Structure of university courses adapted to the EHEA

Objectives
The fundamental objective is to adapt university courses to the European context in such a way as to harmonize the duration of the courses, the learning methods and the evaluation of academic activities with the aim of fostering mobility for students and graduates and enabling a system that recognises and transfers credits.

New structure
Royal Decree 1393/2007, of 29 October, develops the structure of official university education in accordance with the premises of the European Higher Education Area and it establishes three types of course to obtain the corresponding official university qualifications: degree, master’s degree and doctorate.

Degree courses
Their aim is to provide general education geared towards preparation for professional activities. The syllabuses will require 240 credits and will contain theory and practical elements distributed among the following subjects: basic education, obligatory subjects, optional subjects, work placement and final project.
Degree courses will belong to one of the following fields: Arts and Humanities, Sciences, Health Sciences, Social and Legal Sciences, and Engineering and Architecture.

Master’s degrees
The aim of master’s degrees is to enable students to acquire specialised or multidisciplinary higher education geared towards academic or professional specialisation, or, to promote the start of research work.
The syllabuses will require between 60 and 120 credits and will contain all the theory and practical elements that students must acquire, which will be distributed in the following manner: obligatory subjects, optional subjects, seminars, work placement, directed projects and master’s degree final project.

Doctorates
Doctorate courses are made up of an educational period and a research period, which together form what is called the doctorate programme.
In order to be admitted to the training period it will be necessary to comply with the same admission requirements as for a master’s degree.
To be admitted to the research period students must have an official master's degree or another qualification issued by an EHEA higher education institution.
Admission is also available to people that have obtained a qualification in accordance with other educational systems, subject to verification that the qualification is equivalent to a Spanish master’s degree and that it provides admission to doctorate courses in the home country.
This admission does not imply, under any circumstances, recognition of the person’s previous qualification beyond permitting admission to the doctorate course.
Admission may also be gained to doctorate courses by complying with the following requisites:
a) Having obtained 60 credits in one or more master’s courses. As an exceptional case, admission to the research period may be given to students that have 60 postgraduate credits from educational activities not included in university master’s degrees, in accordance with the university’s regulations. This case may only be applied for reasons of strategic interest to the university or for scientific reasons requiring the education of doctors in a certain field.
b) Having a degree with at least 300 credits.
The universities will determine the procedures and criteria for admission to the corresponding doctorate programme with regard to either of the periods.