The rectors of Spanish public universities are very nervous about the application of the new Organic Law of the University System (Losu) because they see that they do not arrive. They have calculated that the measures related to teachers alone will cost them 844 million euros, which represents a drain on their pockets. That is why they demand that the Government provide this money, if possible through the next General State Budgets. If not, they warn, they will have no choice but to fold their arms and not implement the Government’s university reform.
University plan against the Ministry is coming. The report presented this Tuesday by the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (Crue) is the first warning. In it, for the first time, the economic impact of the Losu on Spanish public universities is quantified. The presentation was attended by the president and rector of the Jaume I University of Castellón, Eva Alcón, and the advisor to the Crue Presidency, Professor Juan Julià. The message is clear: the principle of I invite and you pay cannot prevail, expressed in the words usually used to refer to this matter by the president of Castilla-La Mancha, the socialist Emiliano García-Page, who has threatened with going to the Constitutional Court if the financing sudoku is not resolved.
The study estimates that applying the provisions of the Losu regarding teaching and research personnel would cost 844 million euros. This concept is divided into three. Firstly, addressing the teaching time limitations of associates, doctoral assistants and permanent teaching staff in 2024 would be worth 225 million euros. Secondly, reducing temporary employment and improving the quality of staff, between now and 2030, as required by law, would be another 424 million euros for public universities.
Thirdly, the replacement of retirement funds will mean that the campuses “will have to progressively assume the Social Security costs that until now had been assumed by the State, since retired civil servants contributed to Muface, but now assuming such costs will mean an additional amount of 195 million euros”, adds the work carried out by Economics professors José Antonio Pérez, from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and Juan Hernández Armenteros, from the University of Jaén.
What do these 844 million mean? “It is equivalent to 8% of the total public financing that universities receive, which amounts to 10,000 million euros. That is, it would have to increase by 8% and they must begin to put it in the General State Budgets of 2024, because You have to apply for the universities starting in the 2024/25 academic year,” responds José Antonio Pérez.
The Losu promised in its article 55 “to allocate at least 1% of GDP to public spending on public university education throughout the State.” This article states that, to achieve this objective “the corresponding contributions will be established in the budgets of the autonomous communities, in those of the universities as a whole and in the General Budgets of the State.” Now public spending on university policy is around 0.76%. To reach that 1% of GDP, the authors of the study calculate, a contribution of additional resources of 3,180 million euros must be made.
What happens is that the Government has not yet specified who is going to pay. “The Losu report does not even assess what monetary amount the increase in public spending would entail,” the rectors reproach the Government. They also blame him for “not having consulted with the autonomous communities.” “The Treasury advisors are not aware of anything,” they say. And that is why they ask themselves: “Are we facing a new example in which the central government legislates and the CCAA pays?”
“The central government should not wait for the majority budgetary effort to meet the objective of 1% of GDP for university public spending to come from the regional governments, but from the state treasury itself. There is no restriction on the powers of the Administration central can develop sectoral programs to finance universities,” the Crue document urges the Government.
The rectors, on the other hand, have seen that there are differences of 70% between autonomous communities that have their origin in the transfer of powers that occurred between 1985 and 1996, because “the state resources that nourished that transfer were not assigned with a criterion of equity for students from different regions”.
“If each community is left at the expense of its fiscal capacity (GDP), we will have to, for the same fiscal effort, a poor community has to settle for giving its citizens fewer and worse essential services than a rich one. Or, if wants to provide the same services, it has to impose a greater fiscal effort than that required of the citizens of a rich community,” the authors reflect.
“These are inequalities that have not been corrected,” emphasizes Pérez, who explains that the public campuses of Navarra, the Basque Country and La Rioja are the ones in the best situation because, being in regional communities, “they have a regional financing regime that is significantly better than the rest”, while the campuses of the Community of Madrid are the worst financed because this region “has made a policy of less regional spending per inhabitant and has chosen to develop the private university very intensively”.
To correct these differences, which generate “problems of equity in access to the public service”, the Crue report believes that another 1,350 million euros would be needed, in order to “get spending per student as close as possible to in all territories”.
“The State must be responsible for this objective of equity among Spaniards,” the rectors insist.
Finally, they have calculated that another 1,000 million euros are needed to have a scholarship system that is in line with that of the countries around us, since now the fixed amount that each student receives (1,700 euros per year) “is clearly insufficient to cushion the opportunity cost that it entails for low-income families.
All these amounts – the 844 million from the direct application of the Losu, plus the 1,000 million from the scholarships, plus the 1,350 million to improve equity between CCAA – are the equivalent of what it would mean to make the budget increase effective until reaching 1 % of GDP. “The central Administration, promoter and proponent of the law, must assume this increase with its own resources,” the report says. “If this financing is not produced, the Losu will become inapplicable by public universities,” the report warns.
