Many universities have good Theses Guides or Manuals which norms the theses process, but is not common to find in them content standards which systematize the diverse theoretical, logical, semantical and methodological factors of theses quality. Is usual to find that theses guides defines rules for formal aspects as structure, typography, and so on, but excluding the whole content component of scientific quality. From this limitation we can establish that the academic process at many universities lack an important part of the research development, and that there exist an institutional necessity to define quality standards for theses in the most important factors of scientific thinking: theoretical, logical, semantical and methodological quality of theses, although in many cases this necessity is not yet really felt by university administrators or academics from other knowledge areas.

But is more serious the possibility that not few of the approved theses could have a scientific quality that is not enough to match the quality standards expected in a university research, provoked by some or all of the following causes:

• Is possible that the quality standards used to evaluate the theses are restricted to the individual knowledge and expertise of tutors and other academic personnel involved in theses elaboration, but this possibility cause that different tutors could have different standards and this introduce a dangerous heterogeneity in theses quality even at the same University and department.

• Is also possible that tutors are experts in one specific knowledge field, but not so experts in research methodology or scientific thinking, so their quality standards could be insufficient for assure an adequate level of theses quality.

• Or that in some Departments or Schools, the academic personnel is fully aware of this problems and have the appropriate expertise, but this may not be the same situation in others Departments or Schools.

• Or that each academic personnel involved in theses elaboration and approbation have his personal methodological approach, or different preference for one or other methodological paradigm.

All these cases could have a negative influence in theses quality and, over all, in the general quality of academic process, which provoke a bad image of the University as a whole.

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