A meeting jointly organised by the Ministry of Higher Education, Labour and Skills Development and the Maldives Qualifications Authority (MQA) was held to discuss possible solutions facing the higher education sector in the Maldives.
The vision of MQA functioning under the Ministry is to improve the quality of education provided by higher education institutions Maldives, further empowered by the Higher Education Act of 2021.
Speaking during the meeting, MQA’s CEO Mariyam Fizana Rasheed said the higher education system, unfortunately, had not seen much improvement largely due to failure to enforce regulations.
In addition, despite higher education having expanded to all corners of the country, the sector still faces many challenges, she said, questioning whether students are able to bring what they have learned in classrooms to the real world.
"We have started to question whether the higher education we provide is of quality. Especially in today’s society we hear that the quality of graduates is low, degrees are being earned by paying someone, students taking classes while working two jobs, and lecturers running around taking multiple classes on a single night,” she explained.
According to Fizana some courses are conducted part-time in name only, forcing students to bear the workload of a full-time course which in turn affects the quality of education provided to students.
The meeting will present papers or outlooks on what can be done to further strengthen the established universities and colleges in the Maldives.
More than 80 participants attended the meeting, including 11 colleges, two universities and a dozen public and government institutions.