First Virtual University graduates receive their degrees

Côte d’Ivoire’s Higher Education Minister Albert Toikeusse Mabri has praised the success of the country’s Virtual University, with the graduation of its first cohort of students.

Mabri said he was satisfied to see the new Université Virtuelle de Côte d’Ivoire or UVCI succeed in facing the challenge of expanding higher education while offering students numerous opportunities, reported L’Intelligent d’Abidjan.

“UVCI charts a new way of teaching, with its mission of developing distance education for a vast number of new school-leavers, while putting the accent on the quality of education to meet the challenges linked to employment,” L’Intelligent quoted him as saying.

The public university was created by a 2015 decree on the initiative of President Alassane Ouattara to unblock the university system and give young Ivoirians access to higher education.

Now the first graduates of the three-year licence degree courses have received their diplomas, with all their studies followed through interactive modules distributed on their telephones or computers, and only examinations taken in a classroom.

Over the past three years 6,000 students have regularly followed the UVCI’s courses and 2,500 apply every year, reported L’Intelligent.

The graduation ceremony for 693 students – 145 women and 548 men – took place on 28 November, on the theme ‘Digitisation of higher education, vector of employability and creation of employment’, according to the university’s website .

UVCI’s Director General Professor Tiémoman Kone said the university was an innovative response to the lack of higher education infrastructure, which enabled a team of 35 teachers to teach quality courses to more than 6,000 students in a single lecture hall. – Compiled by Jane Marshall

This article is drawn from local media. University World News cannot vouch for the accuracy of the original reports.