Abstract:

In July 2017 a new Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree under the name SMACCs has been approved by EU. The programme is designed to educate the next generation of engineers and researchers in Smart Cities and Communities by learning best practice from 4 of Europe’s most prestigious universities from Belgium (Project Coordinator), Spain, U.K and Greece fostering collaboration with industry through research. Students will have the opportunity to acquire new and valuable skills and benefit form state-of-the-art research at regional and transnational level, fostering innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, employability, knowledge exchange and multidisciplinary learning. A programme designed to improve the quality and relevance of higher education via the cooperation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the labor market. The duration of the programme is for 5-years with the first year being the preparatory year that is required to make all the necessary preparations so that in the 3-different per year intakes taken place in the next years no problems would be appeared. This work presents this first preparatory year that describes various parameters and especially that of the final registered students and the quality that this programme was designed on and tried to bring with first results related with this very important issue (students quality and right selection) that characterizes the final success of such a programme. A detailed statistical analysis is given where pros and cons are described and would be able to be considered in the next stage of that preparatory year making the final right selection of the candidates. This paper could serve as a base and example of other similar to be adopted programmes and the corresponding methodology used to achieve such a result.

Keywords:

Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree, Statistics, Preparatory year, Smart Cities and Communities.