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Spanish Government agrees on the creation of an Expert Committee to reform the university system.
The Spanish Council of Ministers has approved the creation of an Expert Committee to reform the Spanish university system which, as was asserted by the Minister for Education, Culture and Sport, "is an absolute apriority".
José Ignacio Wert explained that in the last few years university education has expanded greatly in Spain. "We have more than 1.5 million students who have been receiving increasingly more public resources"; spending per student is the same or higher than the OECD average, but the situation "is not satisfactory", he stated.
In this respect, he indicated that there is no Spanish university ranked among the 150 best universities in the world; the university drop-out rate is 30%, almost double the European average of 16%, and that only one third of Spanish graduates complete their studies without repeating a year. These figures demonstrate, in the minister's opinion, that "we are throwing away more than 3 billion euros".
The minister added that there are 79 universities in Spain, compared with 10 in California, which has a similar population to Spain, with 2,413 bachelor's degrees, 2,758 master's degrees and 1,680 doctorates. These figures, according to José Ignacio Wert, show that "the results and the investment are disproportionate" and "open to improvement".
The system for regulating universities has not "delivered the results hoped for" either, and hence it is clear, according to the minister, that the Spanish university system needs to be overhauled. To this end, an Expert Committee has been set up, which is "independent, plural and of the highest scientific and academic level", which will endeavour to "assess, orientate and diagnose, in a period of six months, the situation of the system to implement the appropriate reforms.
Further details: http://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/IDIOMAS/9/Gobierno/News/2012/20120413_CouncM...
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Minister's selective definition of university
I read this and thought there must be more than 10 universities in California as I could think of around 10 without trying. I think what he is perhaps using is the number of universisties in the University of California system, of which there are indeed 10. However there are also 23 universities in the California State University system, around 120 private universities and colleges, including Stanford, and 112 community colleges. So if we say there are perhaps 260 universities and colleages in California then Spain looks distinctly underserved!
Clearly the minister is engaging in a bit of exaggeration to help make a political point, and there seems to be a general view that after decades of university expansion there is now a concern that there are too many universities - similar debates have taken place in the UK recently, especially in Scotland and Wales. Yet these claims, and occasional suggestions of mergers are often made without any evidence that the proposed remedy will achieve the objectives, in most cases to improve quality. Many of the best universities in the world are actually not large in terms of student numbers, but they are very well funded. MIT has 11,000 students, Stanford has 15,000, Cambridge has 18,000, etc. It seems to me that merging or reducing the number of Spanish universities is unlikely to enhance quality, but more likely to further dilute the quality that is there, and as for improving student outcomes I suspect size may not be the answer.
Perhaps PASCAL should give some thought as to what constitutes a successful university system?