Ruth del Moral
Madrid, December 12 (EFE). – The President of the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE), Eva Alcón, has warned that the lack of funding is widespread in all public universities, recalling that research “costs money” and “we must not give up on this goal”.
“If a university does not do research, it is something different,” he stressed in an interview with EFE, pointing out that the CRUE supports the demands of the Madrid rectors and warned that there are “red lines” that apply to the entire university system.
Having the necessary resources to fulfill our tasks from a quality perspective and maintaining the autonomy of our university and our research are the key factors you listed that must apply to every university.
Alcón, rector of the Jaume I University of Castellón, also pointed out the insecurity of many students in accessing the university system and decided to “rethink scholarships” because “nowadays it is not enough to have a scholarship to study.”
In this sense, he has asked to promote a scholarship-salary program that covers not only tuition fees but also other costs, such as accommodation, since in many cases university students have to work to cover them.
“The only way to protect the public university is to resolutely direct public resources to public universities so that in this way we can respond to thousands of people of all ages and situations,” he stressed, after the six public universities of Madrid raised their voices in the face of the financial “suffocation” to which the government of the Community of Madrid is subjecting them.
Alcón has pointed out that universities “have not recovered” after the 2008 economic crisis and has made it clear that each Autonomous Community “is the one that should take care of it and ensure that its university system has the appropriate conditions”.
He regrets that the working commission meetings involving municipalities, the CRUE and the University Ministry to increase investments to 1% by 2030 are progressing slowly.
“I am often asked: ‘Why don’t public universities offer more places in the courses for which there is greater demand?’. Well, the answer is clear: not because we do not want to offer this service to the society that demands it from us, but because it means having to hire more teachers and laboratories and some courses are very expensive, as in the case of medicine,” he explains flatly.
Alcón, in office since 2023, insists that the university’s research and knowledge transfer must also promote research teaching staff (PDI) and urges the ministry to convene “sooner rather than later” the new six-year knowledge transfer periods that reward the work of research teaching staff.
“At the moment the Ministry has not contacted the CRUE. I know that it has the will to launch this call, but now we must realize this will as quickly as possible, in the coming months,” he affirmed.
Another concern of the university rectors is the draft law on the new statute of the scholarship holder – he affirms – which must be approved by the Cortes Generales and which provides for compensation for the costs of the student within the curricular practice of transport or maintenance.
The president of the CRUE points out that the university will not be able to cover further expenses and fears that “if the company or the administration does not take them over, the educational practices that are crucial to the education of our students will no longer be carried out.”
Several universities, including Jaume I, reach agreements to establish a public-private collaboration in which the university or administration itself gives up land, the Official Credit Institute (ICO) grants loans on good terms and a company builds housing for students at “affordable” prices through tenders.
Alcón explains that the condition is that the investor builds with a “social” objective, and this is what universities like Pablo de Olavide in Seville or the University of Castilla-La Mancha propose.
Regarding the controversial law on the creation of new universities, which puts private universities on a war footing and which is pending two appeals before the Supreme Court (the Community of Madrid and the CEU University Foundation), Alcón points out that “any law must be made by consensus”.
However, he believes that it is a “sufficient standard to ensure the quality of the university system” and that the royal decree “represents a step forward in this direction”.
“It cannot be that we create a university to respond to a very specific thing that may or may not be profitable at a certain point in time. At CRUE we are for that. We don’t care whether it is public or private, but universities must be accountable to society,” he emphasizes. EFE
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