The Royal Decree of 1892/2008, of December 14, which regulates the conditions for access to official university degree education, opens new means for accessing university for people aged over 40 years without academic certification that can accredit a certain working or professional experience. It also covers access to university for people that have no working or professional experience that are aged forty five years or above.
Thus a panorama is configured for access by selectivity, access by people aged over 25 years, students from vocational cycles and students with disabilities. The objective is to broaden participation and increase access to university courses, by offering possibilities to people that have been denied the opportunity to study by traditionally established means.
At present, in the Spanish university system, the offer for university access for senior persons is based on non regulated training on programmes of varying nature and duration:
- There is a Catalan model that principally bases the education it offers on conferences or tutored classes, administered by the FOPA (Training for Adults),
- A large percentage of Spanish universities offer their own four-year courses to adults (also the Universitat de Lleida), or otherwise
- Programmes such as “la Universidad al Alcance” (‘University within reach’) in which adults are incorporated in regular lectures and follow the same training process as traditional students.
The current possibility of accrediting work and professional experience for it to be evaluated and thus allow access to university studies presents new challenges to universities: how can working experience be evaluated, and on the basis of what criteria? Who should perform the monitoring and evaluation? What possible problems might arise? Have there been similar experiences in other countries that might serve as examples? etc..
The focus of attention being on people aged over 40 years and that do not have academic certificates, although they may have or may not have (people older than 45) work or professional experience, the following general objectives are proposed:
- Analyse and evaluate the systems for accessing university in the international context and for the indicated collective.
- Identify meaningful experiences regarding university training for senior persons in the national context.
- Delimitate a proposal that relates established degree certificates and related professional families.
- Propose models and guidelines for conducting entrance examinations for the indicated collective.
- Establish a proposed action plan to facilitate access and permanence of the indicated collective at a certain university.