Ramon Alemany: “Internationalization is essential for our students’ future professional careers”

Which is the most important challenge for the Faculty at the moment?

It is quite repetitive; the Rector is continuously noting it: human resources. The ageing of the teaching staff and the generational shift. It also affects the administration and services staff. In other fields, there is a debate on whether we will lose or get job positions due robotics. The University would not work efficiently with robots. We need people to continue giving lectures, doing research. Therefore, we have to look for mechanisms to face the generational shift and get younger staff, and bring new talents. Over the last years, the Faculty has worked on a policy on talent recruitment; it went to the job market in economics, the young doctors market, so as to bring people from an open perspective, an international incorporation, not endogamous. Aiming for a good incorporation of teaching staff, with language skills -such as English- to continue working on the internationalization of the Faculty. But we need resources to do that. And this is the essential challenge. We have to help the University of Barcelona as a whole so that funding improves and teaching staff policies can be reactivated.

There are also other internal issues in the Faculty. We have to take care of the maintenance and the expansion of some own management structures that are part of the core of the activity of the center, such as the Office for International Relations and professional careers. Internationalization, international mobility and contact with companies and institutions are essential to guarantee that our studentsʼ training is competitive in this world.

How are these studies to be faced for the future professionals who are now studying in this Faculty?

The future professionals who are trained in this Faculty have to handle problems that go from, mainly, globalization and the technological revolution. This labour market results from the globalization without frontiers. We used to search for a job in our surroundings. Like in other countries, mainly in North American countries, people are born in a State, they study in another one and end up working in a third one, our culture makes us more rooted to our places, we are more tied to our family, and we do not go international that easily. But work is where you find it. We will be useful wherever they need us, and that does not have to be in the company next door. The new professionals will be required to speak other languages, to have experience in other countries, they have to be willing to move. Therefore, internationalization is very important for the professional careers of our students. So is the contact with reality, with companies too. Entrepreneurship, ability to adapt to new situations, does not consist on waiting for someone to pick you up but for learning how to handle your problems. We have to provide the students with tools so they can work on that. Moreover, the technological revolution will make us be always aware for everything as professionals, always willing to learn new things and adapt to reality.

Furthermore, the challenges on resource distribution resulting from the ageing of population, work precariousness among youngsters, extreme poverty, etc., will make the new professionals to have a more social perspective on their economic and business knowledge, as well as the collaboration between economists and sociologists.

How does the policy of this center present internationalization as a key element?

We have many studies taught in English, and we are offering more of them each time. There is the International Business, which is totally taught in English, there is an English itinerary for ADE (Business Administration and Management), the masterʼs degree on Economy in English, which received the accreditation of excellence in internationalization by AQU. This year, we started with the masterʼs degree Erasmys Mundus, coordinated by the University of Glasgow, the masterʼs degree in Global Markets, Local Creativities (GLOCAL). Next year we will have the masterʼs degree on International Business, taught fully in English.

Then, there is mobility. Our bachelor and master degree students have to go international, they have to face labour markets without frontiers. This happens if they go abroad and benefit from mobility programs like Erasmus Mundus and specific agreements to visit other countries in the European Union. In this Faculty, we are making a deep analysis of the mobility agreements we signed with other universities. We try to cancel those agreements without mobility (what sense does it make to sign an agreement with another university if no one goes there and we donʼt have any guest from that university?). We are changing those cancelled agreements for new ones which can be more attractive, for example, for holding good positions in the rankings. We are also working on an analysis on quality universities but in other geographical areas, such as Eastern Europe, with lower costs for the students compared to Western Europe countries. Also, we try to increase our agreements with Asian countries. Therefore, we are making actions so that the mobility agreement structure changes and favours the mobility of the students. This is present. This Faculty has never had a good balance between outgoing and incoming students. We have more than five hundred incoming students, but only half of them go abroad. This year, we will probably reach the three-hundred outgoing students, and therefore, the balance will improve.
What other measures are being applied in the teaching field?

