The majority of the PP guarantees that UNIR can teach face-to-face classes

Last Tuesday representatives of the UNIR, until now an exclusively online campus, met with the parliamentary groups to authorize it to teach face-to-face classes. And yesterday, 24 hours later, the PP presented an amendment to the Proposal of Law for the Improvement of the Provision of Public Services, also called the Omnibus law, which, given that the popular ones enjoy an absolute majority in the old convent of La Merced , will make the wishes of the online campus come true sooner rather than later when processed through the urgent procedure. The objective is to bring the legislative initiative for approval to the plenary session on June 27, the last one before the summer break.

Cristina Maiso, spokesperson for the PP in the Autonomous Chamber, justified this amendment yesterday with the need to equate this university with what is happening on all Spanish campuses since 2021, which can provide virtual, hybrid and in-person teaching. Regarding the arguments put forward by the UNIR, it understands that they are reasonable and respond to the need to update the current regional regulations to the national legislation approved subsequently. “This institution must continue to be competitive and must continue to develop and grow on equal terms.”

The news has attracted unanimity in censorship due to the forms used by the PP, another issue is the content. In the PSOE Parliamentary Group, they criticize precisely this, the forms: “Neither the urgency in the processing is understood, nor the legislative technique used.” Regarding the substance, they claimed to be unaware of the popular amendment and precisely for that reason and in the face of “the importance of this issue, our position has always been the clear defense of the development, sustainability and quality of the public university.”

The IU representative, Henar Moreno, speaks along similar lines. She questions whether it can be brought to the plenary session on June 27 “because the deadlines do not allow.” “They do it urgently, at the last minute and if it mattered so much to them that they had raised it beforehand,” she maintains.

“The PP is always at the service of private universities and what it should do is promote all these types of degrees in our public university,” he points out. In any case, “we are not opposed nor do we stop opposing this issue, but Parliament is not at the service of private entities.”

The IU parliamentarian recalled that there are two non-law proposals presented by her group and approved unanimously in the previous legislature that “neither one nor the other has put into action.” In one of them, it was demanded to double the number of places in Mathematics and Computer Science, and in another, to double the places in the teaching master’s degree.

In Vox, its parliamentary spokesperson, Ángel Alda, assures that his group is not opposed to UNIR being able to teach in-person classes. “We are talking about one of the largest companies in La Rioja with more than 3,000 employees and a turnover of 300 million annually, which also gives prestige and carries the name of our region throughout the world.” That is why its training will not close doors to UNIR, which “must continue to grow on equal terms with other universities.” In any case, he assures that they will wait to learn in detail about the PP initiative, although in advance they are “surprised” that an amendment to the Omnibus law, pending debate in Parliament, will be used for this purpose. They consider it more appropriate that it had been processed through the usual legislative procedure, “instead of doing it through the back door, generating doubts and suspicions when there is no reason for it.”