On May 4, the National Agency for Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education (Aneaes) sent a letter to the Minister of Education, Luis Ramírez, who also presides over the National Council for Higher Education (Cones), requesting the intervention of more than 100 law courses from 28 universities that have never undergone mandatory accreditation processes in the last ten years.
According to Aneaes, these courses are legally authorized by Cones but have never been accredited, violating Article 2 of Law No. 2072/15, which makes participation in external evaluation and accreditation processes mandatory for careers such as Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Engineering, Architecture, and Agricultural Engineering.
“Ex officio, they should be intervened, because they are mandatory careers called by Aneaes since 2015 and have systematically evaded their legal obligation,” said José Duarte Penayo, president of the accrediting agency.
In the letter, Aneaes offered to provide “technical inputs” and institutional support so that Cones could adopt measures it deems appropriate. However, so far, the request has been ignored by the regulatory body, chaired by Luis Ramírez and with Hermenegildo Cohene, also Vice Minister of Higher Education, as vice president.
Aneaes data indicate that in Paraguay there are 200 law units, of which only 33 (17%) are accredited. Of the 158 unaccredited ones, 103 have never presented themselves for mandatory evaluations. The remaining 26 had accreditations rejected or are in the evaluation process.
Of the 28 faculties that never sought accreditation, 26 are from private universities, located mainly in Asunción, Central, Misiones, Alto Paraná, and Itapúa.
The Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC) continues to register law diplomas from the Universidad Sudamericana, even after the scandal involving former senator Hernán Rivas, who resigned on May 8 under suspicion of using a fake lawyer's degree. Although the university announced the closure of the course in 2015, in August last year the MEC endorsed six law diplomas, including that of Jaime Rolando Méndez Ramírez, a Colorado cartist councilman from Ciudad del Este and supervisor of Itaipu Binacional.
José Duarte Penayo explained that Aneaes focuses on legally authorized universities that never sought accreditation. “As for intervening or not in the Universidad Sudamericana, it is difficult to intervene in something that does not exist and was never recognized by the governing body, Cones,” he said. Cones justifies that the university continues to issue law diplomas even without the council's authorization because the course operated under previous legislation, the so-called “Marcos law.”
Duarte suggested that the MEC could “audit” its Title Registration department, linked to the Vice Ministry of Higher Education, currently under the command of Hermenegildo Cohene, who is also rector of the National University of Itapúa (UNI). The former legal advisor and former rector of the Universidad Sudamericana, Hermann Weisensee, who was the personal legal advisor of Minister Luis Ramírez, both at the MEC and at Cones, was reportedly removed from his positions on the same day as Rivas's resignation.