Enrollments in master’s programs offered by Catalan public universities grew by 22% between the 2017-2018 and 2021-2022 academic years due to the need for specialization, studies where there is a female majority: 56%. Meanwhile, undergraduate enrollments increased by 9%. These are two of the outstanding conclusions of the Training and Teaching Indicators Report of Catalan Public Universities (2023), which was presented yesterday in society and which is drawn up by the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP). The increase in master’s enrollments shows that students go “beyond degree training”, pointed out María Valdés, vice-rector of Studies and Teaching Innovation at the UAB, who took part in the presentation together with Victòria Girona, director general of Universities of the Generalitat, and Daniel Crespo, president of the ACUP and chancellor of the UPC. The fields of engineering and architecture, in addition to social science and legal degrees, had the most significant increase in master’s enrolments.
The report indicates that enrollments in official university studies at Catalan public universities and at the UOC (non-face-to-face) for the 2021-2022 academic year exceeded 219,000 students and the presence of enrolled women has remained stable over the last five years: around 55% in degrees and 56% in masters. In the 2021-2022 academic year, 44,160 people started degree studies, with a proportion of women of 56%. In the face-to-face centres, 8 out of 10 are between 18 and 19 years old, while at the UOC 6 out of 10 are over 25. As for master’s degrees, of the 21,696 people who started their studies in the course 2021-2022, 57.7% were women. At face-to-face universities, 8 out of 10 are under 29 years old; at the UOC, on the other hand, almost half of the new students are over 30.
Professional internships have become established as a way through which students complete their training. Throughout the 2017-2022 period, the number of students who have done professional internships has remained the same, except during the year most affected by the pandemic (2019-2020). In this sense, María Valdés, vice-rector of Studies and Teaching Innovation at the UAB, described as “very positive” the data that reflect the increase of students who have accessed the labor market through the internships, which have passed from 11.55% in 2017 to 20.38% in 2023.
If we look at the teaching staff, the total number of teaching and research staff (PDI) has increased by 1,547 people over the period 2018-2022, which represents an increase of 8.85%. The new law on universities (LOSU) sets a reduction in teaching hours for teachers for the next academic year that the centers cannot afford financially. In this sense, the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat puts the cost at around 60 million euros, which should come from the central government. However, it doesn’t look like that money will come, according to department sources. That is why the minister of education, Diana Morant, proposes to make the reduction of teaching hours more flexible. Just yesterday, a working group was set up to deal with the issue.
