As in the rest of Spain, universities across Andalucia are working hard to meet the demands of the Bologna Plan. This plan is creating a Europe-wide system of higher education. Now it will be easier than ever to transfer from one university to another without losing any credit in the process.
The Bologna Plan will require radical changes in Spanish university programmes. Mainly, professors are going to be required to make a dramatic shift from a theory-based system to a very practical, hands-on style. Not surprisingly, many are reticent, reluctant or downright against the plan.
In reality, the benefits for Spanish students will most likely be enormous. Not only will they be able to study throughout the EU, but they will finally gain the kind of practical skills so highly prized in the workforce.
A recent report by Málaga's Diario Sur looked at how the local state university's Communications degrees are changing in order to adapt to the Bologna Plan. Not only will the structure of the whole curriculum need to change, but insiders predict the need for a whole new building in order to provide the kind of equipment students will need to gain the valuable experience required by the new pan-European university degrees.
What do students think of all the changes?
You can find a wide variety of reactions thanks to Internet, and many seem to be negative or at least uncertain. But this is hardly surprising given the fact that most of us tend to react against change, at least at first.
One of the students interviewed by Diario Sur was much more positive. Although he was a fourth year journalism student and wouldn't, therefore, benefit from the Bologna Plan, he expressed his support and said, "When you study abroad on an Erasmus grant, you see that education in northern American and European countries is much more structured, and this is what has to happen here."
Could he have said it better? Probably not.