BM 62 – ESU support to Spanish students against the measures adopted by the government on Education
During the past months, Spain has had hard budget cuts as a consequence to their economic situation. CREUP understands that the government has to make hard decisions to reduce their public debt but some of the measures adopted affect hardly HE students aside from the fact that the government has officially not informed student representatives about its education reforms and has not considered students at all.
In general terms, there has not been a social dialogue about the reforms and not all stakeholders have had the opportunity to participate. Student representatives have not had the opportunity to defend student’s interests and motivations and to participate in the elaboration of the measures. We already had an increase in tuition fees last year, but we will have to face next academic year a 67% increase in tuition fees.
This decision has been complemented with an elimination of student loans, elimination of international grants (other than Erasmus), 50% decrease in Erasmus grants and the creation of new education fees such as administrative and recognition fees, among other issues that affect negatively to students, so it will make it very difficult for students under this situation to enter or continue their HE studies or participating in an exchange grant.
To have a reference about the economic repercussions this will have and the economic dimensions, as an example, the first year of a degree with 60 ECTS will cost around 1900€ while last year was around 1100€.
All this measures have been approved and will be executed while we have less public inversion per student and lower public investment in education than the OECD and where we have less than a 25% of our students granted by our government.
By this motion, ESU wants to not only support Spanish students, but encourage the Spanish government to retract from this decisions and measures adopted as well as demand them to have student representatives’ participation when education policies. Such measures will be harmful for the economic situation on the long-run and will not help at all our students. Instead, it will, for sure, reduce students in our Higher Education system, derive in students with a low economic and social background having very hard time accessing HEI just because of this austerity measures that just affect student’s own economy and their families.
