A UB diploma can earn you a raise of pay here in Belize, but without accreditation, paper from our national university doesn't fly very far in the outside world.
That's why policymakers in the Ministry of Education are working to get the University of Belize fully accredited. The effort spreads across the entire educational system and that was at the top of the agenda today as the Central American Consortium of Higher Education-CSUCA, long with the Ministry of Education held an accreditation and institutional evaluation workshop today. Minister of Education Hon. Francis Fonseca opened the event and told the gathering that there is much that we can get from our affiliation with CSUCA.
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"Belize is firmly committed to the CCA, we believe this council can serve our nation and our region well by assisting with the establishment of clear standards and clearly defined criteria for the evaluation of programs in higher education. But how effective the council will be depends on all of us. We must participate in its work, we must provide the relevant resources, and we must be committed to the promotion of a culture of equity, a culture of quality, a culture of evaluation and accountability among our institutions of higher learning. Today our institutions face many different challenges; challenges of change in policies and academic rules, changes in the organizational structure, changes in curriculum, changes in the upgrade and training of academic staff, changes in the levels and forms of financing available. As individual institutions or even as individual nations we lack the human and financial resources to meet these challenges adequately. For us here in Belize, institutional evaluation and accreditation are not complex concepts rather we view them as basic fundamental tools; wheels on the bus transporting us to a quality education. Without these wheels of accreditation and evaluation, we will come to a grinding halt."