The concept of competences has become a focus within higher education since the initiation of the Bologna Process and the idea that education should lead to employability. In 2005, AQU Catalunya published an overview of competences in the context of course guides and the European Higher Education Area (see Annex 1 of the document Eines per a l’adaptació dels ensenyaments a l’EEES), highlighting the requirement for two types: competències genèriques and competències específiques. Since then, competences have become an established part of course guides, in which we often see categories such as those in the table below.



Basic, general and interdisciplinary competences are expected across all programmes of the same level, and students must acquire them to graduate. However, it is quite likely that students will have developed these competences to some extent even before the beginning of the course. These types of competences describe wide-ranging abilities that are needed in a variety of situations. Some course guides provide definitions in the form of noun phrases.

• Independent learning
  
  The ability to choose the best approach to extending one’s knowledge and to learn new methods and technologies.
  
  
• Teamwork
  
  The ability to work in a team, whether as a member or as a leader, with the aim of contributing to projects pragmatically and responsibly and making commitments in view of the resources available.  
  
  
• Foreign language
  
  Knowledge of a foreign language at an oral and written level that is consistent with graduates’ future needs.
  
  
• Reasoning
  
  The ability to think critically, logically and mathematically. A capacity for abstraction, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

In contrast, specific competences have a narrower scope, and are usually the direct result of taking a particular course, so students will probably not have developed them beforehand.

Finally, note that the adjective competent has two related nouns: competence and competency (in the plural, competences and competencies). Although they can be used with slightly different meanings, for the purposes of writing course guides they can be used as synonyms. UB course guides should use the term competences.