Quality postgraduate education in Mexico
22 Sep 2010
CONACyT, the National Council of Science and Technology, is one of the most important accreditation entities in Mexico.
By Brenda Friederichsen, Reforma Universitarios magazine, translation by Nuffic Neso Mexico
CONACyT publishes a list of quality postgraduate programmes in Mexico called Padrón Nacional de Posgrados de Calidad.
To evaluate the programmes, CONACyT looks at the structure of the postgraduate course, the academic personnel, the student profile, infrastructure, services and results, as well as the connections with the economic sectors. "We intent to give the student certainty that, when they study a registered postgraduate course of Conacyt, there is a guarantee that it is a programme with the best standards on a worldwide basis", assures Luis Ponce, director of postgraduate courses of CONACyT.
“We used the six indicators to get to our results, for example to verify the path of the students and the profile of the professors that integrate the academic nucleus". Therefore, the governmental institution has cooperation with the economic sectors where the graduates get to work, to know the impact that they have. "As a criterion of quality we monitor the graduates to know where and how they are working, which is possible because of the strong connection we have with businesses and academic institutions", comments Ponce.
Constant improvement
In order to assure that the programmes of CONACyT are of excellence, the institution relies on their Quality Guarantee System, which is comprised of two types of evaluation.
The first one is the internal system that depends on the institutions and research centres; they have to carry out a self-assessment of the academic programme. "The universities make a plan of improvement and monitors it through the webpage of CONACyT where they establish the quality of its programmes", says Ponce.
The second type consists of an external evaluation that follows up on the impact and results obtained by the programmes that were monitored. "In the external system, the evaluation is carried out by the academic peers, for example, a programme of physics is evaluated by specialists in that subject, and so on", comments the spokesman of the CONACyT.
The requests of the universities, as well as the evaluations carries out by them, are done electronically. "What CONACyT does, is to guarantee an effective and transparent evaluation that permits to consolidate, in terms of quality, the programmes of postgraduate course of the PNPC".
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Comparison
To give you an idea of the quality requirements to be included in the PNPC, here are some facts about the number of programmes included in the list:
- Of the 633 Doctorate programmes registered by the National Association of Universities and Institutions of higher Education (ANUIES) and SEP (Secretary of Public Education), only 396 form part of the PNPC.
- Of the 3,742 Master degree programmes registered by ANUIES and SEP, only 742 form part of the PNPC
- Of the 1,500 specializations at national level registered by these institutions, only 166 belong to the listing of the PNPC
- Of all programmes registered in the PNPC, 27.1% are from institutions in the Mexico City metropolitan area, and 72,9% are from institutions in other states of the Mexican Republic.
Levels of postgraduate programmes
To classify the programs registered in the National Program of postgraduate Courses of Quality, four levels of competence exist:
- International competence: programmes that have collaborations in the international environment through agreements. The evaluations are done by academic peers of other countries.
- Consolidation: programmes that have national recognition because of the results they have shown in academic productivity and in the economic sectors.
- Development: programmes with an academic search and with a plan of improvement for medium term.
- Recent creation: programmes that satisfy the basic criteria of the frame of reference of the PNCP. The doctorates should not have more than five years of age and, in the case of the master’s, they cannot surpass three years.
More information about the PNPC can be found on the website of CONACyT (in Spanish)