ULPGC six, La Laguna zero: only one Canarian public university offers double degrees
Students take an EBAU test this June at the ULPGC. /
education
The Tenerife center does not have in its horizon to implement them: «They are fine, but there are other lines where to invest our meager resources»
Six to zero. The implementation of double degrees in public universities in the Canary Islands is so disparate that
only one of them, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), offers them, the top three in the 2010-11 academic year. In La Laguna (ULL) there are none or future projects to have them.
In 2010, the 'Canarian Strategy for the improvement of the university higher education offer 2010-2020' was presented, which qualified as
one of the "basic priorities" when creating new official studies in public centers, double degrees.
The document, indicative and not linked to the financing of public universities, determined the priorities of the training offer in the Canarian centers and was promoted by the Ministry of Education of the Canarian Government at the time, headed by Milagros Luis Brito, from CC, « with the active participation of Canarian universities and economic and social agents».
But only the ULPGC has followed this line.
Why not the ULL? The government team of the Tenerife center, which has been in charge of the university since 2019, affirms that they addressed this situation and after "an analysis and reflection" they concluded that the implementation of double degrees was not going to mean that the number of new students would increase and “it would entail a considerable investment in terms of work and organization of the centers involved and resources,
and we had other priorities in which this effort would be much better invested”, declares Néstor Torres, vice-rector for Teaching Innovation and Quality.
For the university of Gran Canaria, "there is an undoubted social interest in double degrees, the students demand them"
The bet, maintains the Lagunero vice-rector, has been "in the updating and renewal" of the offer of official degrees and "proof of this is that in these three years we have implemented two new degrees, Nutrition and Dietetics and Physical Activity Sciences and Sport, and three master's degrees that we started in September, two professionalizing ».
However, the University of Gran Canaria maintains that implementing double degrees is not at odds with updating the rest of the offer. The first began to be taught in the mandate of the rector José Regidor and continued in the stage of Rafael Robaina.
Lluís Serra's current team, which entered in 2021, is committed to maintaining that line.
«There is an undoubted social interest in double degreesthe student body demands double degrees and, therefore, it is in the project of the ULPGC to continue increasing this type of degrees that we offer as long as they have utility and social interest", says Luis Hernández Calvento, vice-rector of Degrees, Postgraduate and New Degrees.
"Double degrees are fine, but we believe that there are other lines in which to invest our meager resources because the social profitability that it will generate is going to be much greater than with double degrees, without detracting from the interest they may have", argues the vice-rector of the ULL to justify the non-existence of this offer at your university.
According to Torres, "the dynamics have changed a lot, double degrees became fashionable and serve as a claim, but with the new reform of university degrees there are unprecedented options, such as dual degrees, open itineraries, micro-degrees to facilitate continuous training and now what corresponds is to focus our energies on updating our offer exploiting these new possibilities».
Looking to the future, the vice-rector for New Degrees at the Gran Canaria center points out that there is a social, business and administration interest in interdisciplinary profiles that are not exclusive to an academic discipline. «For this reason, at the ULPGC we are already working for
the creation of degrees that have interdisciplinary contentthat can offer training in various branches that until now were studied independently, "he highlights.
Criticism of Education
The public universities of the Canary Islands are in full negotiations with the Regional Government's Education Department to support a multi-year financing model in which the money they obtain is based on meeting objectives, and one of them is likely to be the adaptation of the offer to the demands of students and society.
In an interview published in CANARIAS7, the Canarian counselor Manuela Armas criticized the fact that the ULL does not offer any double degree and affirmed that this was one of the reasons why boys and girls from the islands who obtain scholarships go to study abroad. "Perhaps they do it because they don't find what they are looking for here, we are seeing that a large part of those who leave abroad is because they are looking for a double degree," she assured.
Three with a cut-off mark above 10 and one that did not follow
The double degrees offered by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria are English-German and English-French Translation and Interpretation; English-German Translation and Interpreting and Tourism; Business Administration and Management (ADE) and Tourism; ADE and Law; Engineering in Industrial Organization and ADE; and Telecommunications Technology Engineering and ADE. ADE and Computer Engineering were also taught, which ended up being eliminated. Due to its high demand and few places, the double degree in Translation had one of the highest cut-off marks of the ULPGC this year, with 13,318. In ADE and Law a 10,979 was requested, a 10,458 in ADE and Tourism and only a 5 in the other three. As a whole, the ULPGC offers 125 places for new entrants in this type of training offer, the content of which is divided into five courses.
