Ana Delgado Hervás, senior lecturer of the Department of Humanities and principal investigator of the Mediterranean Archaeology Research Group (GRACME), is the coordinator of the new UPF Open Bachelor's Degree.

The programme on offer at the University next academic year 2015-2016, is an innovative model of teaching and learning in which the student will explore different disciplinary fields to construct their own track, in accordance with their academic and professional interests.

- Can we speak of the UPF Open Bachelor's Degree as a new degree or as a new way of accessing the University?

The UPF Open Bachelor's Degree programme is a new way of getting access to the University. It allows a student to enter Pompeu Fabra University without knowing which degree they want to read. They will take the decision once already at the University, after taking courses in different studies.

- What is UPF's aim in offering this degree?

The Catalan and Spanish education system requires young people to take the complex decision of choosing what studies they wish to pursue and what their professional future will be before the age of eighteen. Unlike other countries around us, our universities do not actively participate in this decision making. We want to be a part of this decision, offering young people the opportunity to learn before deciding.

"The UPF Open Bachelor's Degree is a completely new programme on the Catalan and Spanish university scene"

- Does anything similar exist at other universities?

The Open Degree is a completely new programme on the Catalan and Spanish university scene, but it is not in universities in other parts of the world. In the United States, for example, university degree studies share certain features with the Open Degree programme: they are highly flexible programmes, scarcely regulated, and greatly stress transdisciplinary training. At a university like Harvard, a student can enter without having decided what degree they want to do. These universities offer Liberal Arts programmes that allow students to study during the early years subjects from fields as diverse as the sciences, the social sciences and humanities and specialize in a specific area of knowledge in the last years of their studies.

- What student profile is the Degree aimed at?

It aims at students who are interested in different studies or fields of knowledge, who wish to gain a cross-disciplinary university education and who want to decide on their academic and professional future once they have started their university studies.

- What is the role of the academic tutor and what relationship will they have with the student?

The academic tutor is a key player in the UPF Open Bachelor's Degree programme. Their role is to personally support the students who join this programme in their academic decision making. The will advise them when preparing their academic tracks and will help them to choose the subjects that allow them to explore the areas of knowledge that interest them. They also support them when it comes to choosing the degree they are finally to read.

- Doesn't the fact of being able to mix up subjects from up to three different degrees and different disciplines lead to a lot of dispersion in the track of each student?

In rigid university systems that give priority to very premature specialization and emphasize professionalization, there is a tendency to consider interdisciplinarity as a negative aspect of university education. Our university education takes this to an extreme. To be able to take subjects from different degrees is enriching for any student. It allows them to explore different perspectives and points of view and to acquire more flexible, more comprehensive knowledge. The frontiers we have invented between knowledge disciplines are too rigid. I am in favour of starting to bring them down.

"Studying subjects from different degrees is enriching for any student, it allows them to explore different perspectives and acquire more flexible, more comprehensive knowledge"

- From what degrees can the student not choose and why?

The degrees in Medicine, Political Philosophy and Economics do not participate in the programme because they are offered jointly with other universities. Access to the UPF Open Bachelor's Degree programme is a way into Pompeu Fabra University.

- Why it is precisely at the beginning of the second year that a choice of one of the degrees must be taken?

Because it is then that the students have enough criteria to make their choice of degree. If it were left until later that would mean students would not be able to finish their degrees in four years.

  - So, students will be able to finish their chosen degree at the same time as their classmates?

In many cases, yes. In other cases, access to a degree through the UPF Open Bachelor's Degree programme might require prolonging their studies by a term, or two at most. It will depend on the academic track chosen by each student, on the distance between the various degrees taken and on the possibilities of recognition of each degree.

- What will happen with the subjects taken on degrees they rule out?

Most of the subjects taken may be included as subjects of the degree that the students finally choose, either as optional subjects or as basic or compulsory subjects, in the case of closely related areas of knowledge. In addition, Pompeu Fabra University will recognize these studies with a UPF-endorsed degree provided that the student has completed a minimum number of credits.

- UPF offers twenty places in this first edition. Is this expected to increase in the future?

 First we will evaluate this initial experience. Then we will decide.