Madrid and Catalunya, the two richest autonomous communities in Spain, are the worst ones finance their public universities. Neither of them comes to contribute 80% of the funds that their campus need, and in the case of Madrid even You want to set by law that is even less. They are the only ones who do not reach that guide, according to the study The financing of university education in Spainpresented by CCOO this Thursday. Opposite, Euskadi and Asturias touch 90%.
This situation has direct consequences not only in the daily functioning of the universities – the nominative transfer of Madrid, for example, does not even cover the payrolls of the employees of the different campuses – but also in the students, as CCOO points out. The lack of public financing, the main source of income of the campus, is supplied in these communities increasing the part that families contribute via rates and public prices: both regions are, together with Navarra, those that have a cost of studying at the most expensive university.
The average cost of credit in both regions touches the 19 euros (Navarra exceeds them for little), a figure that represents 50% that the price of Galicia (11.95 euros) or Asturias (12.35 euros per credit), According to data from the Ministry of Universities. A degree that costs 700 euros in one of these two regions goes above a thousand in Madrid, Catalunya or Euskadi. In line with all of the above, the universities of these communities receive around 20% of their income directly from families, double that those that have lower prices.
CCOO closes this chapter with a warning: the generalized trend in the country in recent years is that administrations reduce their contributions to public universities. “Between the 2020s and 2022, the drop in the weight of this type of transfers has been common in all autonomous communities, with the exception of Andalusia. There increased 16.4%, while in the Valencian Community it fell by 17.4%and in the Community of Madrid it was reduced by 9.1%,” explains the report.
Far from 1% mandatory for 2030
The report also warns that the State in general – especially the autonomous communities, but not only – are far from reaching 1% of GDP in university spending imposed by the Organic Law of the University System (LOSU). Although the figure must be reached in 2030, the report indicates that in 2022, last year with settled data, current and capital transfers of the Autonomous Communities and the State to the face -to -face public universities represented 62.5% of that amount (or 57.7% considering only the autonomous communities).
In absolute values, that 1% would represent in 2022 a total of 13,464 million euros. According to union accounts, administrations will have to inject 5,049 million euros more to their universities in the next five years. And that account is conservative if one takes into account that Spanish GDP grows in recent years around 3% per year.
“All public administrations must guarantee, among other issues, the necessary and sufficient financing framework to ensure the necessary conditions so that universities can fulfill their mandate of training free, criticisms and with full capacities, skills, knowledge and experiences for their personal, social and professional development, regardless of their personal, social and economic reality,” says CCOO.
Infrafinance is paid by the poor
The union renews in its report the consequences of the shortage of financing suffered by universities. The most obvious is that “they are forced to raise public fees”, which generates “access inequalities.”
This cause-consequence is quite direct: more expensive prices, more restrictive prices. Less obvious seems another consequence of infinance, but also ends up resulting in access inequality, according to the union. The reasoning is that when having resources, universities have difficulty increasing the hiring of teaching and researcher personnel and, therefore, proposing an increase in places, especially in the degrees and qualifying masters, whose prices are ranked.
Not being able to open places in those degrees with greater demand for registration – a measure that is conditioned to the approval of the corresponding regional executive – the required access note to enter the titles with greater demand increases, which makes it difficult to access it and, in practice, it implies a drift of students to private universities, where the concept of “access note” is not applied.
When this circumstance is combined with the evidence – it is more than demonstrated by science – that “the academic results are intimately related to the socioeconomic situation of the family,” recalls CCOO, the result is that “the people who come from more favored socioeconomic environments The student belongs to middle and high classes, ”illustrates CCOO. Biosanitary formations, which have suffered a boom In recent years, they would be the example of this situation.
The access challenge
CCOO points out in his study that balancing the profile of those who access the public university is one of the challenges facing campus. The statistic says, recalls the union, that “77% of people between 25 and 64 years old who have at least one parent with tertiary studies also obtained a tertiary degree. On the other hand, only 31% of people whose parents have not reached a second level of secondary education have obtained a university degree themselves.”
“If we consider the socioeconomic origins of students, there is an overrepresentation of those with high educational and occupational levels of their families,” concludes CCOO. And it’s not just a matter of presence, adds the study. Also the cast between the different degrees is inequitable.
“The students of families with the highest status and training level preferably study Medicine, Engineering and Architecture while those with families with self -level occupations and studies show greater concentration in social work and teacher training at the degree level,” explains the text.
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