21/10/2022 Over 675 academics from 23 countries attended the «2022 Keynote Conference: SINAES Enrique Góngora Trejos, Higher Education and Society» yesterday. Dr. Francesc Pedró, the Director of the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO-IESALC), was the keynote speaker.
Dr. Pedró’s conference was titled «Higher Education in the Current Context of the Economic, Social, and Academic Crisis.»
The expert invited attendees to rethink universities to help prepare global citizens who can face complex challenges and foster learnings and open science through transdisciplinarity. Likewise, he stressed the importance of promoting higher education institutions geared towards social commitment, ethics, and sustainable development.
- Opening
The Executive Director of the National System for Higher Education Accreditation (SINAES), M.Sc. Laura Ramírez Saborío was in charge of the opening speech. During it, she noted that SINAES had organized the Keynote Conference SINAES for 14 years straight, uninterrupted.
M.Sc. Ramírez complemented her statement with a video summarizing the main achievements of the official accreditation body of Costa Rica in the past year (link to the video).
- Keynote conference
The Director of the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO – IESALC) believes that international rankings can result in a mirage. Dr. Pedró asserted that it is necessary to support accreditation agencies, and used the example of SINAES as an institution that promotes continuous quality improvement of education.
He also pointed out three consequences of the pandemic: learning loss, student dropouts, and increased inequality. In terms of what is required to improve Higher Education, the expert mentioned, among other things, that we must move from exclusion from entry to conceiving higher education as a human right. He also pointed out the importance of moving away from disciplinarity and fostering transdisciplinarity.
- Closing
The President of the National Accreditation Council, M.Sc. Francisco Sancho, gave the closing speech. He thanked the academics of Hispanic America for supporting the academic activities that SINAES conducts.
The Fourteenth Edition of the Keynote Conference SINAES connected academics from Germany, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, United States, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.
Full recording of the activity
SINAES Keynote Conference 2022
Presentation by Dr. Pedró
SINAES ES ante la crisis Dr. Pedró.pdf
