorizing the creation of private universities, supervising their continuing function and maintaining the academic quality of education at each institution. By and large, CEPS serves as a clearinghouse that authorizes the opening of new private institutions and provides them with a platform to cooperate with one another.
The Council of Private Higher Education is composed of two delegates from the Universidad San Carlos, two delegates from each private university and one delegate from among the presidents of the country’s professional licensing boards. Delegates are elected to serve for a period of 18 months. The presidency of the council rotates every six months between delegates from the USAC, private universities, and the licensing boards.
The Council is divided into three branches: the executive secretariat, the treasury and the specific commissions that complete special assignments for the organization and report on these projects. Funding for CEPS is provided by the group’s member universities.
Developments in Accreditation:
Universities in Guatemala, both public and private, are granted a great deal of autonomy. Beyond the basic authorization to operate,
CEPS does not generally intervene in the operations of its member universities except to report a specific case of egregious negligence
in terms of the quality of infrastructure, staff or the education being provided.
In Guatemala, as in many countries in Latin America, the lack of a tradition of quality assurance at the university level, the absence of adequate funding, and need for clear governance in higher education has muddled
the development of a standard accreditation process or governing body. Despite of this, and in order to comply with their government
mandate to oversee private higher education, CEPS has initiated the process of creating the Sistema Nacional de
Acreditación de la Educación Superior or National System of Accreditation for Private Higher Education (SINADEPS).
SINADEPS will work with the USAC in an effort to accredit all of the institutions of private higher education in Guatemala and
eventually to evaluate and recognize individual departments at each university. This process will require a great deal of cooperation
between the private and public sectors, a development many experts hypothesize will be expedited by the future strengthening of
regional cooperation amongst accrediting organizations.
For its part, the USAC has begun utilizing a quality assurance system of internal and external evaluation on a departmental
basis – a process directed by the Central American regional accreditation agency SICEVAES (Central American System
of Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education).
Links to Additional Information:
Honduras
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras(UNAH)
Sistema Nacional de Acreditación de la Educación Superior de Honduras (SINAESH)
Background:
Article 160 of the Honduran Constitution designates the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (UNAH) as a decentralized body autonomous from the State with the responsibility to authorize, organize, direct and develop the nation’s professional and higher education. In 1989, this policy was augmented by the higher education law establishing the Council of Higher Education, the current administrator of public and private centers of higher education in Honduras apart from UNAH. The Ministry of Education does not participate in the regulation of university education.
The Council of Higher Education is presided over by the president of UNAH and staffed by six appointed UNAH education professionals, six top administrators from other national universities public or private, and the head of the Council’s Executive Directorship. The Council’s responsibilities include setting and enforcing higher education policy and approving the creation of public and private universities. To accomplish these goals the council employs two separate bodies. The first is the Council of Technical Consultants made up of education professionals from around the country that reports to the Council on matters pertaining to the improvement of higher education around the nation. The second is an Executive Directorship that performs functions such as authorizing the creation of new university departments or setting academic benchmarks required to earn particular degrees.
Developments in Accreditation:
Through the UNAH, the Council of Higher Education dictates formalized academic standards for higher education with the aim of regulating the development of university education in the country. New universities and branch campuses are required to follow these standards, and institutions are to establish internal evaluation systems and report periodically to regional administrative centers overseen by the Council of Higher Education and UNAH. The extent to which these practices are observed or policed is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the only legally recognized tertiary degrees offered in Honduras are those awarded through UNAH (and subsequently the Council of Higher Education) or other institutions recognized by UNAH.
In recent years, the institutions of Honduras have begun to explore the prospect of accreditation as it has become a more prominent issue throughout the Central American higher education community. Up to this point, accreditation in Honduras has been a task taken on by the relatively new regional accreditation organizations like the Central American System of the Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education (SICEVAES), the Association of Private Universities of Central America (AUPRICA), and the Central American System of Research and Postgraduate Study (SICAR). Individual institutions of higher education have taken it upon themselves to submit to the accreditation process in varying degrees (
typically on an institutional basis at private universities and on a departmental level at public) from these various regional accreditation organizations.
The Council of Higher Education has put into motion plans to create the National System of Accreditation of Higher Education in Honduras (SINAESH), an autonomous organization that will be responsible for guaranteeing and
certifying the quality of both public and private Honduran tertiary institutions. Universities appear to support this measure and some institutions are preparing for this development by employing internal evaluation officials such as the Director of Evaluation and Accreditation at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Francisco Morazán, the Director of Teaching at UNAH, and the Executive Director of Quality at the Universidad Católica de Honduras. Taking all of this into account, it is apparent that the basic ideas and mechanisms are in place to develop a tradition of quality assurance at Honduran institutions of higher education in the near future and that the universities of Honduras have demonstrated a willingness to participate in the accreditation process.
Accredited Institutions and Departments (2005):
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