The Universidad de La Frontera offers 10 doctoral programs in different fields of knowledge, which are all accredited by the Chilean Accreditation Agency CNA.

"We confirmed our position as a university of excellence", Dr. Renato Hunter, the Vice-rector for Research and Graduate Studies of the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO), pointed out within the framework of the two new accreditations of doctoral programs that allowed this university to be one of the first ones in Chile to achieve to have all of its current doctoral programs accredited by the official Chilean Accreditation Agency CNA-Chile.

The achievement of this goal confirms the capabilities of the university in the field of postgraduate studies and regarding the level of its researchers, academic staff and doctoral candidates. In this context, Dr. Mónica Rubilar, the Academic Director of Graduate Studies of the UFRO, pointed out: “With the recent accreditation of the doctoral program in Communication Sciences and the doctorate in Engineering Sciences with Specialization in Bioprocesses, all of our programs in the area of doctoral studies count with a public guarantee of quality. That does not only reflect the prestige this institution gained, but also the success of our processes of continuous improvement and quality.”

Today, the law on higher education demands, amongst others, the mandatory accreditation of all doctoral programs and the Universidad de La Frontera achieved to comply with this obligation. But this achievement also implies certain responsibilities and new challenges. “Now we have to maintain the level of excellence we achieved and to do significant efforts in order to keep strengthening these programs, their academic staff, infrastructures, equipment and internationalization processes,” the Vice-rector Dr. Renato Hunter added.

To reach 100% regarding the accreditation of the doctoral programs is a contribution to the decentralization of knowledge and of the training of qualified human capital, considering that this is a regional university that, from the Araucanía Region in the south of Chile, confirmed its commitment to quality and the link with the community. “But our social commitment is also to bring the research results associated with doctoral programs closer to the community and to see how we can contribute and broadly permeate society within the context we are living in,” Dr. Hunter explained.