The Government of Nicaragua, through the Ministry of the Interior, closed this Wednesday the private International University for the Integration of Latin America (Unival), created 25 years ago and whose headquarters are located in Managua.
Through an agreement published in the Official Gazette, La Gaceta, the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior canceled the legal personality of Unival, which was registered as an NGO, in compliance with an administrative resolution of the National Council of Universities (CNU) and the National Council for Evaluation and Accreditation (CNEA).
The Ministry of the Interior explained that the CNU and the CNEA evaluated Unival from November 23 to 26, both at its headquarters in Managua, and at its facilities located in the cities of Juigalpa, Jinotega, Matagalpa and Ocotal, with the purpose of verifying compliance with the career curriculum, as well as the number of teachers, enrollment, graduates, among others.
“In 25 years of Unival’s creation, it still does not have a consistent academic offer in terms of its minimum elements that the study plans required by the CNEA and the CNU must have,” argued that portfolio, directed by Minister María Amelia Colonel Kinloch.
THE GOVERNMENT’S ARGUMENTS
Among others, he mentioned that the CNU has not authorized the execution of 13 undergraduate careers, 27 undergraduate degrees, 15 specialties and 29 international master’s degrees in virtual mode (online).
In addition, the international academic offer of Unival in several countries does not have the authorization of the CNU.
Likewise, he maintained that no information was obtained about student enrollment, records of graduates by career, records of teachers who attend the different subjects of the virtual offer that Unival carries out outside of Nicaragua.
That is to say, added the Interior, it was evident that “there are omissions and inconsistencies of information before the regulatory bodies” of the higher education centers in Nicaragua.
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“Unival lacks a system that manages and administers the academic information of the institution” and “on repeated occasions it has refused to provide statistical information to the regulatory authorities of the higher education system,” he noted.
On the other hand, the Government affirmed that Unival has breached the Law for the Recognition of Academic Titles and Degrees of Higher Education and Higher Technical Education by establishing additional tariff charges.
STUDENTS FROM UNIVAL WILL BE RELOCATED
Therefore, through a resolution, the CSE and the CNEA resolved to request the Government to cancel the legal personality of Unival for presenting insufficient quality of institutional management and academic processes, specifically in their curricular designs, study plans of its undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate academic offer.
Also due to the lack of information systems that allow timely recording of the academic and administrative work of the institution, which guarantee the reliability of the data, the recording of transactions and dynamization of the key processes of the institution.
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The Interior ordered the Unival authorities to deliver in an expeditious and orderly manner to the CNU Compliance Department the information on students, teachers, careers, study plans, enrollment databases, and qualifications.
Likewise, it informed that the CNU will proceed to relocate the students currently enrolled in Nicaraguan territory in universities that are accredited in Nicaragua.
Last February, the National Assembly (Parliament) of Nicaragua, with a Sandinista majority, created three new higher education centers, with the documents and infrastructure seized from six private universities that had been stripped of their legal entities, including the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (Upoli), which was a stronghold of anti-government protests between April and June 2018.
