3/15/18

Ten suggestions for choosing a university

Foto: Unsplash/ John Schnobrich

Foto: Unsplash/ John Schnobrich

In the last academic year, 2,781 bachelor's degrees, 3,772 master's degrees and 1,105 doctoral degrees were taught in Spain, spread out among 1,000 faculties, according to  provisional data from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.  The excessive amount of options may become a handicap for the more than 340,000 students in the country who last year enrolled on a bachelor's degree course for the first time and, therefore, had to decide on a university. Futura, Master's and Post-graduate Exhibition, to be held on 16 and 17 March in Barcelona, aims to guide university students on bachelor's, postgraduate and master's degree programmes. Professor Nati Cabrera from the UOC Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences offers some suggestions for making the right choice based on the idea that the best faculty is the one that most closely matches our values, preferences and way of seeing the world.

  1. What do I want, what am I good at and what can I do? These, in this order, are the three basic questions that, according to Cabrera, students must ask before deciding on a course and a university. It is important that they follow their vocation, leaving aside whether there is a high or low rate of employability. With the help of professors to guide them or using the resources provided by public institutions or administrations, students can identity their strong points. This, along with  websites such as educaweb, which help students self-diagnose to discover their own skills, and being aware of cut-off marks for admission, will help future students decide on a course or faculty.
  1. A maze of rankings. The most expensive and elitist British and North American universities head most rankings of the best universities, such as the Times Higher Education, the Shangai Ranking and the QS. They are the best known but there are hundreds of rankings (by speciality, university, type of engineering, etc). Cabrera emphasizes that these kinds of rankings attach more importance to the prestige and social impact of the institution (the number of Nobel Prize winners who have studied there or the number of scientific publications) than to the teaching or the methodology, which in the end is what most interests future university students.
  1. Studying abroad? Extensive knowledge of a second language is highly valued by the labour market, but for this you don't need to study abroad for four years. Doing a bachelor's, postgraduate or master's degree outside the country is not within reach of most pockets. Universities that encourage exchanges abroad or work experience in companies around the world will help students to internationalize themselves and acquire knowledge of a second language without having to get so deeply into debt.
  1. Flexible universities. If students work or have family responsibilities or other obligations or commitments, the universities that allow them to study partially or completely online are an added value.
  1. Double degrees, a trend on the rise. The market increasingly demands professionals with a double degree: for example, Law and Business Administration or Economics and Engineering. Students who choose these double degrees must be aware that they take a couple of years longer, so they must be sure about their decision. Cabrera explains that, if in doubt, it is best to do a bachelor's degree and then complement it with another bachelor's, postgraduate or master's degree.
  1. The higher the education level, the greater the labour insertion. A whopping 90.5% of those who have done a doctoral degree are in employment, as are 84.2% of those who have done a master's degree, according to data for the first quarter of 2017 from the Enquesta de població active (Labour Force Survey) summarized in the study La inserció  laboral dels doctors i doctores de les universitats catalanes (Labour market integration of Catalan doctoral degree holders), produced by the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU Catalunya). Eighty-two per cent of bachelor's degree students also find work. According to the OECD, the difference in unemployment between the highest education level (doctoral degree) and the lowest (primary education) in Spain is 28 percentage points, while OECD countries as a whole have an average of seven points. Spain is one of the OECD countries where this difference is most pronounced.
  1. Cooperation programmes with companies. With which companies or institutions do universities have an agreement? Do they help with labour insertion? Do they promote international exchanges? These are among the questions future university students should ask themselves. It is no secret that what a student wants is to work and find a job as soon as possible, so if the university can help with this first step it is a point in its favour.
  1. High employment today can be unemployment tomorrow. Job markets fluctuate and the degrees that have a higher employment rate today may not in five or ten years. For example, graduates who in 2014 had higher employment rates studied Electronic Engineering, Medicine, Automation Engineering and Industrial Electronics, and Aeronautical, Naval and Ocean Engineering. In contrast, those with worse jobs were those graduating with degrees in French Philology, Arab Philology, Art History, Marine Sciences and Marine Navigation, according to the Encuesta de inserción laboral de titulados universitarios (Survey on the labour market integration of university graduates), produced by the National Statistics Institute (INE).  “Students cannot base their decision only on employability. It is good to bear it in mind but it doesn't have to be the determining or exclusive factor”, Cabrera points out. An example of this changing world is Architecture, which in the years of the property boom had a high percentage of employability, and plummeted with the bursting of the economic bubble and the ensuing crisis.
  1. Public or private university? The private option is not always the best. The last QS study, which measures the weight of the faculties in the ranking of the best universities in the world by areas, places eleven Spanish faculties in the top 50 in their subject. Of these, eight are public.
  1. Innovative education models. Until a few years ago the way universities taught didn't vary that much. Now there are faculties that try to provide innovative and motivating courses for students, with a high level of practical application in real or simulated contexts. “This can help students to have a more gratifying educational experience”, explains Cabrera.

 

Experts UOC

Press contact

You may also be interested in…

Most popular