Brent Zephyrine

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 stu­dents or 44 per cent of the lo­cal ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion pop­u­la­tion in T&T can now boast of be­ing trained by ful­ly-ac­cred­it­ed and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-recog­nised high­er ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions. The state­ment was made yes­ter­day by act­ing ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of T&T (ACTT), Michael Brad­shaw, dur­ing his overview at a news con­fer­ence held to com­mem­o­rate the first in­sti­tu­tion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tion of three of the na­tion's largest ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions. They are the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus (UWI), the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (Costaatt).

The con­fer­ence was held at the Al­gi­co Plaza Build­ing, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain. The ACTT, cre­at­ed by an Act of Par­lia­ment in 2004, has es­tab­lished a struc­tured reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work based on in­ter­na­tion­al norms and stan­dards, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Fazal Karim said. He al­so said while these "achieve­ments" demon­strat­ed that "we can match the qual­i­ty ex­pect­ed" of glob­al high­er ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions, ac­cred­i­ta­tion sta­tus "will en­sure in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of our grad­u­ates as they seek to fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties." Echo­ing the min­is­ter's lat­ter state­ment, ACTT's act­ing reg­is­tra­tion man­ag­er, Si­mone Primus, not­ed that stu­dents ben­e­fit­ed tremen­dous­ly through this ac­cred­i­ta­tion in a num­ber of ways. Among those she iden­ti­fied were: greater ac­cess to pro­grammes and schol­ar­ships, eas­i­er in­ter­na­tion­al trans­fer of stu­dents and cred­its among in­sti­tu­tions, im­proved stu­dent per­for­mance through qual­i­ty pro­grammes and qual­i­fi­ca­tion for "se­lect­ed jobs."

Ac­cord­ing to Brad­shaw, ac­cred­i­ta­tion was a "vol­un­tary process" of be­ing cer­ti­fied as meet­ing "the min­i­mum in­ter­na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­ty stan­dards" set by a qual­i­ty as­sur­ance body. He added: "In­sti­tu­tion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tion in­volves the in­ten­sive and com­pre­hen­sive (con­tin­u­ous) eval­u­a­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion as a whole to de­ter­mine whether it is do­ing what it says it will do in its mis­sion and/or in­sti­tu­tion­al goals." Brad­shaw iden­ti­fied the ar­eas against which these in­sti­tu­tions were eval­u­at­ed as: mis­sion and pur­pose, gov­er­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion, teach­ing and learn­ing, pre­pared­ness for change and com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment.

Act­ing di­rec­tor of ac­cred­i­ta­tion and qual­i­ty en­hance­ment (ACTT), Cur­tis Floyd, said in­sti­tu­tions seek­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tion must first be "a reg­is­tered in­sti­tu­tion with ACTT" and must have had "at least one co­hort from a lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped de­gree pro­gramme" to be con­sid­ered.

Floyd added that "ini­tial ac­cred­i­ta­tion" may be award­ed "for a max­i­mum pe­ri­od of sev­en years" and that "any short­com­ings iden­ti­fied" by the eval­u­at­ing team could re­sult in "the con­tin­ued af­fil­i­a­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion with ACTT be­ing com­pro­mised." The ACTT cur­rent­ly has eight oth­er in­sti­tu­tions who are can­di­dates for such ac­cred­i­ta­tion and have iden­ti­fied oth­ers who have in­di­cat­ed their in­tent to pur­sue the process.