This morning the Government has offered to the university councilors of the autonomous communities to finance 3,400 positions for university professors over the next six years to comply with the obligations of the new university law (LOSU). This is two-thirds of what the Ministry of Universities estimates is necessary (its calculation is 5,100 teachers in total to comply with the law). The offer is subject to the communities financing the remaining third.
This proposal did not please some of the regional councilors who participated in the General Conference on University Policy this morning, who believe that the State should increase funding. This is the case of the PP governments of Galicia, Castilla y León, Aragón and Cantabria.
On the other hand, other autonomies, such as Castilla La Mancha or Navarra, have expressed their willingness to participate in the plan while others have expressed their desire to debate it in their governments.
“We condition the entry of this program in each autonomous community to the co-responsibility of the autonomous community. We understand that in the coming days we will be able to resolve particular doubts that the autonomous communities may have to facilitate that with this program we can resolve the problem of precariousness and temporality,” said the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, after presiding over the General Conference on University Policy. The ministry will open a call in the coming weeks for the autonomous communities to express their interest in entering the program.
With this proposal, the second made by the ministry, the aim is to unravel the obligation to comply with the provisions of the Organic Law of the University System (LOSU) in relation to the teaching and research staff, suffering from severe aging and temporality. greater than 40%.
The Program for the Incorporation of Teaching and Research Talent to Spanish Universities guarantees the financing, with 150 million euros annually, of 3,400 positions for doctoral assistant professors in the 2024-2025 academic year and during the six years of duration of this type of contract. . It guarantees it as long as the autonomous communities ensure a similar financing plan until their estimated needs are covered. The Government estimates that the Spanish university system needs at least 5,100 places.
In this way, the State undertakes to finance two thirds of the necessary places and the regional governments the remaining third.
The ministry had initially proposed financing a third of some 4,200 places in total. The autonomous communities and universities considered this aid insufficient. They regretted that the Government set a minimum funding threshold for universities and personnel stabilization obligations through the LOSU, hoping that the autonomies would be the ones to assume the economic consequences of its application.
However, three weeks ago the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and Minister Morant, met with the Spanish universities, through the Conference of Rectors (CRUE), and offered the financing plan that they have now presented to the counselors. autonomous.
The CRUE published a statement celebrating the proposal and calling it “powerful.” The president of the conference, Eva Alcon, insisted on “the importance of now co-responsibility on the part of the autonomous communities to develop the LOSU.”
The Executive of the Basque Country anticipated the General Conference held today and last week already agreed to provide the University of the Basque Country (UPV) with 150 new positions for doctoral assistant personnel over the next six years, starting in the 2024-2025 academic year. . Two thirds in charge of the ministry and the remaining in charge of the Basque Treasury. They also committed to opening a dialogue so that Euskadi can directly hire substitute teaching staff.
Morant has stressed that the communities are responsible for universities and what the Executive intends with this initiative is to reinforce the modernization of the university system, after a period of cuts and economic restrictions.
These extra places, which will be launched beyond the ordinary offer of public employment, must be used to compensate for the changes in the teaching dedication of the associate professors and the new doctoral assistant professors, collected in the LOSU, whose entry into force It marks one year at the end of this month.
The 3,400 places committed by the Government are equivalent to double the number of places in an ordinary call for doctoral assistant professors in public universities, according to ministry data.
Among the communities that have expressed their disagreement is the Executive of Aragon (PP and Vox), which demands that Universities finance 100% of the cost of a “law promoted by the central Government with its back to the autonomies”, according to the Agency. Efe, which attributes the sources to the autonomous government.
In his opinion, it is a “lack of respect that after creating a working group” to facilitate the implementation of the LOSU, “its proposals are ignored and a financing system that is not fair at all is announced behind the communities’ backs.” .
The Community of Madrid sent a letter to Morant a few days ago in which it expressed its “deep concern for the disregard to which it has subjected us, after having used us for a pantomime of a ‘working group'”, while decisions were being made “that will put “the viability of the financing of teaching staff, and of LOSU itself, is in jeopardy.”
For its part, Galicia has also expressed its disagreement through the voice of its advisor: “You cannot do politics with the budgets of other autonomous administrations, it is a lack of respect for the institutional architecture of the State,” the councilor has criticized. However, , has pointed out that, in the specific case of Galicia, “they are not particularly worried” since they have been carrying out multi-year financing plans for some time that allow universities to have “the maximum successive, historical budgets in recent times.”
Furthermore, he has stressed that Galician universities have certain percentages of professors, both tenured and civil servants, which “is what is being proposed”, which is a measure that in Galicia “is going to have little impact.”
The LOSU stipulates a full-time, permanent, articulated and predictable workforce. Sources from the ministry explain that the entry route is that of a reading assistant professor who has a specific teaching load, and that it is not necessary to be accredited although one must have acquired the commitment to be accredited.
The stability of the position, according to the law, will last for 6 years, so it is expected that the new professors will reach the category of tenured professors between 28 and 35 years of age. This differs from the current situation in that, on average, they begin to stabilize at age 42. The aging of university staff is important. The average age of the holders is 57 years and that of the professors is 61 years.
In addition, the prohibition of replacement imposed by governments during the economic crisis has encouraged the figure of the “false associate”, with heavy teaching loads.
The LOSU requires the commitment to eliminate temporary employment, which in 2023 reached an average of 48% of university staff and which, according to the ministry, may reach 63% in some universities.
Although the replacement rate was recovered a few years ago, universities have not received sufficient funding from the autonomous communities. In absolute values, counting inflation, it has increased by 0.1% in the period from 2009 to 2024. “This type of recovery has had a different path,” ministry sources report, such that Castilla y León has increased by 19%, but Madrid has cut it by 15%, and Navarra, the community with the greatest growth, has increased the budget for the public university by 39%.
The investment per student is also unequal. The average for all public universities is 7,000 euros, 4,000 below the European average. But La Rioja invests 10,300 euros per student while Madrid invests 5,600 euros.
