The UAB awarded by the Erasmus Mundus international master's degree programme
The UAB has been awarded by the European Commission for its trajectory and the results achieved throughout the twenty-year history of the Erasmus Mundus Programme, a European competitive action programme for high-level international joint masters.The award was presented during the programme's 20th Anniversary Conference, "Beyond Borders and Boundaries: 20 years of Erasmus Mundus", held on 27 and 28 May in Brussels.
The award was given as an acknowledgement to the ten European universities that have participated most intensively, continuously and uninterruptedly in the programme during its twenty years of existence. Ignasi Salvadó, director of the OPERA office in Brussels and representative of the University through the 4 Universities Alliance (A4U), received the award.
During these twenty years, almost 600 universities have participated in the different editions of the Erasmus Mundus programme, which have offered a total of 585 joint master's degree projects. The UAB has done so continuously since 2004, when the first edition of the programme was approved, with a total of 16 master's degrees, many of them periodically renewed and still in force. The UAB currently offers 9 Erasmus Mundus master's degrees, 2 of which it also coordinates: Education Policies for Global Development (GLOBED) and Human Disease Models Morphological Phenotyping (MorphoPHEN). GLOBED is the first Erasmus Mundus master's degree coordinated by a university in Spain to have been renewed for a third time.
The 20th Anniversary Conference was attended by representatives of European academic institutions, alumni and members of the European Commission in the field of education. Ignasi Salvadó also participated on behalf of the UAB in one of the debates, dedicated to identifying the key aspects that explain the ability of Erasmus Mundus master's degrees to attract talent, and in which special emphasis was placed on the high employability of its graduates and the successful experience of certain master's degrees to ensure continuity at the end of the programme's funding.
The Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters are prestigious international master's degrees, designed and taught jointly by a group of higher education institutions. The program promotes integration within the European Higher Education Area and the recruitment of talent from around the world, with grants also available for students from outside the EU. The joint masters involve at least three institutions from different countries and partners from the academic and non-academic world, and the stays at the participating universities include periods of study, research, work placements and preparation and defense of a final thesis.