BOLONIA: The credit system
Published on
The setting in operation of the European Space of Higher Education (EEES) involves the implantation of the European credit as the assessment unit of the University teaching. The European system of transfer and accumulation of credits (ECTS) replaces the about 10-hour-teaching for each credit in the current Spanish system with a period between 25 and 30 hours of student work.
This work includes the hours of theory and practice classes, consultancies, seminars, the daily personal study, the evaluated assignments and the practice carried out at companies which are part of the official programme of study.
The ECTS () was adopted in 1989, within the framework of Erasmus programme, and its approval in our country is set in the . At the beginning, it was used for the acknowledgement of foreign study periods, but it is currently becoming a system of accumulation at a European level in order to meet the goals of the 1999 Bolonia Declaration. Despite the generalized rejection on the part of the students and many professors grouped in platforms, the Ministry of Education and the Spanish universities are working non-stop to put into action, from the next year of study (2008-2009) the EEES’ requirements since , as the Bolonia Declaration states, the deadline is 2010.
European Credit Transfer System Royal Decree 1125/2003
The current concept of qualifications will disappear to give way to the Grades. In our country its duration will be of four years , mostly they will have 60 credits for each academic year, which involves approximately 40 weekly hours of work, with obligatory attendance to classes and consultancies. Within this system there’s no room for the students to study and work at the same time. Masters will become official and will have a study load of 60 or 120 European credits, which is equivalent to one or two academic years. By means of these measures, the “European university” imposes the discipline of working hours, to adjust the university students to work in companies and teach them to work under the pressure of stress.
Daniel Domínguez
Translated byDiana Irene Arancibia