The Spanish public university is quite good at generating and transferring knowledge. That, together with the fact that its public prices are unbeatable and the significant number of scholarships—which make the first year practically free—makes it one of the jewels of the social and legal state enshrined in our constitution. There are several reasons, but the central one is that the public offer falls short.
An artificially limited number of places has created a market niche. If your vocation is to be a doctor, and you cannot study it in the public sector, it is logical that you want to go to the private sector and even ask for loans from the bank to finance your dream. The same thing happens with the double degrees of, for example, Physics and Mathematics, which are very selective, and in which we consequently find honors students. If there are only 20 places for that degree in the public university, we end up with outstanding students who cannot access studies that could be the dream of their life.
Degrees must be opened with a very flexible subject offer
This bottleneck is structural, but it can be fixed. A difficult one, but not impossible if both administrations and universities agree to draw up itineraries that contribute to channeling vocations. The central idea is that everyone can end up studying whatever they want at the public university. To do this, we must open the degrees with a very flexible offer of subjects, and channel the -changing- interests of the students towards the construction of a design curriculum that can become quite unique, in line with Anglo-American universities and their majors. An added virtue of this philosophy is that it introduces uniqueness to the resumes, differentiating them and improving the employability of graduates. Implementing a system like that requires overcoming many historical inertias, and requires a lot of internal negotiation, but the reasons that motivate the need for change deserve it. It is about not truncating vocations, opening the university to everyone regardless of their economic means, and adapting to new realities in which general training is once again an advantage. It is also a good time to introduce new features, now that the autonomous communities have to legislate on the LOSU and the universities have to modify their statutes.
It would not be honest to introduce this debate on our campuses by ignoring the fact that there is another reason for them. It has nothing to do with being better at teaching and research. Its academic prestige, except in one case, is very debatable. The classifications must be given fair consideration, but the fact is that there is only one Spanish private university among the 800 best universities in the world. The reason for their popularity is another: they offer an easy and uncomplicated path to obtaining an official qualification that allows you to practice. Its efficiency rates, the ratio between the number of students who enter and those who graduate, is very high, which means that the vast majority of students attend courses per year. It will be argued that this can be achieved with excellent teaching. Definitely. But the path is not usually that, but rather a reduction in the requirements, especially taking into account that the private market is usually that of students who could not enter the public school because it did not give them the grade. Added to this is a marketing strategy about a guarantee of employment at the end of the degree that relies more on poorly paid internships than
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