The Coordinator of Student Representatives of Public Universities (CREUP) has asked the recently appointed Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats, to reinitiate what is known as the ‘Castells law’, after denouncing that this will not mean significant advances in university democracy, student representativeness or improvement of the university life of the campuses.
The proposal for the Organic Law of the University System (LOSU) raised by Castells has received the unanimous rejection of students, rectors, unions and Autonomous Communities, which has led the student representation to request Subirats to reconvene the negotiating tables of the law in order to reach agreements that benefit the entire university community. Although for Castells LOSU was practically finished, the students insisted on the need to once again discuss the university model we want and build a university model that meets the reality of the university community and the different campuses and university groups.
For the university student body, LOSU does not advance in any aspect regarding the current situation of the Spanish University System, which is reflected in the statutes of the different universities, for which they hope that Subirats dares to propose a better University, one that looks to the future. To do this, from CREUP they claim that the presence of the student body in all university bodies and elections for one-person positions is at least 30%. At the same time, they continue to demand that the mandates be renewable for 4 years, instead of 6 non-extendable years as proposed by the LOSU, allowing all students to vote at least once for their deans and rectors.
On the other hand, Castells’ university law proposal establishes that public university prices will be set by each Autonomous Community, within the maximum limits set by the General Conference on University Policy. However, the university student body insists on the need to guarantee in the future Organic Law that the public price system should tend to make the first university enrollment free, an idea that the former Minister of Universities has shared publicly on several occasions. Thus, Subirats now has the challenge of beginning to fulfill commitments with the university student body, which has been systematically forgotten in the different ministerial reforms.
Nor did Castells’ proposal advance in relation to university students and student participation, including, with respect to the LOU, only figures already in force in the university statutes, such as Student Councils. Thus, the ministry’s proposal does not advance in solving the main problems of students, such as the absence of procedures that guarantee their rights or the lack of teaching innovation and modernization of university degrees.
For this reason, the student representatives insist that this should not be the final draft that enters the Courts and that the negotiations should not be terminated. They insist on a university co-governance that advances towards the future, which necessarily implies a democratic improvement and does not stagnate in the current model.
Facebook Comments
Disqus