we have had an intense 2021/2022 academic year in terms of work on the roll-out of protocols, guidelines and orientations. Many documents have been produced, especially on issues related to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees: from the basic processes of verification, monitoring, modification and accreditation to additional elements derived from the provisions of Royal Decree (RD) 822/2021, such as the PARS (successive academic programmes in engineering and architecture), dual mentions or curricular structures and teaching innovation specificities.
We quality agencies have done this work to the best of our ability, but the most fundamental part of making RD 822/2021 truly operational has yet to be completed. It is October 2022 and the computer application “Verifica” has still not been adapted, more than a year after the Royal Decree’s publication. Universities, who must make enormous efforts to prepare reports with the new learning outcomes approach, do not understand why there is a delay. They do the work required of them and then have to enter the “new” proposals into an old, non-adapted computer application, which does not make much sense. It is inefficient and complicated. It is for the universities. As it is for the agencies who have to carry out assessment work under these conditions. The hope is that the software application will run smoothly once it is up and running.
Added to this situation are a number of unavoidable issues emerging in the world of university quality and which will require a great deal of attention and dedication during the 2022/2023 academic year. To mention a few: the accreditation of doctoral schools, issues related to the accreditation of centres involved in lifelong learning in the university system, the roll-out of micro-credentials and the improvement of teaching assessment guides. There is no back-pedalling along this road, and it must be travelled gradually and progressively. In the world of quality there are no short cuts.
And to complicate matters further, this would be rolled out by royal decree and could overlap with the two issues I have already mentioned: the roll-out of RD 822/2021 and the key issues for the immediate future.
Faced with the foreseeable combination of the effects of these three major issues, I sincerely believe that agencies, government and universities need to work collectively to address the difficulties encountered in order to make for a less bumpy road ahead.
As the title of another of Sempé’s books says: Rien n’est simple. It’s true, nothing is simple, but we can certainly make it easier.