On 22 March, the Ministry of Education opened a new Call for Proposals addressed to public and private institutions of higher education (HEIs) in the country to contribute to their high-quality accreditation processes and to promote T&T education, which promotes young people to develop professional skills for employment, undertake or continue their educational trajectory, and thus add to the social transformation of the territories in the country.
According to the terms of the call, from this Tuesday until April 7, interested institutions will be able to apply for technical, professional and technological programs, of which 35 will receive support to strengthen their management capacities aimed at the route of excellence offered by the accreditation of high quality.
The Minister of Education, María Victoria Angulo, explained that “with this invitation, the National Government continues to work with the HEIs on the implementation of Decree 1330 of 2019 and Agreement 002 of 2020 of the CESU, which renews the regulations to respond to global dynamics and advance the strengthening of the CESU Security System Quality, strategy defined in the National Development Plan 2018-2022″.
In 2020, in order to adopt these new guidelines, the Ministry of Education designed the Accompaniment Route for the Strengthening of Internal Quality Assurance Systems (ACIS), which provided technical support to 100 HEIs in strengthening their internal management by encouraging the development of actions that contribute to the fulfillment of institutional quality conditions, including learning outcomes and in the articulation of the processes of qualified registration and accreditation, among others.
Continuing the process, in 2021, Phase 2 of this Route was structured and a total of 126 higher education institutions were accompanied, who advanced and completed their process of institutional conditions and in academic days to socialize the scope of the new regulations of the Quality Assurance System and promote the culture of self-evaluation in the sector.
By 2022, the Ministry of Education will develop the following 5 lines of action that will benefit a total of 95 HEIs, to contribute to strengthening their capacities in accompanying: 1) Higher education institutions located in prioritized regions; 2) Process of integration of ACIS and management systems; 3) Implementation of ACIS; 4) Institutional accreditation; and; 5) Accreditation of programs at T&T levels.
For this last line, institutions interested in receiving support in their processes aimed at achieving high quality accreditation must apply for a maximum of a T&T program with 8 continuous years of operation and have not filed a self-evaluation report with the National Accreditation Council.
To apply for programs, HEIs may write within the established deadline to the email direccionfomentosuperior@mineducacion.gov.co. Once the application phase is over, the Ministry of Education will evaluate the proposals and on April 29 will publish the list of IES and T&T academic programs chosen to receive accompaniment in 2022.
High-quality accreditation is a process that allows higher education institutions and their academic programs to become visible, create opportunities for strategic alliances, open the way for internationalization and generate a dynamic of continuous improvement in internal procedures.
In this way, and with the policy of promoting quality improvement through the Strengthening of ACIS, the Ministry of Education is advancing in the development of strategies aimed at promoting inclusive and quality higher education for Colombians.
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