General Objective

To advance the Latin American Higher Education Space in areas such as recognition of degrees and credits across borders by reinforcing and connecting quality assurance systems for higher education, in which universities and QA agencies are key partners and drivers.

Specific Objectives

SO1: To support internal university procedures for quality management, and link them to enhanced processes for the recognition of foreign degrees and credits, with the guidance of a jointly-developed ‘QA Tool-kit’ for Partner countries in Latin America

SO2: To enhance articulation of university QA Units with international relations offices (IRO) via a training programme, in order to guarantee quality mobility and exchange predicated on mutual recognition

SO3: To align national and regional QA agency support for the development of quality units within universities, their resourcing, and the promotion and use of common tools for quality enhancement and recognition

SO4: To further promote in Latin America an understanding of European tools and standards for quality enhancement and recognition in higher education, so that LA and European QA and recognition systems can be easily related.

The EQUAM-LA partnership entails both partners with a long history of cooperation and those that are newer, especially to the E+ programme. It includes partners with experience in managing E+ projects who have built a long-stanging cooperation (OBREAL GLOBAL and ASCUN, for example) and also seeks to develop synergies between old and new projects.Though EQUAM LA’s objectives are relevant to many countries in Latin America, partners in Argentina, Colombia, Panama and Nicaragua were carefully selected to represent a panorama of capacities and development needs, and also to represent the LA region more holistically. Each country is at a different level in terms of QA systems and processes for recognition. Peer learning and exchange can thus be very fruitful. What is more, Nicaragua and Panama already have the regional framework of Central America and CSUCA , in which they work. CNEA in Nicaragua has explicit ambitions, as a younger agency, to expand Latin American cooperation with counterparts.