Postgraduate training at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia began in the 90s with the creation and offering of programs at the level of professional specializations and master’s degrees, taking into account the vocations of the regions and the relevance of the programs both at the work level and, according to the expectations of students or professionals.
According to Anabela Villa, director of Postgraduate Studies at this university, the institution has a wide range of specializations in different areas of knowledge, for example, accounting, financial, administrative, social and human, health and engineering, among others.
“These specializations are connected to master’s programs in the areas of health, social and human, administrative, accounting, finance and engineering, which allows the professional to deepen and expand their discipline. On this journey, the University provides the student with the learning path and recognizes acquired skills so that their training process is more agile, relevant and appropriate,” he explains.
Today the University has 140 active postgraduate academic programs in the National Higher Education Information System (SNIES), of which 105 are specializations and 35 are master’s degrees.
Likewise, the University is working to obtain qualified registration in 2024 for three doctoral programs: Sustainability, in alliance with the José Celestino Mutis University Network, Engineering and Animal Science.
Villa adds that the educational institution works to expand its training and innovation offering aimed at the area of health and social security. “To achieve this, we will work on the design of eight academic specialization programs around the following axes: pharmaceutical care, health communication, nutrition and food safety, mental health, primary health care and social promotion.
“During this entire trajectory and with the exercise of strengthening our educational offer at the postgraduate level, the University today has a record of 33,105 graduates, graduates in its different programs.”, precise.
Opportunities for all
The Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia is an educational institution with coverage in 18 cities in the country, which facilitates mobility or transfer for students if they need it. The above becomes an important aspect that the candidate can consider when choosing a postgraduate degree.
Another relevant factor that Villa highlights is the academic flexibility of the study plans with routes and options to develop their learning. tailored considering the possibility of generating mobility between the different levels of training: undergraduate and postgraduate, through the strategy of free and advanced courses.
“These allow a student or person from outside the university to take postgraduate courses and, subsequently, be recognized to continue their studies at the next academic level or achieve mobility between the same levels. In this way, transit between training levels is allowed.”
Another relevant element is given in the approach to student learning which is based on practice and learning from the context. This is a practical approach oriented towards the application of knowledge. “This is relevant for that student or professional who is looking for an education that has direct application to the work field,” says Villa.
Benefits in the professional and work environment
Understanding quality as an institutional commitment that promotes the consolidation of a culture of continuous improvement, the postgraduate director highlights that it is necessary for the university to permanently monitor its graduates to enhance and channel strategies to support internal institutional processes as to the development of improvement actions in their academic programs.
This is how every two years they carry out an impact and occupational dynamics study, which seeks to know the assessments of their graduates and employers about the performance of those who graduated from the university.
The study, which was carried out between November 2022 and March 2023, included the participation of 852 postgraduate graduates and 205 employers. These are some of the most relevant results:
- 94 percent of graduates contribute to the development of the company through the transfer of knowledge to the workplace.
- 89 percent of graduates contribute to solving company problems.
- 95 percent of the graduates surveyed consider UCC services to be of high quality.
- 94 percent of the graduates surveyed indicate that they put their skills into practice and are agents of competitiveness in their companies.
This content was made with the support of the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia.
