The Value of Educational Inclusion of Young People with Intellectual Disabilities in Higher Education: the Promentor Program

Abstract

The attention to students with disabilities is a quality standard in the framework of the European Higher Education Area. The National Agency for quality Assessment and Accreditation, in its evaluation protocol for the verification of official degrees, has included different aspects related to equal opportunities of students with disabilities (ANECA, 2008). However, universities do not offer equal opportunities to all disabilities; the Autonomous University of Madrid is the only Spanish university which provides students with intellectual disabilities a Custom Title, which qualifies them for inclusion in the workplace. For Autonomous of Madrid, attention to students with intellectual disabilities has been a standard of quality and a value of excellence. This article aims to disseminate the PROMENTOR program, successful model used at Spanish Universities, within the European Higher Education convention framework, which addresses the inclusion and the occupational training of young people with intellectual disabilities in order to help them to get a common job. The article begins with a review of training programs that exist for people with intellectual disability in institutions of higher education, both nationally and internationally. Now it is shown the evaluation of the results of this syllabus based on six research projects carried out between 2005 and 2010 in the framework of the UAM-PRODIS Patronage Chair. These projects utilise a holistic research approach to facilitate decisions regarding areas for improvement and to help develop and propogate the Promentor syllabus. It concludes with a discussion and conclusions section where it’s evaluated the results obtained with the support of different theoretical frameworks of reference.