Letter from the Sinaces Coordination Committee

This is the letter that the Coordination Committee of the National System for Quality Assurance of Higher Education (Sinaces) published today in El Mercurio:

Mr. Director:
We appreciate the letter sent by two academics with extensive experience in quality assurance, as it gives us the opportunity to comment on the various actions taken by the Coordination Committee of the National System for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (Sinaces). As the new law stipulates, the Committee was established at the end of September last year and, since that date, has met on 26 occasions, 22 of them since March 17 of this year.  

The instance has served to discuss criteria that have allowed coordinating various measures that its members have adopted. Thus, the guidelines issued by the Superintendence of Higher Education to guarantee the continuity of training processes, the priority areas of its auditing plan, the requirements for the automatic renewal of current accreditations by the National Accreditation Commission, the continuity of the supervision processes developed by the National Education Council, the measures taken by the Undersecretary of Higher Education to mitigate the effects of the crisis, as well as the joint review of the quality criteria and standards proposed by the National Accreditation Commission have been part of the discussion. During this year, the Committee has also met with representatives of institutions to learn about the adaptations they have had to make in order to continue with their training activities and to openly discuss the challenges imposed by the current conditions on the Higher Education System. One of the fruits of these meetings is the document that the Committee issued last July, called “Guidelines for training processes in higher education in the context of the covid-19 pandemic”.

The Committee's opening disposition during its first months of operation stems from the conviction that a better higher education system is built on joint efforts, both from the members of the Committee and from the higher education institutions themselves.

Juan Eduardo Vargas
Undersecretary of Higher Education

Jorge Avilés
Superintendent of Higher Education

Hernán Burdiles
President of the National Accreditation Commission

Pedro Montt
President of the National Council of Education