D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 4, July/August 2000, p. 16)

For many years supporting higher education in developing countries was regarded as an inefficient investment. Obviously, this perception is changing. Increased investment in basic and secondary education has explosively increased demand for higher education. According to UNESCO and the World Bank, not only demand but also the necessity for higher education is increasing substantially in the knowledge-based societies of the 21st century. Budgets, however, are decreasing. In this situation support for quality management to improve effectiveness and relevance of university programmes is crucial. Therefore, DSE plans to continue or even intensify cooperation with its international and German partners to support universities in their tasks of promoting educated democracy, intercultural learning and offering socities the indispensable knowledge resources to survive in a globalised world.

DSE supports university quality
management in Central America

This spring, after an intensive process of institutional self-analysis, the National University of Costa Rica introduced a year-long trimester system to use university facilities much more efficiently and to allow students to gain a degree one year earlier. In May the University of Panamá submitted its first participatory institutional self-analysis to an external review by a group of international peers including a former university president from Germany. Six other similar exercises in Central America are to take place this year. In addition, self-evaluations of more than 90 university programmes in 16 universities are presently conducted.

These processes are induced and coordinated by the Central American System for Self-Evaluation and Accreditation “SICEVAES” which is supported substantially by the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) through the CAMINA programme. CAMINA is a multipart seminar on “Innovative Methods of Managing Quality Assurance Processes in Central America” organized jointly by DSE’s Education, Science and Documentation Centre, CSUCA, the Central American Superior Council of Higher Education, and ISOS, the Institute for Sociocultural and Socioeconomic Studies of the University of Kassel.

CAMINA is organised as a “sandwich programme”. Three bread layers of seminar parts for the same group of participants during one and a half years are framing the sandwich; between these layers, internet classrooms, specialized webpages and multiplication workshops are carefully placed, all topped up by an international conference for the superiors of the participants and a publication of work results.

In November 1999, DSE organised CAMINA I, a 20-day seminar in Germany with a triple objective: learning about quality management experiences in Europe (not only Germany), knowing more about each others’ perspectives on what quality management is and how it works, and elaborating a draft for a “personal project” to be achieved by the end of the process in March 2001 by each individual participant. This April the group met for another two weeks in Costa Rica. During CAMINA II 30 higher education managers from seven Central American countries and Colombia discussed how the internal evaluation procedures in 20 public and private universities could be improved. Center piece of this programme is the exchange of practical experiences between the participants organised in six professional areas. Counselling and further training accompany this ongoing process. In the Costa Rica seminar best practices from Costa Rica, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and Germany were presented by practitioners and discussed by the group.

Web-based elements

The process did not stop after leaving Germany. Assisted by a virtual classroom and a specially designed website six working groups stayed in contact during further elaboration of the personal projects. In CAMINA II participants discussed and further improved the procedures of the internet-based working groups by designing and subscribing formal contracts between them. Furthermore, these activities have been included as one of DSE’s pilot projects in the Global Campus 21 net-based learning platform which DSE is currently developing together with Carl Duisberg Society, DSE’s sister organisation

The participants in the CAMINA programme are the upper level managers. To apply new management patterns experienced during the seminars they need the cooperation of both, the evaluation teams in the different faculties, and their superiors, the university authorities. For that purpose, DSE during CAMINA III is supporting ten national workshops organised by the participants and their respective universities on topics elaborated jointly in the Costa Rica seminar, involving another 600 persons in CAMINA.

The process will be closing with CAMINA IV in Guatemala by next March. Participants will provide reports on their “personal projects” constantly discussed in the six net-based working groups. The reports will be discussed and finally published if they meet the professional standards agreed upon by DSE, CSUCA, the University of Kassel and the National University of Costa Rica. If successfully completed participants will earn credits of the two universities supporting their professional and academic careers. In order to assure sustainability of the programme, CAMINA was designed from the beginning together with CSUCA and key actors from the different universities.

International cooperation

CAMINA is integrated in a variety of international events bringing together Central Americans with DSE’s partners from Indonesia and East Africa.

In East Africa and Indonesia, we are starting bottom up cooperating with probably the most prestigious universities of their repective region/country, the Makerere University of Kampala, Uganda, and the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The main emphasis of cooperation is on the improvement of continuing education offered in regional university centres in Uganda and management training for younger lecturers with potential to lead in Indonesia.

DSE will foster ties with its network partners to offer specialised courses in higher education management and will explore the potential of web-based elements in further sandwich programmes. Together with other DSE centres, the Education, Science and Documentation Centre (ZED) will explore possibilities of joint programmes, I.e. on the role of universities in regional development.