COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT GRADES IN DESIGN IMPLEMENTED UNDER THE EUROPEAN HIGH EDUCATION AREA

The implementation of the Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering has started in Spain. This new degree is focused on education based on competences acquisition, a factor that will help students to improve their professional skills development. In this sense, 2009 has been an important year in starting the process leading towards the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The first objective of this paper is to analyse the “state of the art” of the various existing Design Degrees in the European Union. From this point, the second objective is to perform an analysis of the different approaches made to address the same subject: university education in the area of product design knowledge. Finally, this paper aims to compare the grades already implemented at the European Union and the grades existing in Spain, in terms of structure, skills and teaching methodology, among others, in order to determine what degree of harmonization occur between them.