A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya
Josep Joan Moreso Mateos, president of AQU Catalunya
It is Agency newsletter tradition that we devote the first editorial of the year to explaining the challenges we expect to face. If I may, this time I would like to refer to the first editorial I wrote as president of AQU Catalunya (elButlletí no. 67, July 2013). In it, I stressed that the Agency should be an instrument for stimulating and improving the Catalan university system, never an obstacle. And for this to happen, given that it is a collective task, the final success depended on the union and organisation of everyone's efforts.
We are aware of the controversy that can arise when dealing with the issue of assessing university teaching staff; nevertheless, we embrace the opportunity it provides us with. We can surely all agree that the prestige of a university institution depends on the quality of its teaching staff. From the outset, teaching staff assessment should take into account the three functions that make up our profession: teaching, research and management.
Knowing what graduates think about their time at university is one of the keys to knowing how courses can be improved and to help future students to make informed choices about their studies. The satisfaction survey carried out by AQU Catalunya since 2015 responds to these needs. It asks people who have just completed their bachelor's and master's degree studies to comment honestly on what it was like to study on this programme at their university.
Catalonia has created its own model of universities and university activity. Catalan universities are facing new realities, new challenges and new opportunities. The processes of internationalisation fully affect our university world and require well-honed policies and strategies in areas such as the quality of teaching and research, the mobility of students and teaching staff or the convergence towards the constitution of a European Higher Education Area.
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