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 was established and promoted all through Europe. Development of this adaptation process for technical degrees in Spain has became a very complicated task, and more over for degrees related to Industrial Engineering. Apparently, adaptation process in these degrees should be easier than in others, because of the fact that traditionally in Spain there have lived together degrees in Technical Engineering, 3 years, and Superior Engineering, 5 years. However, some social sectors have profiled by this reform to improve technical deficiencies in former study programs. The Real Decreto 1393 de 2007 (RD 1393/2007) regulates 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 Industrial Technical Engineering. In short, main restrictions of these laws are: 1. All Degrees will divide in 4 courses of 1 year each, with a total amount of 240 ECTS. This supposes an important change with nowadays three years structure, although total amount of teaching hours are almost the same. In principal, this situation will help students to develop their skills taking it easy. 2. The degrees that allow to access to the Technical Engineer 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 formation on industrial engineering of 60 ECTS and the third module with specific formation of 48 ECTS that may vary depending on the speciality that student go on: Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial Chemistry, Textile or Industrial Electronics. 3. Finally, a final degree thesis must be done by 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 uniforms all degrees, due to 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 between degrees, each University may propose a different name for the degree that allows access the same profession. The adaptation from the current titles' structure to the new degrees is relatively simply, because most of current matters can be adjusted at the new degrees. However faculty' imagination and aptitude may induce a higher divergence between new degrees respect the current Technical Engineer studies. In this work the specific structure of industrial degrees branch at Escuela Politecnica Superior de Elche at Miguel Hernandez University is analyzed. This structure is focused on optimize University resources and improve students' mobility between proposed degrees.