Against equality

When in 2012 the Education Ministry approved the decree that allowed a general hike in university fees, even while reducing the quantity of study grants and toughening the requisites for obtaining them, many voices warned of the grave consequences that this move might entail for a factor as socially important as equality of opportunity. Two years of hikes have now made university fees so high that many families will desist from sending their children to university. In Madrid, for example, the increase varies, in degree-carrying studies, between 50 and 92 percent. In Catalonia, the cost of the average master’s degree has risen by 169 percent, and in Valencia by 216 percent.

Now, when the second university year under the new system is about to begin, the first consequences are beginning to emerge: a descent (for the moment a slight one) in university enrolment, for the first time in years, and drop of eight percent in enrolment for master’s degrees. Thus, the negative predictions made at the time have come true. What was then not discerned, however, was that besides hindering university access for students from lower-income families, the new system of setting fees was going to cause a new and unacceptable divide of a regional nature. Making use of their powers of self-government, the regions have implemented the law in different ways. While some, such as Catalonia, Madrid, Castilla y León and Valencia have applied the authorized maximum fee increases, others such as Andalusia, Galicia and Cantabria have approved only minimal hikes, so that the difference in course costs has already attained alarming proportions.

The result is that while in Galicia enrolment in Law costs 591 euros, in Madrid it costs 1,620 euros, three times as much. And while in Andalusia a student doing Teacher Training must pay 757 euros, in Catalonia the fee is 2,116.

The different policies thus applied reflect the various regional governments’ widely differing sensitivities to equality of opportunities in education. Their citizens would do well to keep this in mind, since it is obvious that, while the crisis is affecting all the regions more or less equally, not all of them approach its problems with the same sense of social responsibility. Some regional governments opt more clearly than others for an elitist approach to university education — from which, excepting those in receipt of grants, students from lower-income backgrounds are to be excluded.