A basic lesson of Political Economy is the creation of value by the artificial production of principle of scarcity and necessity. The collapse, for example, of public health is induced and patients are referred to insurance companies, with the known result of the neoliberal pogrom. In higher education in our country, this logic of commercialization follows the same path of privatization of a fundamental pillar of the Welfare State, violating a constitutional right with unsustainable arguments such as the mantra of educational freedom.
The problem is that the exponential increase in private universities does not meet the established minimums in the regulatory framework, violating the rules of the game to the point of questioning the Spanish university system itself, its quality and certifying trust. The most recent case of Extremadura is illustrative, like Andalusia, of a drift that fundamentally attacks the essential core of this constitutional right: equal access and social mobility. And the result, known. The number of students enrolled in Spanish public universities decreases while that of private universities increases They have already reached the public ones in number and if they continue this progression they will soon surpass them. The boom in private campuses outlines a landscape of single-thematic universities, corporate higher education centers and even media outlets with their own master’s degrees and promises of employment at private universities, such as the European University of Madrid, while prestigious universities such as the Complutense they live on the edge of its institutional operation due to budgetary restrictions and harassment from a regional government that seeks to promote a University Law aimed at precarizing and undermining university autonomy. And, of course, as is the tradition of liberticides, from Fernando VII to Moreno Bonilla, from Milei to Díaz Ayuso, thus avoiding all free knowledge, daring to know, this being, as it is, from the enlightenment, the necessary precondition for freedom. and social change.
Paradoxically, the Ministry of Universities approved a standard to avoid “chiringuito universities” and tighten the requirements for authorizing newly created campuses. Royal Decree 640/2021, of July 27, Creation, recognition and authorization of universities and university centers, and institutional accreditation of university centersestablished the minimum required criteria for teaching and research quality, as well as equipment and organization, which all university centers in the country must meet. All, regardless of their legal nature. The universities must adapt and demonstrate compliance before 2026. This would explain the hasty approval, in just a few months, of numerous private universities, many of them with unfavorable reports from the University Policy Council and accreditation agencies.
Private universities have managed to take over more than 60% of the postgraduate places offered. And, barring any surprise, they will surpass the public ones in enrolled master’s students this year. The lack of democratic planning of higher education has resulted in an oversupply while at the same time there is a shortage of places in strategic sectors such as Medical Faculties, where a private healthcare pool has been created. The business lobby even pressures so that MIR training can be undertaken in its own centers, some of which barely have a Faculty of Medicine or specialized degrees in technology and digital culture.
Given this scenario, it is time for Congress to adopt decisive measures in the dilemma of the stock market or life, given the contradiction of promotion and development of the public higher education system as a guarantor of equality in the face of the speculative logic of capital that imposes commercialization of the University, the expansion of financial capital in higher education with a total lack of transparency and in some cases fraud of law in the approval and launch processes of new universities linked to the vested interests of the IBEX35 in the midst of campaigns that have been regularly waged against the public university while promoting undergraduate and graduate programs with misleading advertising about supposed unverified academic excellence, when the reports of accrediting agencies are unfavorable, research non-existent and speculative investment a rising dominance.
A revealing fact is that the turnover of private universities and business schools in Spain has grown by 44.7% in just over five years: from 2,255 million euros received in 2017 to more than 3,300 million in 2023. Universities are created, bought and sold, owned by investment funds, speculating as with housing.
Although the Government and the Autonomous Communities periodically point out that criteria will be “reviewed” and “toughened” For the creation of new universities, the reality is that the Spanish University System continues to not resolve this situation with the increase, for example, of non-face-to-face private universities of around 10%. A public university has not been created for decades and there are clear needs to be covered by the universal access system.
When speculation, which should be a noble task of thinking freely and contributing to the progress of knowledge, becomes an exception due to the dominance of financial capital that intervenes in the market, public powers must act in defense of the social majority. For this reason, from the plurinational GP of Sumar we have defended parliamentary initiatives in line with the demands of the Conference of Rectors and Unidigna, urging the Government to act in at least five strategic lines:
1. The planning a multi-year financial system and stable of public universities that reaches at least 1% of GDP to converge with the countries around us, avoiding the principle of induced scarcity to artificially benefit the market.
2. One moratorium on the creation of new universities private to avoid fraud of law, as happened in the approval of centers in Andalusia.
3. The strict compliance with requirements legally required and establish sanctioning measures in the event of non-compliance with the due requirements.
4. The creation of an oversight unit in the General Conference of University Policy for the inspection or creation of any private university.
5. Planning the map of degrees and offer of places in the public system consistent with social needs and not only based on the fickle market demand in order to configure a balanced, proportional and universal offer, thus complying with the constitutional precept.
The drift of a public limited company in higher education, UNIVERSIDAD SA, ends up devouring societyanemic, due to the creative destruction of the dialectic of scarcity and oversupply. We saw it in the United States, this policy led to social unrest in Chile and failed in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. We cannot afford it here, at this point in history. So neither people without university places, nor university places without people. Take action.
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