Most of these institutes award diplomas after three or three and a half years of education. The Institute of technology implementation (IUT from Instituto universitario de tecnologia on Spanish) began with the creation of the first IUT at Caracas, capital city of Venezuela, called IUT. Dr. Federico Rivero Palacio adopted the French "Institut Universitaire de Technologie"s system, using French personnel and study system based on three-year periods, with research and engineering facilities at the same level as the main national universities to obtain French equivalent degrees. This IUT is the first and only one in Venezuela having French equivalent degrees accepted, implementing this system and observing the high-level degrees some other IUT's were created in Venezuela, regardless of this the term IUT was not used appropriately resulting in some institutions with mediocre quality and no equivalent degree in France. Later, some private institutions sprang up using IUT in their names, but they are not regulated by the original French system and award lower quality degrees.