HOW HIGHER EDUCATION CAN DEVELOP GENERIC COMPETENCES?

Abstract

Training generic competences is a current, relevant and controversial issue. Today continue the debate about understanding the competence or skill concept and its relevance into the educational and business reality. The training by competences at university level arises in Spain with the constitution of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and specifically with the “Bologna Declaration” in 1999. In the professional field, the competence movement arises around 1973 with David McClellan who identified that to be successful we need something more than intelligence and knowledges. In this research work we propose to train university students in personal competences and skills for their personal, academic and professional excellence and success. Understanding that competences can be developed and taking this hypothesis to the university field, we intend to answer the question: How university could teach and develop these competences? The general objective of this study is to reflect the need to develop generic competences at university. Competences that help students to move towards personal, academic and professional excellence and success in their lives. To do so, we will start from the distinction between competences and skills, we will talk about competences in the professional and educational field and we will propose a university subject for the generic competences development. Finally, we will observe the evaluation that the first-year students of all the faculties of the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid, Spain) give to this subject in the academic year 2018-2019.