What is a University in Spain?
The Spanish Government has changed the criteria for the creation of Universities in our country, a change we have been demanding for several years. The demands of the students’ representatives were clear: the criteria can’t be as lax and permissive as they were. In the Spanish Higher Education System, Universities were created even without the approval of the quality assurance agencies due to the permissiveness of the legislation, and this is unacceptable.
Now, the Universities will have to offer, at least, 10 degrees, 6 official masters, and 2 doctoral programmes, with a total of three branches of knowledge represented in the University. Also, to force the Universities to build up their investigation, they will have to spend, at least, a 5% of their budget on research.
A University will have to have, minimum, a half of their students studying degrees, and to pursue the quality assurance, a half of the professors must be doctors and the percentage of temporary teachers can’t overcome the 40%. However, there are changes we dislike, such as the establishment of internal quality assurance systems in each one of the universities, from CREUP we defend that the quality assurance has to be neutral.
This law has been established as a retroactive one, so all the Universities (both public and private) in Spain will have to adapt to the terms of the legislation in five years. Those Universities that don’t follow the minimums established by the law will have to close their doors. We deeply hope that this new law improves the quality of our higher education system.