Choosing a University - Entornos de Formación

CHOOSING A UNIVERSITY
In the context of the Spanish higher education
sector, it’s difficult to know how to choose the
right university and course. There are no longer
any barriers to studying near home or far away,

In the context of the Spanish higher education sector,
it’s difficult to know how to choose the right university
and course. There are no longer any barriers to
studying near home or far away, or to choosing one
specialism over another. Students hold all the cards for
choosing whatever they want, and it’s up to us to make
sure they choose us.
The reform that Wert, the Spanish Education Minister,
is proposing is still at the early stages, but it will open
the door to private initiatives. These will include both
universities and associated establishments increasing
and diversifying the Spanish educational courses on
offer. The terms have not yet been fully decided, but it
looks like they are headed towards reducing the
minimum criteria for qualifications and educational
standards in favour of creating a stronger, more open
competitive market.
In any case, in Spain over the last few years, 19 private
campuses have opened, whereas no public ones have
been set up.
We have to see how all this is going to work, and what
ANECA (the Spanish National Agency for Quality
Assessment and Accreditation) will say about it. What
is definitely true, is that virtually all private
establishments, and many of the public ones, are trying
to maintain their geographical intake. However, their
local clients, students who live in the vicinity, are
becoming fewer every day because of the emergence
of new competition and a lower number of students
due to the falling birth rate.
Against this backdrop, the logical response of any
company or university is:
- To create unique and different niche qualifications,
whilst appreciating everything involved with
such an investment of resources and opportunities;
- To focus the search on students living outside their
geographical area, in this case, through distance
courses.

OK, perfect! The higher education sector is, at the end
of the day, a company that has to co-exist with others,
and which therefore has to find its own niche. Online
training and highly vertical studies are action areas in
any medium-term strategic plan. So, what problems
does this new flood of initiatives pose?
From the student’s point of view, we have to come
back to the heading at the start of this section: which
university should I pick to guarantee the best results?
Might it be everything that looks good, in this case, for
my personal development? In the case of choosing
popular courses such as Business Administration and
Management, or courses with similarly large student
numbers, I suspect consumers are going to do what
they do when they make travel arrangements: search
opinion forums looking for a good quality-to-price
ratio.
From a management point of view, a university or
educational institution, everyone, absolutely
everyone, should prune what they don’t need and
adapt to the market to set themselves apart in the best
way.
From a marketing point of view, this might involve
offering MOOCs, or other training such as centre-based
courses, amongst specific ways of advertising and
guerilla marketing.
From a quality point of view, you have to show you are
proud of what you are offering. You have to demonstrate
to future students they have made a good choice in a
university system where quality processes are strictly
linked to results. Maybe this is a first approximation to
the American model, with European nuances.
Content and teaching have to be fully in sync with
student expectations and with educational goals. There
needs to be quality content, with a clear and direct
methodology and a rock-solid teaching design, so
teachers can be given free rein to achieving their own
goals.

From an infrastructure point of view, you have to
really take care of the virtual world the students
inhabit. In this case, the virtual environment has to be
friendly and sociable, and also able to encourage
learning, a place where students have their own
private space but also a shared space. It has to
function as an area for both formal and informal
learning. It has to be a system that binds and
integrates the functions of learning and social
interaction, within a solid framework of applications
and infrastructures that work together to support
teaching.
At Entornos, we are fully aware of all this, and we
work with customers in this change process. At the
end of the day, educational technology turns the
virtual learning environment into the streets, city
lighting, buildings and classrooms of a physical
university. What is really important is what happens
inside this virtual world and, to make it happen
successfully, we have to be excellent architects and
designers.
Salva Pellicer May,17

Choosing a University - Entornos de Formación

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