There is a national university that has about 60% of all the students in higher education in Haiti. The University of Haiti faced a strong increase of the student subscription (34%) with the election of President Aristide and is now suffering terribly because of the political situation (firings of teachers, military occupations...) The university is composed of 11 units, physically and administratively separated, most of them located in Port au Prince. There is no PhD level, neither Masters, nor specific budget for research. The private universities receive 20% of the students; they are numerous and, in general, very expensive, the most notable is named Quisqueya. The remaining 20% of students attend non-national universities. The most notable research domains are agronomic and health.

There is also a number of technical schools in Haiti where people can get basic computer skills such as Microsoft Word, Access, and Excel. Higher level education in IT is acquired by those who have done their studies abroad, mainly in the US and in Canada.

Financing for IT programs comes mostly from Haitian banks, and Haitian and international NGOs. USAID is preparing a program to modernize government policies in order to create a nurturing environment for the growth of IT in the business and education sectors as well as connecting the provinces to telecom networks. Some of their short-term initiatives include:

· Sending a U.S. management team to advise CONATEL and Teleco.

· Establish regulator-to-regulator relations between CONATEL and the FCC by funding travel for CONATEL senior authorities to visit the FCC and for the FCC to provide assistance to the Haitian government on policy.

· Send a small U.S. team to advise the Haitian government on the President's initiative on electronic commerce (including domain name issues--a real problem for Haiti), and on the WTO agreement on basic telecom services, especially on the reference paper on regulatory principles.

· Develop a bilateral mechanism for providing advice on a continuing basis to the GOH on its plans to restructure CONATEL and privatize Teleco.

· Send a small USAID team to investigate rural applications of the Internet for development.

There are millions of dollars in foreign aid that has been frozen over the past 8 years due to political instability in Haiti. Most of this money is scheduled to be allocated to NGOs for various programs including modernization of the Information Technology industry.