The Spanish university world it faces problems that are not limited only to a budget allocation that makes it unequal in terms of conditions with other countries in the European environment. The adaptation of the content of the degrees to the changing professional realities, a bureaucratized teaching career on the one hand and radically precarious on the other or the inequality of access to higher education based on family income, an entry toll that is already conditioned by secondary education and that the introduction of master’s degrees as the almost essential culmination of undergraduate studies has taken it even further, are just some of them.
The Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats, has faced with determination the stranded legacy of its predecessor Manuel Castells, to promote the new organic law of the university system. Perhaps the aspects most subject to political debate are the regularization of the forms of governance, including a mechanism for electing the rectors that is less rigid than the one envisaged by Castells, or the regularization of rights such as student unemployment, postponed time and again. But even more essential is the will to put an end to the precariousness and temporary nature of teachers, which involves putting an end to the abuse of the spurious use of the figure of the associate professor and establishing a path to the teaching career with reasonable terms (10 years), essential on the other hand to undertake the unappealable generational renewal that is presented in the next decade. And also the addition of continuous microforming formulationswith which the university assumes new commitments to improve the country’s competitiveness (and adds new tasks that help it make sense of its structure and staff in the face of the downward evolution of the demographic curve).
Another imbalance that drags the university system since the minister werth establish a wide range of prices for university credits (and the cuts will put universities in a dire financial situation) is the unsustainable difference in the amount of enrollment between the various autonomous communities (with Madrid and Catalonia extremely above the average). An imbalance that will be alleviated next year with the entry into force of the maximum limit of 18.46 euros per credit in undergraduate studies and master’s degrees that qualify for professional practice.
That the prices equate the cost of humanistic degrees with few practical components and scientific, technical and health studies that must assume additional costs due to their high experimental load is one more step in the equity of access to university: access to some studies or others should depend on ability and vocation, not on economic factors. Although the price of tuition is only part of the economic barriers to access and many other factors must be acted upon, such as salary scholarships or the possibility of combining studies and work. Otherwise, lower tuition may end up benefiting more students who could afford it than those with more extreme financial hardship.
In the case of Catalonia, the Conselleria de Recerca i Universitats has promised to comply with what has been agreed in the whole of Spain next academic year -students will pay between 17.69 and 18.46 euros, depending on the degree, not yet counting the master’s degrees general- and has been set within two more years to reach 17.69, and guaranteed by law. It is a success for the movements that had promoted the Popular Legislative Initiative recently approved for Parliamentand the fact that the most ambitious objective is not achieved immediately is not difficult to explain given the need to make a responsible forecast of budget availability at an extremely delicate moment for public finances.