One of the most critical requirements concerns research activity: its teachers must present at least five competitive projects each year (one international). And, within five years, the establishment must have obtained around twenty national or international projects.
Until now, it constituted the Achilles heel of many private universities, with smaller numbers of teacher-researchers and a lesser research tradition than public universities.
But, as university sources confirm to EL ESPAÑOL, the centers have found a way to fulfill this obligation: creating formal consortia between universities to jointly attend national and international calls.
“The regulations allow it and it is perfectly legal. A competitive project awarded to a consortium counts for all the universities participating in it,” explain the same sources.
The main thing is that the same project counts as its own for each institution that is part of the research team, which multiplies, in scrupulous compliance with the law, the required scientific production.
Universities recognize that demand is “strong” for the usual volume of professor teaching researcher (PDI) in private centers. But they maintain that this strategy is the only realistic way to achieve the objective of twenty projects in five years set by the royal decree.
What is striking, they admit, is that no one knows how to explain why this system of collaboration – which has always been possible – has not been used before, when the lack of research is one of the structural problems pointed out in the report. Spanish university system.
Diana Morant’s Ministry of Universities confirms the legality of the strategy and recalls that the research component is much broader than the work of PDIs as principal researchers.
The royal decree approved last October establishes that universities must annually present at least five research project proposals for national competitive calls and international. At least one must be international.
In addition, it introduces the novelty that universities must demonstrate the achievement “as principal investigator by their teaching staff” of at least 20 competitive research projects at the regional, national or international level for seven years.
To meet this second requirement, sources from the Ministry of Universities point out, all researchers from each university must sign as principal researcher so that the law is respected. Therefore, in this case, It is not enough to be a member of a consortium.
Current consortiums
As this newspaper has learned, UDIT, UNIR, UDIMA, CEU and ESIC have already started exploring or activating these stable consortia. In certain cases, in collaboration with public universities, present themselves jointly in the next calls for applications.
Privately, the sources consulted assure that “this has already been done punctually”, but they now want to “make it official” through closed and permanent structures which allow the decree to be systematically executed.
Among other advantages, they emphasize that the union of several institutions would allow them to access large-budget projects, particularly those linked to European funds.
“We are encouraged to collaborate. Together we can opt for more powerful research and positive proposals for the Spanish brand”, they emphasize from the sector.
Anyway, Among universities, there is no real fear of closure.
In the sector, they recall that the powers in matters of higher education belong to the autonomous communities and that – in the same way that they are the ones who authorize the creation of a university – they also have the power to close it.
It is for this reason that they hope that the regions “will not allow Sánchez to close any centers.”
They also insist that although the decree encroaches on regional competences – this is why Aragon, Madrid and Extremadura appealed to the Constitutional Court: the central government cannot have the last word when it comes to closing a university.
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