To Be Or Not To Be: Decision Making As A Critical Skill To Develop In Higher Education Students

Higher education in Portugal encompasses two different subsystems (universities and polytechnic institutes) and two distinctive sectors (public and private). While university institutions are supposed to train professionals in a knowledge base, it is the responsibility of the polytechnic institutes to support their teaching, favouring the development of their students' professional competences.The quality and qualification of the human resources are central for the organizations to fulfil their aims and to be successful. Decision-making, among others, is a key competence of decision-makers. This assumption points toward that organizations make a careful and wary choice of their decision makers.The Tuning project is a development platform for a set of comparable and mutually compatible qualifications between the three study cycles described in terms of workload, level, learning outcomes, skills and profile. Regarding the "Decision Making" skill and under the orientation of Dublin Descriptors, the learning outcomes per cycle of studies are:In the first cycle, students should demonstrate problem solving skills within their study area, as well as to build and substantiate their own arguments; ability to collect, select and interpret relevant information that enables them to base the solutions they recommend and the judgments they issue, including in the analysis the relevant scientific and ethical social aspects.For the second cycle, they suggest that students demonstrate the ability to integrate knowledge, deal with complex issues, develop solutions or make judgments in situations of limited or incomplete information, including reflections on the ethical and social implications and responsibilities that result in or condition these solutions and these judgments.For the third cycle, doctoral degree, the objectives are to enable the student to critically analyze, evaluate and synthesize new and complex ideas.In view of the aims proposed by the Dublin Descriptors and the reality of higher education system in Portugal, this paper intended to evaluate the learning outcomes, as far as "decision-making" skill is concerned, in the three study cycles in function in Portugal, with statistical analysis of the data provided by SPSS, regarding the current learning outcomes of all study programs submitted to accreditation (NCE- New Study Cycles) and re-accreditation (ACEF - Cycles of Studies in Operation). to national agency to evaluation and accreditation of Higher Education - A3ES.In order to achieve the purposes of the present research study, data were collected in the form of a data base, concerning requests for accreditation of study cycles that Portuguese higher education institutions prepare to submit for legal accreditation. Based on the inductive methodology, it was possible to identify the main topics stated in the literature that correspond to five indicators: (i) CNAEF (National Classification of Education and Training Areas) (ii) subsystem; (iii) sector; (iv) degree; and (v) the study variable "Decision making". The database under study corresponds to 2926 processes submitted for evaluation and accreditation to the A3ES between 2009 and 2015.As results, it was hoped to validate whether the learning outcomes related to decision-making competence are in line with the ideas proposed in the Dublin Descriptors. After the study it was concluded that much work still needs to be done to achieve the major goals of Bologna. Only 16% of the accreditation processes analyzed referred to the "Decision Making" skill as an intended learning outcome, which shows that, in fact, higher education system in Portugal is still far from having successfully completed the goals of Bologna Declaration.