From competencies assessment to knowledge management.

FUNDAMENTALS

In statutory terms, the Université Multiculturelle Internationale is a private education and consultancy institution which legal see is in Roseau (Dominica). For its distance accreditation activity it also has an office in Córdoba (Argentina). Individual follow-up is mainly done from Argentina, degrees are registered in the headquarters, in Dominica.

In functional terms, continuously committed to applied research in educational sciences and opened to all successful horizons of exploration, UMI pulls positive lessons out of several sources of reflexion and improvement:

• it notices the well-established success of the degrees in the French advanced higher military education system, upon professional file (portfolio) and defense of a thesis, without further training;

• it notes the sound interest for the already classic French national accountancy diplomas upon free examination and the more recent international language certificates, also upon direct examination without previous specific training;

• it sees with interest the experimentations and progressive steps of the universities that followed it in the VAE system for accreditation of prior learning, then adopted the diploma supplement, and are now also thinking about personalising it;

• its modalities of competencies assessment and validation follow closely the investigations of applied research in the fields of academic and professional training, and of competencies identification and management in the organisations ("knowledge management"), which are receiving a growing attention in companies of economically advanced societies;

• the advantages it provides to its alumni are inspired from the quite elitist French-style "grandes écoles".

In operational terms UMI adheres to a double system of reference, French and international (UNESCO and the Bologna Process of European harmonisation). It positions its degrees at the same level as French national degrees of the same title, while knowing that this level is higher to the northern-American system that tends to become a new reference (see the UNESCO report on this matter).

Sure of its expertise in competencies ingeeniering and confident in its methods for identification and authentication of knowledges and know-how, UMI commits its signature and its reputation by certifying the knowledge and competencies acquired by its graduates, as firmly as other institutions certify the teaching brought to their students. And believing in the decisive career advantage given by the possession of an appropriate degree, UMI commits to reimburse any graduate who, five years after getting his degree, would not have obtained from it any professional or social improvement.