BY ANIKA RICHARDS

SIX tertiary-level institutions will, within the next six months, know whether their 28 programmes are accredited by the University Council of Jamaica (UCJ).

Minister of Education Ronald Thwaites made the disclosure while speaking to editors and reporters at the Jamaica Observer’s Monday Exchange forum at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue offices in St Andrew last week, noting that with opportunities for tertiary education expanding, the question of quality is a major concern.

He said that the UCJ, which is the external body for tertiary education, responsible for quality within the institutions and their programmes of study, has several other programmes that are at different stages of the accreditation process.

“Accreditation of a programme indicates that the programme has been subjected to external review and a determination has been made that, with regard to the elements of accreditation, the programme is attaining or exceeding the threshold standards required for such a programme; that the programme is achieving its stated objectives; and that the programme is in fact what it says it is, and does what it says it does,” the minister explained.

Last year, a total of 20 programmes were accredited or reaccredited at nine institutions, which included two accreditations at the Mico University College. Also, two new institutions were granted registration as tertiary institutions.

The education minister went to great lengths to explain the difference between accreditation and registration, stressing that if prospective students notice that an institution is registered with the ministry, this does not mean the programmes are accredited.

“Registration merely says that you have met some basic requirements to function as a tertiary institution,” Thwaites pointed out. “… Accreditation is something that is far more subtle and deep-seated than that.”

He stressed that the only institution in Jamaica with all its programmes automatically accredited is the University of the West Indies.

“All of the others, UTech (University of Technology), NCU (Northern Caribbean University), etc, have individual courses of study which are accredited, but they do not have institutional accreditation,” the education minister said.

Thwaites admitted that the challenges facing institutions seeking accreditation have to do with the length and detail of the process. He explained that, though the UCJ and the Jamaica Tertiary Education Commission have distinct functions, the programmes to be accredited have to pass through both agencies.

“We are anxious to further staff the UCJ and to ensure that we beef up the standards, because quite frankly, many of the programmes that the UCJ is being asked to accredit, we don’t have the specialisations here to use local people to monitor them,” Thwaites noted. “We have to get people from abroad, and that involves expense and time.”

Thwaites said for students who have started and completed programmes at some institutions, only to realise that the programmes are not accredited, the ministry has tried to accommodate them, but this process has to be very selective.

“In order for a degree programme to be accredited, the first cohort has to have been successfully completed, and then on that basis it is assessed,” Thwaites divulged. “That makes the first cohort of students who have invested, paid money, taken the time, pretty much guinea pigs.

“I am instructed that while there seems to be an inherent risk in that, a higher risk than I would want to take, there is no way around it,” the education minister admitted. “This is the way that all international accreditation takes place.”

He said what has been done is that in cases where students have completed their courses which are not yet accredited but are on the way to accreditation, they are treated as if the programme is accredited.

“For example, we are looking at teachers who have taken a course at X institution which hasn’t yet been accredited. We are not paying them as pre-trained, we are paying them as graduates,” Thwaites stated.

“But we have to be selective. Because you can do that, but when somebody comes from ABC school, which is a shop window in a plaza on Constant Spring Road or Barnett Street, you can’t do that,” the education minister reasoned. “Otherwise you are just giving away accreditation like confetti and the whole thing becomes prostituted.”