From which were transferred the competences in education, all, regional governments and the major parties have tried to move the wires from the power academic and infiltrate his own in the classroom
“As is the case with almost all institutions, the political parties try to control the University to put it at his service, even if such attempts are not always successful.” These are the words of the leader of the NGO Transparency International Manuel Villoria, professor of Political Science and public Administration from the University Rey Juan Carlos (URJC), located this year in the center of the controversy is a trail of scandals and corruption cases academic in the service of the political class.
The so-called cases master may be the extreme example of the delicate relationship of forces that exist between the University and the policy, and that manifests itself in the form of regulations, ordinances, budget allocation or on issues more internal, as can be the presence in the social councils, the influence of political parties and trade unions in the election of the vice-chancellors or the staff selection processes.
The professor of the rey juan carlos Ignacio Sánchez-Camera warns, in this sense, the risks of “invasion of the political power” or of subordinating the development of the University to the political support and, therefore, financial. “The university should be very jealous of their autonomy, but also aware that it is increasingly difficult to” keep it accurate.
The political interests result in tensions that start in the own election of the rectors, an authentic the game of thrones in which each candidate is allowed to carry the label of a party, as happened in the last elections of the universidad Complutense (with candidates informal of the PP, the PSOE, UPyD and we Can), perhaps the clearest example of these dynamics. Though in reality, a continuum of other logics which are more related to corporate networks. “To win a candidate of the PP or the PSOE in the end it is indifferent, what matters is that den spaces or not in a department, or that you create endowed chairs or research institutes,” says Villoria.
José Carrillo, a former rector of the UCM and the son of the historic leader, communist, even points out that, on occasions, candidates have to talk with the parties to avoid support on the contrary that in order to obtain their support and also downplays the power of the parties on campus: “they Know that they do not have enough influence; but have affiliates in the universities, lack of power, and there are other interests that have nothing to do with politics.” In a community where there are sensitivities of all kinds, he adds, “you aspire to that there is no interference on the part of the power of an autonomous region, although a candidate has been able to meet with the owners of Education. That has existed.”
Persuasion of friends
Antonio Rivera, professor of the University of the Basque Country and a former vice-chancellor of this institution, assume within the normal that the principal to have a certain inclination, although “the teams are more pluralistic and diverse”. That is to say, according to a parliamentarian and deputy minister of Culture of the Basque Country tends to integration. “I never asked to anyone who had previously voted”, says in this regard Carrillo.
With or without political affiliation, the professor of the University of León and Francisco Sosa Wagner believes that these processes form the “persuasion of friends” to those who are offered posts of vice-chancellors, to which is added the supply of chairs, seats of professors or research institutes. The author of The myth of the autonomy of the university and about to publish his Novel acidic university. Adventures, jokes and slopes in the cloisters, Sosa Wagner is convinced that on this basis, build the electoral programmes, and when one conquers the management of day-to-day it is very sectarian.
Be that as it may, the dynamics of electoral leave traces, and are well known, the controversies that arise between rectors and the regional governments of different political sign, such as that engaged in, precisely, José Carrillo and the executive of madrid Esperanza Aguirre. The former chancellor defended as inevitable the political inclinations but stresses that there are limits that must not be crossed. Boundaries that coincide with those of the university autonomy, which, in his judgment that includes “economic autonomy and guaranteed funding that is not dependent on a fall better or worse, to the authority, and autonomous.”
To Antonio Rivera, the relationships between the universities and a regional government may be better or worse, but it didn’t come as determined by a political colour. In this sense, relates to two different experiences. On the one hand, the management of war economy that his university has suffered in times of counselor, Angeles Iztueta (EA). On the other, the Government of socialist Patxi Lopez to the rector, Iñaki Goirizelaia, among which “things worked out very well and the Government swelled of money to the public university”. “You can have convictions that transcend politics,” she says, like the matching of the sensitivities does not have to mean a permanent agreement.
The university has to decide on certain issues collectively. Staying silent has never been the spirit
In theory, there are mechanisms to curb the cacicadas about the university, ranging from the control of the accounts in the parliaments of the mobilization on the campuses, as recently occurred in Castilla-La Mancha to claim more funding. Another of the keys to independence, to Manuel Villoria, is that neither the input nor the race of the officers is dependent upon the political and articulates a system of evaluation to be objective and independent of political pressure.
So, the universities are interspersed with more or less difficulties, the attempts of control and manipulation, because it is not the same enter in large institutions, governed by their own dynamics, that in the new creation, in which the administrations have been able to control since the construction of the buildings to the selection of the staff, that was able to enter in commission on services for after stay.
Two institutions of madrid are listed in this disparadero. In 1989 he created the Carlos III University, driven by the then president of the socialist Community of Madrid, Joaquín Leguina, and his minister of Education, Jaime Lissavetzky. Led by the historic socialist Gregorio Fish-Beard, initially to be called the university of the south was installed in Getafe and, thereafter, in Leganés. Other municipalities of the so-called red belt of Madrid, governed by PSOE and IU, supported in 1995 the establishment of the University King Juan Carlos, known as the university of the PP, driven by the then director Gustavo Villapalos under the autonomous Government of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón. The goal of these municipalities would not have been other than to ensure that their campus will be installed in those locations that had not reached the Carlos III.
revolving Door
Fish-Beard or Gustavo Villapalos have become, precisely, two exponents of the list of rectors who have made the leap to politics, or of politicians who have landed in the universities, a prolific quarry and in particular for the former socialist ministers Virgilio Zapatero and Angel Gabilondo, and others like Marius Rubiralta, Adelaide Street, Alejandro Tiana, Carles Solá, Saturnino de la Plaza, Gabriel Ferraté… All of them have been great and all occupy or have occupied positions of government in different levels of the administration.
Some of them were also heavy artillery in the war that the rectors had with the Government on account of the processing of the Organic Law of Universities, back in 2001. Positioning of orientation very different from that of other more recent and contested as the institutional declaration in which the Autonomous University of Barcelona calling for the release of political prisoners or the signature of Jose Carrillo in the manifesto socialist to “defeat the right”, which signed to be rector but, according to his words, in a personal capacity.
In general, you tend to think that the pronouncements of the university should be limited to the academic level and reflect the pluralism that exists in the campus. “The politicization in the sense of ignoble occurs when a public institution is put at the service of partisan interests,” says Antonio Rivera.
Far seems to have been, anyway, the idea of the university as an engine of revolution or social change because, as he says Sosa Wagner, have become centers so closed that are now “campus saints,” cemeteries with a tone very low, which does not prevent teachers oalumnos not to engage in the great debates. “The university has to decide on certain issues collectively. Staying silent has never been the spirit,” argues Carrillo.
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