Last week it was announced the intention to consolidate the 30% reduction in university fees and, in fact, to go further, including master’s degrees and with a horizon of equalizing the prices of degrees and master’s degrees in the lowest range. It can be good news as long as it can promote access to university, both young adults and people who need to recycle their knowledge, especially in a context of skyrocketing inflation and in which current spending requires a higher proportional part of salary. But let’s open our eyes.
A 2019 Red Vives report indicates that only 10.6% of students who attend degrees are from low social class, while those from high social class represent 55%. Will a decrease in the price of fees facilitate their access? We will have to see it, but I venture that it will have a small impact, because the main barrier is not in the enrollment university but in what happens in pre-university stages; once inside, the main difficulty for some students lies in not being able to work, or only being able to work for a few hours. A good salary-scholarship program with reduced tuition for low incomes, it would be more effective in terms of inclusiveness than a generalized reduction. The paradox may arise that upper-class families have paid more during the stages of compulsory education that they position themselves to enter the public university system than they will now pay once inside this system.
Beyond issues related purely to equity in access to university, A few years ago, the expression “university social responsibility” or “social commitment” began to be used to refer to the social impact that this institution has to have. An expression that has a redundant point because, if a university does well his work in teaching, research and transfer, that should already be a great benefit to society. In fact, this return to society was quantified in a report published by the ACUP in 2020: for each euro of public investment in the Catalan university system, the return to society is 4.49. Despite this powerful data, it is still true that the university is inserted in a society that has its biases, preferences and barriers. If attention is not paid, the university can become an instrument of validation and perpetuation of these biases.
We speak, for example, of inclusion in the classrooms of intellectually capable people but with economic difficulties, complex personal or family situations, diverse origins, physical and psychological disabilities. We talked about the shortage of women directors. we talked about that teaching, research and innovation are socially relevant and ethical. We are talking about transmitting values and skills that are aligned with the global challenges that future generations will have.
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Social commitment, then, can be articulated from a conservative attitude, with policies that complement the main activities of a university, or as a transformative vision that also incorporates teaching, research and transfer activities. However, to be honest, few universities currently have the capacity to articulate a transversal change. And, in its most conservative version, Typically, social commitment programs are financially poor. Punctually they are put in the center with intense lights and everyone says that they are very important, but when the lights go out they are secondary again and based on the volunteerism of the people most involved. We lived it with the financial crisis of 2008, when students faced with situations of family unemployment had to abandon their studies. We are living it with the Ukrainian refugee crisis. And we will continue to experience it in future crises.
It is certainly not easy for universities stand out internationally in terms of educational quality and research and, at the same time, have powerful social commitment policies. Inclusive social policies are costly, both in investment of time and financial resources, since the wealth of plurality is complex to manage. In addition, the benefits of a socially responsible university are very long term, and the long view is unusual today.