TEMPUS CORINTHIAM

56Guide of Good Practices TEMPUS CORINTHIAMWe chose the Department of Architecture (DoA) as the pilot case study for severalreasons, one of them being that the programme in the DoA together with other schoolsof architecture had recently been subject to a Quality Assurance exercise of the IsraelCouncil for Higher Education (CHE), and the issues of professional degrees andtheir accreditation is currently on the national agenda of the registrar of architects andengineers in Israel. Furthermore, the current five year programme is similar to theolder European formats and therefore we thought it might be more easily adapted tothe Bologna Process. Indeed, all the issues raised from the pilot case study have beenshown to be very important and highly relevant for other departments as well and forprofessional degrees in general.The first part of the chapter will describe and analyse the existing situation in Bezalel.The second part will describe the pilot project process; the way it was executed inthe department in order to find the most suitable method to adapt the ECST system inparallel to the existing credit points. In the final section we will debate other generalissues relating to the Bologna Process such as professional studies and quality assurance.It will conclude with the insights we have gained into the process and some openquestions that we think should be elaborated and discussed in a larger consortium andshould be presented to the National Tempus Office (NTO) in the Council for HigherEducation.Academic ProgrammesThe academic curricular system at Bezalel consists of two curricular programme categories:• Bachelor’s degree programmes (4 and 5 years)• Master’s degree programmes (2 years)Bachelor’s Degree ProgrammesStudies for a bachelor’s degree are focused in the various departments with core studiesprovided by the Academy by the Department of History and Theory. The actualcurriculum is determined in accordance with the year of study and the specialist subjectof the programme, while the core studies are determined to be 20 per cent of theexisting credits.The bachelor’s degree programmes at Bezalel are four years in all departments, exceptthe DoA, where studies take five years to complete. In accordance with the decision ofthe Council for Higher Education, the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design is authorisedto award the degrees Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A), Bachelor of Design (B.Des)and Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) according to the criteria outlined below: