Moreover, the rapid evolution of the economic and social environment calls for constant adaptation of the teaching and operating methods of universities to enable them to effectively combine the creation and transmission of scientific, technical and humanistic knowledge with preparation for professional practice and the promotion of critical thinking, pluralism and the values of a democratic society.
Twenty years after the signing of the Bologna Declaration by the European Ministers for Education (1999) to create a European Higher Education Area – an area which was to give coherence to the university system which, by definition, knows no borders – the question we should be asking ourselves is: are the approval of the royal decrees passed during the year 2021, namely on the creation, recognition and authorisation of universities and university centres and institutional accreditation of university centres (RD 640/2021) and establishing the organisation of university teaching and quality assurance procedures (RD 822/2021) in line with reinforcing Europeanisation and internationalisation, or do they do just the opposite?
I will focus on two key issues:
- RD 640/2021 is restricted to universities and university centres, consolidating a single university model, the research university. In all societies, the research university is the main agent for the generation and transfer of knowledge, but it should not be solely responsible for university higher education. In fact, in most European countries, the function of university higher education is shared with institutions of a more educational nature, with different names but with the same concept of "universities of applied sciences" (Fachhochschule, hogeschool, college, polytechnic institute, högskola, etc.). These institutions are recognised as universities, being the same ones that year after year receive Spanish students with mobility programmes formally recognised by the Spanish universities of origin. The applied nature of their bachelor's and master's degrees allows for specific professionalisation.
There is no positive reason to maintain a single model of university in Spain, which makes it less efficient in professionalising profiles and generates all kinds of tension in academic careers in these fields.
- Royal Decree 822/2021 abolishes 180-credit degree programmes, which are common in most European countries. This decision reduces flexibility and moves us away from the Qualifications Framework for the European Higher Education Area. The academic offer should be flexible and adaptable without confusing equality and homogeneity with quality. Uniformity is not synonymous with quality but with a lack of flexibility, at a time when universities need to reinforce their autonomy in order to be competitive. The duration of degrees should relate only to the period necessary to have the knowledge, competencies and skills that are essential to achieve degree-level learning outcomes.
All these aspects and others related both to the two Royal Decrees, already passed, and to the preliminary draft of the LOSU (still in a period of reflection and discussion) have been commented on by the Ministry of Research and Universities, requesting that the future law should successfully favour the autonomy of each university and that each autonomous community should be able to develop its own models that encourage its responsibility and involvement in the progress towards a knowledge society in its territorial area. In this way, Catalonia will continue to make progress in the construction and consolidation of its own model of universities and university activity.