DUAL UNIVERSITY TRAINING, KEY TO REACH EXCELLENCE IN LOGISTICS

(Article by Dr. Blanca Braut, Academic Director of EU Mediterrani published in EL VIGIA)

In the next few years, logistics will generate tens of thousands of new qualified and highly specialized jobs throughout the country. According to data from the Association for the Search of Specific Excellence in Logistics (ABE-L) and the National Institute of Statistics (INE), logistics accounts for around 12% of the Spanish Gross Domestic Product, with land transport being the highest representative of the sector, with more than 6% of the total national companies, more than 4% of total employment, a business volume close to 95,000 million euros and an annual investment of more than 12,000 million euros. Spain ranks 18th in the LPI Global Ranking (Logistics Performance Index) with a rating of 3.72 out of 5. This justifies the need for graduates trained specifically in logistics and in an eminently practical way that can be immediately incorporated into the labour market.

The Degree in Business Logistics (Dual) that we teach in Barcelona, ​​in the Mediterrani University School, centre attached to the University of Girona, is a study framed in the logistics sector, which lasts four years and is structured in 240 ECTS credits. Our main objective is to train expert professionals in the logistics sector, which has a high level of employability. It is this objective demand of the market, which can not only absorb the existing postgraduate offers, which has justified the appearance of this degree and aims to constitute an opportunity for meeting students and companies in the sector, trying to ensure their fast incorporation into the labour market, even during the course of studies thanks to our cooperation with well-known companies both in the industrial sector (mainly in the automotive sector) and in the service sector, which has a wide presence in Catalonia.

Specifically, this degree includes a required module of external internships that consists of 42 ECTS credits distributed between the third and fourth year, which students will do under the dual modality. The objective of these internships is that students acquire an individualized training adapted to the specific needs of each company, as a way to complement the training obtained from the rest of the subjects of the degree. It is a dual training that gives the degree an eminently practical character and that facilitates the labour insertion, by allowing each student to develop the whole module of external internships in the same company, to perfect the competences and acquire the specific knowledge of professional interest. The dual training in logistics should allow the improvement of the employability of students, increasing the adequacy of the studies to the demands of the work world and the training of university students to the requirements of the jobs they will develop in their professional future, improving the economic efficiency of the system and the social integration of the students.

In addition, in its condition of first university degree that in Catalonia guarantees duality to all enrolled students, it provides an incentive for the existence of a constant and consolidated demand of students who wish to study this type of studies. The growth of the weight of logistics, together with the constant evolution of electronic commerce, makes this area especially attractive.

In summary, dual training optimizes professionalization as a prior step to direct access, easier and less disruptive to occupation. The dual quality training offered by the Degree in Business Logistics, based on close collaboration and concurrence between the academic world and companies, is especially interesting and necessary due to the marked professional nature of this field of economic activity. In fact, ABE-L estimates that, given the current and future growth of the logistics sector, it is essential to have a specific and regulated university higher education in this field, which helps to achieve both the creation of new companies in the sector and the continuous generation of jobs. The dual training helps meet the expectations that the sector currently places in the university word as a provider of really useful professionals to cover the increasing needs of highly qualified personnel.