Joint degree program: lifeline for modern university?

Abstract

Purpose – the purpose of this article is to provoke discussion toward need and importance of joint degree programs in a modern university. Design/methodology/approach – The research was conducted to analyze the demand of joint degree programs from the perspective of students, identify weak and strong aspects. To achieve this purpose was chosen combination of theoretical and empirical methods: a document analysis conducted and online inquiry organized. Findings – The analysis of articles, MRU strategy and other publicly available researches and statistics points out a threat for nowadays university forcing high education institutions to find new ways to rise the quality of studies and raise interest of students to the programs. The conducted research results showed that joint degree programs can be an answer to students’ expectations if certain threat aspects as level of partner institutions, price of studies were taken into a consideration while creating new joint degree programs. Research limitations/implications – Due to unknown size of research population, it was impossible to calculate the required sample size. The research respondents were chosen by non-probability inquiry sample. The activity of respondents was relatively low – totally 142 answers from students, 119 replies to Lithuanian survey and 23 to English version were received.