Concurrent Masters Degrees across the Atlantic: innovations, issues & insights

Abstract

A transatlantic degree consortium to implement a four-semester dual masters degree initiative across a three-institution consortium consisting of Purdue University (USA), the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) is presented in this paper. This initiative, while focusing on graduate (Masters) student mobility, also includes faculty mobility, language instruction and assessment, project evaluation and other services to insure ongoing success. Effective existing collaborations, i.e., an active undergraduate exchange semester and collaborative faculty activity established a solid foundation for the new dual/concurrent technology degree program and enabled it to get off to a fast start. Two of the new consortium members are already partnering in an Atlantis undergraduate student mobility project that is working well and which has generated considerable student and faculty traffic and collaboration well in excess of the funding requirements. The partners have invested considerable amounts of their own monies in building the relationship and thus evidence the sustainability of the new dual transatlantic technology masters degree program.