UB Shares Outcomes of CSUCA Meeting

The University of Belize wrapped up the second day of hosting one hundred and thirteenth session of the Central American University Confederation called the CSUCA. Universities from Central America and the Dominican Republic met to discuss the state of education in the region, share best practices and solutions to address some of the ongoing issues such as financing, lack of post-graduate programmes and student engagement. At the end of today’s session, UB signed an agreement with the University of Managua to help shape and strengthen its medicine programme. Today, the President of UB Professor Clement Sankat spoke with the media about some of the developments coming out of the meeting over the past two days.

Clement Sankat

Professor Clement Sankat, President, University of Belize

“CSUCA is attempting to bring universities in Central America and the Caribbean much closer together, working in harmony, sharing resources, using new technologies to connect us. An important policy decision yesterday was that CSUCA approved a policy that students from CSUCA universities, if they move, will pay the tuition of the CSUCA University. What this says is that if a student from Belize goes to the national university of Panama, the student of Belize pays the same tuition that the Panamanian student pays in his country and vice-versa. So, you see how this opens up the possibilities for our own students to move within Central America and get a good education and a regional experience. Universities are no longer in an ivory tower. Universities in developing countries like ours where the needs are so great, so many people are untouched; so many students do not even have the dream of touching the doors of a university, so let’s go to them. That is one of the best practices that we heard today.  Today, for example, we also heard of a program that is being developed by the universities in Nicaragua that deals with a master’s programme in disaster risk reduction. That program, by distance, will be available to students throughout Central America because it is an online programme. It is also very relevant because we live in a seismic, hurricane, flood-prone area of the world. So, CSUCA is also sharing these kinds of best practices for new programs so that universities and students from the CSUCA countries can benefit from this.”