To this end, in 1998, the UNWTO Education and Training Department and the UNWTO.Themis Foundation created what is now the fundamental pillar of the Programme: the UNWTO.TedQual Certification System, which is composed of a series of evaluation criteria - universally applicable to any tourism education, training and research programme - that makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of the pedagogical system as well as to which extent are covered the needs of the tourism sector, civil society and the students in such programmes.