14 universities closed for a month

 Fourteen of Panama’s 41 universities will have to cease operations for at least a month, starting Monday, April 2.

They failed to meet the March 30 deadline for providing their self-assessment programs to CONEAUPA (Panama’s National Assessment and Accreditation body. )

The self assessment report is part  of the accreditation process conducted by the Ministry of Education (Meduca) through CONEAUPA. Thirty four higher education institutions of the country had until March 30 to deliver their improvement programs, but only 20 complied.

Now the 14 universities have an extension until April 30 to provide the report but during the month cannot open.

Marian McPherson,  secretary of CONEAUPA said the idea was not  to close universities, but stressed that it was necessary to transform higher education."We could not continue.with Universities that had no headquarters but issued diplomas, and that's not right," she said.

Minister of Education, Lucy Molinar,  said that 50 experts will now evaluate the 20 universities that met the self-assement deadline.