“This does not go from public universities against private universities. In fact, in this country there are magnificent public universities and magnificent private universities,” said the government spokeswoman and Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría. “I see the Popular Party, Mr. Feijóo, Mrs. Ayuso, wanting to generate this confrontation. But this confrontation is a lie. Because, I repeat, this does not go from public universities against private universities, this goes from good universities against bad universities,” he added.
The Government insists that the proliferation of these new “institutions” is negative for the education of Spanish students and affects the responsibility of public administrations to ensure that all students receive a degree that complies with quality minimums. “We talk about fundamentally private centers, that the only thing they have of university is the name, which are usually investment funds and that all they seek is to generate business. They have a very scarce number of students, they practically do not offer a clear number of university degrees or masters,” he said. “In short,” he added, “it is simply a business to sell titles.”
The Minister has thus defended the hardening plan for the conditions to create private universities proposed by the Government before the hatching of dubious quality and campus centers that do not reach the minimums of the law in recent years. The government wants to expedite the processing of the decree, which Eldiario.es advanced, with which it will harden the creation of private universities. For this, the urgency process of the text has approved in the Council of Ministers.
This maneuver allows the Executive to save some steps and shorten others, such as the time of the State Council to issue a report on the proposal. Sources from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities explained yesterday that the idea is that the new standard, with its most demanding requirements for new centers, is ready in May.
Alegría has also assured that the Government has already debated the measure with both public and private universities and the Conference of Rectors and Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE). “That nobody tries to take us to that confrontation of public universities against private universities, because then they will simply lying and cheating,” he concluded.
Criticism of the Popular Party
Isabel Díaz Ayuso has described this morning as “guerracivilist” the plan of the central government. The president of the Community of Madrid has assured that the Ministry of Morant is determined to carry out a “campaign” to face the public and private sectors “where there was no war or side of war.”
In an event organized by Eldiario El Español, the Madrid president has insisted that “deny what they do for the public life of Madrid” private centers such as the Institute of Business, ICADE or the IESE, is “sectarian.” Ayuso stresses that this business model “is an economic lung for Madrid”, and that the government decree intends to “harm” the community.
“Do you know that the Community of Madrid is the second autonomous community in which the credits of the degree are more expensive?” The Minister of Education replied. “Do you know that a not less number of autonomous communities of the Popular Party, such as Andalusia, Madrid or Murcia, have voted against the prices of university registrations?”
“Since thousands of families in this country invest a lot of effort and many resources so that their daughters and sons can go to study at a university, public administrations have to ensure that university is an institution that meets minimal quality requirements,” joy has reiterated.
Private higher education has become in recent years a high profitability business with a stable and practically assured clientele. In this almost five years, according to the information of the Ministry of Science and Universities, nine new private universities have been approved. Three of them passed the filter against the criteria of the technicians of the Ministry and the General Conference of University Policy (CGPU).
The executive’s plan starts from three lines of action. The first, to establish a report of viability and quality that will be mandatory and binding – unlike that now the ministry – to all centers and that will prepare the ANECA (the state agency that evaluates the university quality), to demand that the new centers that have at least 4,500 students in five years and give national character to the online universities, which means that they will have to be approved by Congress instead of the Autonomous Communities.
Source: www.eldiario.es
