Spain needs the public authorities to increase the study scholarship budget by at least 1,000 million euros annually to guarantee that young Spaniards belonging to low-income families have the same opportunities as the rest of their generation. … Study a university degree. It is one of the main conclusions of the report ‘The Spanish university in figures’, the x-ray of the higher education system carried out by the Conference of University Rectors (CRUE), which each year puts on the table the strengths and deficits of its campuses. .
CRUE experts consider the provision and offer of public scholarships to pursue higher education “insufficient” and assure that, if the deficit they have calculated is not covered, the State will fail to fulfill its obligation to guarantee equal opportunities, which will result in access limitations for the most modest young people or dropouts from studies. To be effective, the aid should guarantee about 600 euros per month to the poorest students, which is more than double what they now receive, for which the variable part of the scholarship should also disappear, which in addition to being linked to the income it does to the notes.
Analysts recall that Spain dedicates half the money to scholarships compared to its GDP than the EU average, which places it in fourth place in the EU if you look at the aid budget in relation to the total public spending. Despite the slap on the wrist, they admit that the current Government is making an effort to improve this aid, with a 22% increase in beneficiaries, with 400 euros more than the average annual scholarship, with 60% of the budget dedicated to the poorest students. and after returning the note to achieve help at 5.
Higher education centers have provided two thirds of the candidates to cover the 3.4 million jobs generated by Spain since 2015
These 1,000 million more for scholarships are part of the almost 3,200 million more that the Government and autonomous communities should allocate each year to cover the endemic underfinancing that hinders the operation of Spanish public campuses (especially after the 20% cut of executives popular) and to comply with the commitment of the LOSU, the new university law, which proposes to achieve in 2030 a transfer of funds equivalent to 1% of GDP. However, they remember that even by fulfilling this commitment, the Spanish public university would not reach the European average, for which at least another 800 million more per year would be necessary.
On the list of the main problems of the Spanish system there are two others. The first, also budgetary, which refers to the very low financing of R&D&I, with 19% less public funds than our partners, but above all with 41% less investment from companies. The second is the mismatches in many degrees between the demand for student places and the needs of these graduates in the labor market, especially STEM professions. Clear examples are engineering and architecture and the science branches, with a drop in applicants close to 20% in this century, when they are among the profiles with the least unemployment and best salaries. The opposite is the case in the humanities, with enrollment growth of 6%.
University record
The rectors stand out in the analysis for their management. They assure that, despite the tremendous constraints to which the administrations’ poor budget condemns them, Spain has one of the most successful university systems in the world, both in teaching and research quality. They begin by highlighting that it is a powerhouse in higher education, with 50% of young people and 40% of active adults with a degree of this type, and with the highest number of university students (1.7 million) in its history despite the decline in the birth rate, with 58% of them women and with health sciences and technology in clear growth.
Spanish campuses have better academic performance than the average of more developed countries, with a higher completion rate and a lower percentage of dropouts. Despite the low funding for R&D&i, scientific production also triples the percentage that would correspond to its GDP and is close to that of benchmarks such as the United States, Germany or France.
Proof of the success of our universities, they add, is that they have been able to provide candidates with the professional profiles necessary to cover two thirds of the 3.6 million jobs generated in Spain since 2015 (1.6 million graduates and 800,000 senior technicians or specialists), discarding the lie that the campuses are “a factory for the unemployed.” In fact, they remember that, despite the fact that private campuses have doubled so far this century, it is false that in Spain there are too many universities, since there are fewer centers in relation to the inhabitants than in seven of the eleven most developed countries in the world. .
