Abstract:

The Public Administration and Management (PAM –in Spanish “Gestión y Administración Pública”, GAP) degree at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) will close the first four years cycle in the next academic year (2011-2012 to 2015-2016). Graduates in PAM have many and varied career expectatives, ranging from the local administration until European and international administration, or both the public and private sector. The PAM degree was designed according the Bologna degree structure adapted for Spain by a statute law: 4 + 1; four years or 240 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits (60 cr/y) assigned to the degree, and one year or 60 ECTS credits assigned to the master.

Recently, the Ministry of Education issued a regulatory law (National Official Newsletter –BOE- 2015; 29, Feb 3: 8088- 8091; http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2015/02/03/pdfs/BOE-A-2015-943.pdf) for organising the university studies in a different structure according the rest of Bologna studies in Europe: 3 + 2; three years or 180 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits (60 cr/y) assigned to the degree, and two years or 120 ECTS credits assigned to the master. Essentially, this law corrects the great mistake that executive did more than ten years ago imposing longer degrees than the rest of the Bologna territory. But, really, creates a new problem because merely abolish the 4+1 structure for new and existing degrees, and, in addition, it has to be applied since the new academic year 2015-2016, just when the existing educational surveillance authorities finish their own organisation revision. Other problem is not all degrees have created a “natural” continuity in related masters. At Spain, since a degree or master is posed to the university authorities, until it starts to run, it may take more than two years, and every study is officially reviewed (by the educational surveillance authorities) every six years. General speaking, the environment of the Bologna studies could be characterised by a parameter representing the total time spent by students to reach a master degree, and it is set as invariant of five years in the expression n1 + n2 = 5, when n1 = 1,..,4 and n2= 1,..,4 (some specific studies, as Medicine, are excluded because they are longer). Therefore, we cannot dismiss than next Spanish executives issue new regulatory laws setting studies’ curricula as ‘1+4’, ‘2+3’ too, or (come back to) 4+1 structures.

This is a new challenge for the PAM degree in its fourth year: to move or not to the new 3+2 curriculum design, despite it is not yet consolidated. But some questions must be answered and a bunch of tethers should be released before entering in the formal process to create a new 3 years PAM degree and the corresponding 2 years master. The main questions are the following: (1) Could be more interesting for prospective students make a degree of three years instead of four years?; (2) What master or masters’ catalogue UJI could offer as a continuation of the "+2"?; (3) How has to change the financial system in public universities to face the re-structuration and compete against private universities?; (4) How can, UJI and departments, manage the teaching load loss related to the migration from “4+” to “3+”, and the consequent wide reorganization of official teaching assignments? The aim of this work is to reflect on these issues and try to find approximate answers based on our current and past educational and academic experience.

Keywords:

Public Management and Administration Degree, The Bologna 3+2 Studies Curriculum, Migration from a 4+1 Degree Structure, Related PAM Masters.