THERE are three concerns which mnay may hold or might be interested in exploring in connection with the long-awaited Jamaica Tertiary Education Commission (J-TEC) and its enabling legislation, the University Council of Jamaica (UCJ), and the benefits expected to accrue to the nation, in general, and to graduates of tertiary institutions, in particular.

The concerns may arise from an article published in the Jamaica Observer on Monday, September 29, 2014, entitled ‘J-TEC being readied to regulate and transform Jamaica’s tertiary sector’.

Mrs Maxine Henry-Wilson is the CEO and commissioner of the J-TEC. A former minister of education, she is, in my view, one of the more eminent educational leaders in the country.

I was attracted to the article by the promise of the headline and the photo of Mrs Henry-Wilson.

The first concern is simply one for direction: Where is the ship going? The headline speaks of the promise to transform the tertiary education sector, and this is reiterated in the article, where the writer notes that the legislation will empower the J-TEC to “regulate, standardise, safeguard, and transform Jamaica’s tertiary education sector”.

It is the vision of what the transformed tertiary education sector would be, which I found, sadly, to be missing from the article. On carefully re-reading, I found that there was promise of a rationalisation of the duties of the UCJ vis-a-vis the J-TEC, and, I infer, the very important off-shoot of mandatory registration, the removal of the opportunity for there to be any “bandooloo college or university” — the term is mine, not the Commissioner’s — operating, as it were, out of the trunk of a car. In short, the business plan, the assets, and the shareholders will all be identifiable, and the related assets of the company clearly spelled out, thereby ensuring a higher measure of accountability to their clients.

But, that could have been accomplished by a simple amendment to the existing UCJ Act. So, what is the big picture, the vision of the future to which the advent of the J-TEC is intrinsically linked? It is that which I couldn’t find in the article.

Perhaps, I should have gone in search of the Education System Transformation Programme (ESTP) documents for the answer. But, perhaps, it would have been better for the commissioner to have articulated the vision upfront and carried us along towards the dream.

Accreditation

The second and third concerns arise out of the fact that the referenced article seems to use as its point of departure, recent concerns expressed by graduates of “some local tertiary institutions” which have failed “to award them degrees despite them (sic) completing their programmes of study”.

The article explains that the institutions concerned had indicated that the delay had been occasioned because the degree programmes had not yet been accredited by the UCJ. The article further explains that “a programme of study cannot be evaluated for accreditation until it has completed a full cycle”, which is to say that at least one set of graduates must have passed through the programme before the accreditation process can be completed, and that was the cause for the delay. And this is more than reasonable, as we would like to be assured that the systems do actually produce the intended output.

The J-TEC commissioner, also in the course of the article, indicates that a major aspect of the rationale for the changes in the monitoring and regulatory machinery of the tertiary sector is the need for “minimum academic and operating standards… given the nature of tertiary education and the increasing demand for recognition of credentials beyond the shores”.

She notes, further, that the function of the UCJ after the passage of the J-TEC-enabling legislation will be to carry out accreditation. She characterises accreditation in this way: “External accreditation will be voluntary, but registration with J-TEC will be mandatory…”

As this matter of the “demand for recognition of credentials beyond the shores” resonates with the concerns of the un-credentialed graduates referred to at the start of the article, I take this to be, at least, a main point of focus for the article.

My concern, then, is given the primary importance of the “increasing demand for recognition of credentials beyond the shores”, and even within our shores, how do we address that imperative by making the accreditation of programmes remain a “voluntary” matter?

How are graduates helped when, having completed their programme of studies, they are told that their certification is not “accredited” and, therefore, not recognised by the state in which they live and work, and that it is unlikely to be recognised by any overseas institution or employer who does its/his due diligence to check up on the recognition of that diploma in the local market in which it was issued?

How can it be helpful for J-TEC to guarantee the accountability of the financial and governance structures of all tertiary institutions, the quality of their teachers, and their library, in short, to guarantee all the input and through-put systems, but have nothing to say about the output? And, how can we as a small, cash-strapped nation, stop short and accept that we have guaranteed that the input and through-put systems be quality checked, but we don’t think it a necessity that the output be quality checked? So, we leave that up to the desire of the institutions’ managers.

It is, indeed, likely that, over time, the weight of student disaffection and demands might cause unwilling tertiary institutions to either “volunteer” to have their degrees accredited or withdraw from the market. But, why wait for that when we are currently revising the laws and regulations by which the sector operates and is to be governed? The two things — the voluntary nature of accreditation, and “the … increasing demand for recognition of credentials” — seem incongruous.

And if it is that the authorities are unwilling to mandate accreditation because of the high cost of the process, then why not make J-TEC and the UCJ collaborate over the review of the registration requirements, which appear to be common to the processes of both institutions, and add to that the cost of, and the requirement for the examination of the “evidence of the quality of the graduate” which is the unique process, or set of processes, which the UCJ undertakes?

Perhaps, the commission and the Parliament might consider this inconsistency. The core question, then, is: How does it benefit us to maintain a voluntary accreditation system?

Learning without borders

My third concern is that nowhere on the horizon of the referenced article are the related matters of the “portability of credits” and “equivalency” mentioned. The first expression, as with the more familiar expression, “number portability” which speaks of the soon-coming right of a consumer to keep his telephone number even if he switches telephone service provider, speaks of the no less desirable feature that studies undertaken in one institution should have known criteria that would allow them to be readily articulated into, at least, a similar programme by another institution. Admittedly, the discussion has more ramifications that this, but it begins here.

Why is it that, after all the resources directed into the formation of the over-arching regulatory agency, which the J-TEC will be, there is no mention of the likelihood of a resolution of the conundrum where a graduate with a BSc in X from one institution is not equal to one with a BSc in X from another institution, and cannot get into the postgraduate programme in X from that second institution? And, if this nuancing is justifiable, and it might very well be, then wouldn’t the good governance of a properly regulated, transformed tertiary sector clearly spell out these differences so that the student/client and his family might make an informed decision at the outset to purchase this, shall we say, tier-one BSc in X as against that tier-two BSc in the same subject?

And, if no one else does it that way, as yet, then shouldn’t we make use of our natural advantage as a small society to, again, run through the 9.7-barrier, I mean, lead the world again in developing a better-than-the-rest system?

Noel Stennett is an education professional with over 12 years experience as an educational manager and over 15 years teaching in traditional and non-traditional settings. Comments: ndstenn@gmail.com