Education and Science, EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Legislation

The Education and Science Ministry wants the proposal to be considered during the Cabinet of Ministers' extraordinary meeting tomorrow, where the accreditation process will be discussed. The ministry wants to take responsibility for the function that was originally meant to be delegated to the German higher education accreditation agency ASIIN.

In the future, universities could be permitted to choose one of the 28 European accreditation institutions registered with the European Register for Quality Assurance Agencies, said Liepina.

Education experts told reporters that they deemed the proposal acceptable.

As reported, yesterday several ministers had to rush to the airport to accompany President Andris Berzins on his official visit to Azerbaijan; therefore the government could not finish reviewing the issue of higher education accreditation.

The government will convene for an emergency session on Thursday to make a final decision.

Yesterday, the discussions continued for almost two hours. Higher Education Council representatives said they were concerned that the accreditation process could get delayed, and that university and college graduates could not be issued diplomas. Several speakers also said that dozens of thousands of lats was to be paid to ASIIN, which they said was too much.

Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis also inquired about the usefulness of ASIIN, given that it would be paid more than LVL 90,000 altogether. Liepina explained that ASIIN would be responsible for many practical and technical matters that no other institution could do. Dombrovskis nevertheless emphasized that the contract with ASIIN could not be signed if accreditation of study programs would therefore fall behind schedule.

The Finance Ministry also had several objections to the financial aspects of the agreement.