Systems of Higher Education in an international Comparison: Spain<title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../CSS/2col_leftNav.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div id="masthead"> <h1 id="siteName"> Systems of Higher Education in an international Comparison: Spain</h1> <h1 id="subTitle"> Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Universidad Carlos III, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia</h1> <div id="globalNav"> <a href="../educationalsystem/school.html">Educational System</a> | University Life | <a href="../work/internship.html">Work</a> | <a href="../madrid/geography.html">Madrid</a> | <a href="../valencia/valencia.html">Valencia</a>| <a href="../authors.html">Authors</a></div> </div>  <div id="content"> <h2 id="pageName"> Courses</h2> <div class="story"> <h3> The Academic Year</h3> <p> The winter term is very similar to the German one. Lectures start in Octobre and end in late January. <br /> Then, in the first two weeks of February, exams take place. <br /> But instead of having vacations until April, the summer term follows directly after these exams are finished. It could happen that the final exam is written on the last Saturday in this two weeks and the Monday after the courses of the summer term start. No vacations at all!<br /> The lectures of the summer term last until June and are followed by another two week exam period. <br /> If a students failed in any exam, it has to be rewritten in Septembre. <br /> <br /> So in total Spanish students have only a little less vacations than German students do, but with a different distribution. The reason for this is very simple: The Spanish summer is way to hot to learn. Especially August is a month where everybody takes his holidays and drives to the seaside. In Madrid about 70 % of the employees take their holidays during this month, hence the streets are literally empty - except for the tourists.</p> <h3> The Courses </h3> <p> In contrast to Germany the Spanish system does not make any difference between lectures, lab courses and seminars. Instead a course always consists of theory lessons as well as practical sessions. These can either be small exercices during a theory session, small homeworks - to be delivered within a week, or larger projects that are usually designed as group work. While homeworks become more and more common in Germany due to the Bachelor / Master system, they only support the lecture and sometimes are required to be allowed to write the exam. Nevertheless the exam is still THE measure for the final grade. This is different in Spain. Exams and practical works are equally important and very often the exam only accounts for 40 to 60 % of the final grade. As a result it becomes more important to be very industrious and less important to have a lot of knowledge that one can show of in an exam.</p> <p> Another difference is within the size of Spanish courses. While especially the foundational courses can be very huge (with up to 1.400 students in one lecture at industrial engineering) Spanish courses are always relatively small. It is nearly impossible to attend a course with more than 60 to 80 students. A normal size would be between 15 to 40 students - school class size. At UC3M this is achieved by dividing the students into morning and afternoon groups, so that a lecture is actually held twice (if there is an English counterpart it might be held even three times). <br /> Since small courses only require small space, there are no huge lecture halls at Spanish universities. At UC3M there was only one huge auditorium at each campus - and this was not used for giving lectures, but for big events, such as concerts. </p> <p> Last but not least there is at least one thing that was the same at UC3M and TUM, there is no compulsory attendance to the courses. As long as the students hand in their practical assignments and write the exam, everything will be fine. </p> <div> <em>Author: Arno Scherhorn</em></div> </div> </div>  <div id="navBar"> <div id="sectionLinks"> <h3> University Life</h3> <ul> <li><a href="living.html">Living</a></li> <li>Courses</li> <li><a href="learning.html">Learning</a></li> <li><a href="exams.html">Exams</a></li> <li><a href="grades.html">Grades</a></li> <li><a href="sport.html">Sport</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="relatedLinks"> <h3> Related Links</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.uc3m.es/" target="_blank">Universidad Carlos III</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.upm.es/" target="_blank">Universidad Politécnica de Madrid</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.tum.de/" target="_blank">TU München</a></li> </ul> </div> </div>  <div id="siteInfo"> (C) 2008, Stefan Edbauer, Arno Scherhorn, <a href="http://www.juergentreml.de/">Jürgen Treml</a> </div> <br /> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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