3+2: the university model that Europe uses

According to a report by the European Commission, in the academic year 2010-2011, more than 60% of the forty-seven countries included in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) were already offering 3+2 in more than half of its degree courses. The rest of the course offering was complemented with the 4+1 model (240 bachelor's degree credits + 60 master's degree credits). In fact, only seven countries, Spain among them, chose to ignore these shorter bachelor's degrees. The others are Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Ukraine.

For the moment, next year only four 180-credit bachelor's degree courses will be included in the Catalan university system, one of which will be offered by the UOC. This is the Digital Design and Creation course, which was presented at the Saló de l'Ensenyament education fair held on Sunday, 13 March, in Barcelona. "The new offering faces a two-fold challenge: on one hand, to prove that 180 credits are sufficient to acquire the skills that the student will need to work in an innovative field such as design and, on the other hand, to innovatively use technology to push back the limits of what it is possible to do in virtual environments such as ours," explains Carles Sigalés, Vice President for Teaching and Learning at the UOC.


Internationalization of the Catalan university system

But which is better? 3+2 or 4+1? According to Sigalés, the difference is "relative". "One cannot generalize that the four-year bachelor's degrees are better than the three-year degrees or that the opposite is the case. In fact, the latest trends clearly show that skill acquisition is not directly related with a course's duration. You can assimilate a skill very quickly because you have prior knowledge and certain abilities that make it easier for you, or you might need much longer in other circumstances," says the Vice President for Teaching and Learning.

What the 3+2 formula does is align the Spanish university system with the European system. "It makes internationalization, student exchanges and programmes with other universities easier and, therefore, connects us with the activity taking place in the European system," he points out.

The UOC favours a "flexible" application of the 3+2 or 3+1+1 system in its course offering, with the exception of the four-year bachelor's degrees, as is already being done in countries routinely used by Catalonia as educational models. "The online student profile, who normally studies part-time and already has professional experience, wants courses that are not so long," says Sigalés. However, the CRUE (Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities) decided in February 2015 to not start reducing to three years the four-year bachelor's degrees that already existed until the 2017-2018 academic year. And this transformation will not be done in all courses but only in certain fields of knowledge. The Government of Catalonia has indicated on several occasions that it could be applied to bachelor's degrees in Chemistry, Physics or Mathematics, in which the first three years could be generic, with the two years of the master's degree being more specific. So until the transformation happens, the 4+1 model will only coexist with the 3+2 model in the new degree courses.