CURRICULUM DESIGN OF NEW UNIVERSITY TECHNICAL DEGREES ADAPTED TO EHEA RESTRICTIONS

The Bologna Declaration of 19 June 1999 defined the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) as a key way to promote citizens' mobility and employability. The main objective of this declaration and the later resolutions is that by the year 2010 the EHEA must be established and promoted all through Europe.
Development of this adaptation process for technical degrees in Spain has become a very complicated task, especially in degrees related to Industrial Engineering. Apparently, the adaptation process in these degrees should be easier than in others, because both 3-year technical engineering and 5-year superior engineering have been traditionally coexisting. However, some social sectors have profiled of this reform to improve technical shortcomings in the former study programs.
The Real Decreto 1393 de 2007 (RD 1393/2007) regulates the main aspects of EHEA in Spain and the Orden Ministerial 351 de febrero de 2009 (CIN/351/2009) defines the requirements of new degrees which will train professionals in the Industrial Technical Engineering area. In short, the main restrictions of these laws are:
1. All Degrees will be divided into 4 courses of 1 year each, with a total amount of 240 ECTS. This involves an important change compared to nowadays’ three-year structure, although the total amount of teaching hours are almost the same. In principle, this situation will help students to develop their skills, taking it easy.
2. The degrees that allow the access to the Technical Engineering profession are going to be structured in three modules. The first module with formation on fundamentals of engineering of 60 ECTS, the second module with common training on industrial engineering of 60 ECTS and the third module with specific formation of 48 ECTS that may vary depending on the speciality that the student chooses: Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial Chemistry, Textile or Industrial Electronics.
3. Finally, a final degree thesis must be done by the student, 12 ECTS.
The Orden Ministerial CIN/351/2009 defines the competencies that students must acquire at each module, and allows a quarter of the degree (60 ECTS) to be defined by each University. This new structure standardizes all degrees, since in former Technical Engineering degrees the common content was the 50% of total teaching hours. Now the structure changes from 110 common credits to 180 common ECTS. Furthermore, in spite of the apparent uniformity among degrees, each University may propose a different name for the degree that allows the access to the same profession.
The adaptation from the current title plans to the new degrees is relatively simply, because most current subjects can be adapted to the new degrees. However faculty’s imagination and aptitude may induce a higher divergence among new degrees regarding the current Technical Engineer studies.
In this work the specific plan of the industrial degree branch at Escuela Politecnica Superior de Elche at Miguel Hernandez University is analyzed. This structure is focused on optimizing the University resources and improved the students’ mobility to and from proposed degrees.