Regarding the upcoming academic year, we have worked on a change in the structure of the courses schedule. We thought about offering a bigger timetable regarding teaching and organizational aspects. For the next academic course, we will offer two morning schedules -one from 8 a.m. to 12 noon and another from 12 noon to 4.30 p.m.- and then there will be an afternoon one from 4.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. Students who come from other cities find it hard to have lessons at 8.30 a.m. This new schedule can benefit those students who can come at 12 noon, with a pause to have lunch. But students from Barcelona can attend the 8 a.m. lessons and after 12 noon they have time for other activities and study. For the next academic year, regarding the studies on Economics and Business Administration and Management, the two big ones, we will offer these morning and afternoon schedules. Regarding the other studies -the bachelor degrees on Statistics, Sociology and International Business- we will continue offering morning schedules and in some cases, such as Sociology, one in the afternoon.

Regarding the masterʼs degrees, we will have a new official masterʼs degree, the master on International Business, which is a follow-up of the bachelor degree on International Business. Like the bachelorʼs degree, this masterʼs degree is totally taught in English and we expect a lot of international students. Also, we are working on other possibilities to offer some interuniversity masterʼs degree in the upcoming academic years.

How is research at the Faculty at the moment?

Regarding research on economy, the position of the Faculty is good within Spain. In other fields, such as business and sociology, it is good and it is growing. The problem is that some situations limit us due resource issues. Lecturers retire and we have not brought new people yet. Research has some activity cycles and the moment of highest scientific performance is not when you are sixty but many years before. If the average age of lecturers of this Faculty converges at sixty, this means that scientific performance will obviously decrease. Therefore, the ageing of the Facultyʼs lecturers, the staff, and the inability of a generational shift, is punishing us. Moreover, public resources have been reduced. Research funding policies seem to be useful to fund excellence but not for a basic fund. However, we will try to fight in this field to keep this good level we achieved.

There have been several campaigns recently to make research on social sciences more visible.

These are important. We have to fight, from all social sciences, to make our research be seen as useful for society. There are other fields, such as medicine, biomedicine, biotechnology… which we all know to be useful. However, research in social sciences is also necessary and useful, and therefore we should know how to talk about it. We have to tell people that we donʼt play a role for a career, to promote us as researchers, but we do so because our research is significant. In this sense, we have to be tied to other fields of science which are making an effort to have experts dedicating to disseminate and share their discoveries. Societyʼs knowledge has to be enriched while we also give value to research. It is difficult but we have to make this effort so that our work and research is valued. The European Union requires social fields to be more proactive in dissemination and in the social return aspects of research.

Whatʼs the relation between the Faculty and its closer social fabric?

We keep a lot of contact with professional schools, social entities, etc. We have the Social and Entrepreneurship Forum, which has reached its seventh edition this year. During the morning, several entities visit the Faculty -Caritas, Red Cross, etc.- to bring their activities to our students. We are in contact with all of them. We also have awards valuing bachelorʼs degree final projects on social fields. There are also awards from the professional schools, which offer a topic and award the best bachelorʼs degree final project on it. Therefore, our contact with others is good and we hope to continue in this line.

During the academic year 2018/2019 we will offer a study offering at the University of Experience of the UB on Social Economy, and we also want to create a new specialist minor on Social Economy for the bachelorʼs degree in the Business Administration and Management, as well as a dual pathway in ADE-Sociology, and maybe an interuniversity masterʼs degree on Social Economy.

Can you tell me a unique feature of this Faculty?

This is a big Faculty. We can think this is a handicap but we are positive. By being this big we can have many studies in the Faculty, many lecturers, students, activities, this is a very diverse Faculty in ideology. Therefore, this Faculty offers many opportunities on knowledge, bachelor studies and different research lines, which are interrelated at the same time. In addition, offering different course schedules will help students to balance their family, work and student life. And also, we offer the widest optional subject area offering in ADE (Business Administration and Management) from all Catalan faculties.