The conditions are in place to reverse the demographic decline that will begin to be felt in the classrooms in the coming years. The new Organic Law of the University System (LOSU), approved last Thursday, allows the entry of new sap: young people from other countries and professionals with training needs. And there would still be a third sector that will grow: the retirees of the 'boomer' generation who, according to forecasts, will be a quarter of the Spanish population in 2037.
Statistical projections indicate that in 15 years, 20% of students under the age of 23 will decrease, that is, undergraduate students who are close to 80% of the total university student body.
The birth rate in recent years has progressively fallen so that in 2004 454,591 children were born in Spain, which are adolescents who, by age, have already been able to enroll in the 2022-2023 academic year (200,000 took the selectivity exam). The last number of births, that of 2022, which will be the students of the 2040-2041 academic year, was 329,812. The difference is almost 125,000 less compared to 2004.
Added to the loss of a potential student body, the public campuses (50 centers in total) are the competition from the private ones (43) that have grown both in number –both face-to-face and online– and in power of attraction.
In the last 20 years, public places have decreased by 200,000 students in undergraduate studies, while private ones have increased in the same proportion, according to a recent report by the CyD Foundation. It is true that public universities still represent 82% of the undergraduate students of the universities as a whole, but in master's degrees the private ones have stepped on the accelerator and already have 43% of students.
In Spain, in master's degrees, the participation of public institutions is practically 20 percentage points lower than the same institutions in the whole of the EU.
And a third shadow still looms in this panorama: the strength of Vocational Training (FP), shorter studies, with great employability and increasingly socially valued.
In Spain, the study structure of the population is wider at the extremes than in the middle. A bulk of the adult population between 25 and 64 years old has higher education (40.7%) or only compulsory or have not even obtained it (36.1%).
On the other hand, only 23.2% have average studies corresponding to technicians. These are the ones that should grow in the future, as recommended by the European Commission. In the European Union, 33.4% have a degree in higher education, 45.9% have an average degree and 20.7% have a maximum of compulsory studies.
The new law anticipates these changes, creating a new framework to attract international students (currently 1.5% of undergraduate students, compared to 4.5% in the OECD) and professionals or the unemployed with the offer of short training courses.
The potential of the Spanish campuses has always existed, but so have the bureaucratic obstacles. Spain is an appealing destination (first place of preference in the Erasmus mobility program) and fifty campuses are among the best in the world, according to the three largest rankings (Shanghai-ARWU, Times Higher and QS).
But internationalization has been slowed down by bureaucratic entry problems with visas and approval of the baccalaureate degree.
And with a lack of academic offer of 3 years (180 ECTS) as it exists in Europe, compared to 4 years (240 ECTS). The few existing 3-year degrees, almost all in Catalonia, were forced to be extended to 4 years to comply with the 2021 regulation, in the time of Manel Castells, which prohibited degrees of this duration, in response to the claim of students -who they rejected 3 2 because they considered that it made studies more expensive– and that of the majority of rectors who preferred to retain young students for another year in their centers.
Minister Joan Subirats has partially reversed this situation. With LOSU, 3-year degrees can be designed if alliances are established with foreign universities.
“This novelty, which, together with the one introduced in the startup law, such as the extension of this permit to carry out internships or to work for a minimum period of two years, similar to other EU countries, will influence the retention of talent trained in Spanish universities", explains Mercè Conesa, director of Barcelona Global, the Catalan association that has fought in public administrations to internationalize the Catalan university system.
Currently, there are 44 European university alliances, with strong Spanish participation (all Catalan public campuses).
The new regulation encourages the autonomous regions and campuses to also participate in international projects and obliges them to establish internationalization plans.
Likewise, the new law adjusts the duration of the visa to the years of training and one more and facilitates and simplifies the recognition of baccalaureate degrees.
“LOSU establishes bases, eliminates obstacles, another thing is how it is going to implement the internationalization strategy”, considers the professor of economics and collaborator of the CyD Foundation, Martí Parellada. In his opinion, incentives will be needed to achieve internationalization (also for other groups).
Finally, the regulations establish that lifelong training is a "basic function" of the university, which may create its own titles in modalities such as microcredentials and micromodules. And these will be accessible to people without a university degree but with creditable "certain work experience".
In this sense, the European Commission has established that in the year 2030, 60% of citizens up to 60 years of age are in some type of training process.
Universities are already training non-official degrees in short formats. They do so from affiliated foundations or centers. But its bulk is undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees. "Moving from this to a larger catalog of offers will not be easy," according to Professor Parellada. First, because universities are used to having a captive demand and in these courses they will compete with private academic institutions as well as with companies that already have their own classrooms to train their employees.
And secondly, continues Parellada, the regulation, the times to incorporate changes and the teaching staff, civil servants or workers, do not easily accommodate themselves to the teaching of professional adults.
