The Plenary Session of the Senate has approved this Wednesday the project of the Organic Law of the University System (Losu), a norm that comes to replace the LOU of 2001 to adapt the campuses to the new needs that have arisen in the last two decades. At the end of the debate, Minister Joan Subirats defended that the new text will help improve internationalization, knowledge transfer and lifelong training, where he has recognized "significant deficits". He has also highlighted the need to "safeguard pluralism and diversity in the university" as a "central element of university life". It is his response to the complaint of a thousand teachers, several rectors and parties such as PP, Cs, Vox and UPN, who have warned that this rule opens the door to the "ideologization" of the campuses even against the criteria of the Court Supreme.
The Losu has been approved with 140 votes from the PSOE, ERC, PNV or Más Madrid, 107 votes against from the PP, Vox, Ciudadanos, UPN and the PRC and seven abstentions from Junts, Bildu and PAR. PP and Vox had presented veto proposals (the equivalent of the amendments to the entirety) but they have been rejected. In this phase of the Senate, more than 300 amendments had been registered and finally four compromises and three amendments have been agreed, which brings the law back to Congress. Subirats has said that it will be approved in this chamber at the end of next week, although, according to the predetermined calendar, next week there will be no plenary session enabled.
The Losu changed considerably during the Congress to deal with the ERC claims. The most controversial is the one that establishes as one of the "fundamental functions" of the faculty (highest body of representation and participation of the university community) that of "analyzing and debating issues of special importance". The ERC deputy Marta Rosique revealed that it was the key to avoid future court rulings such as those that have already condemned the University of Barcelona and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia for "positioning themselves on issues of profound political relevance and affectation in their environment" when They gave their support to the process. The Supreme Court has established that the universities "are subject to the principle of predicable neutrality of all public Administration."
The PP and UPN amendments to change this wording have been rejected. "Public universities cannot adopt agreements that are taken as the will of the university and that refer to issues of a political or ideological nature, typical of social and political debate, unrelated to the purpose and functions of the university and that divide the public" , has expressed Alberto Catalán, senator of UPN. "Losu politicizes the university, disrupts the system and alters the jurisdictional order," stressed José Manuel Marín, from Vox.
The PP senator, Francisco Fragoso, has defaced the transfers to nationalists and independentists in exchange for a law that "attacks the principle of neutrality, advocates the politicization of universities and breaks our university system into 17 different ones." "They humiliate themselves to stay in power, they legislate for the benefit of those who break the law," he stressed, comparing the processing of the Losu with the modification of the crimes of sedition and embezzlement.
Antonio Magdaleno, from the PSOE, has accused these senators of "lying to the Spanish" because, he has assured, "the law speaks of analyzing and debating the cloisters on any issue, not deciding, since they can only decide issues on the scope of university autonomy".
ERC senator Josep Maria Reniu added: "When they tear their clothes saying that universities cannot position themselves politically, we could give so many examples that this argument would be invalidated. If they do so against the Iraq war or against the war in Ukraine, that's not a concern. What worries him is what they position themselves on issues related to Catalonia, that's the problem. But the university is either critical or it's not, I don't want an education center for Miss Pepis, I want a center that wants to debate and analyze the reality that surrounds it".
Reinu has read a long list of the measures that his party has managed to get them to join Losu. For example, Erasmus in Catalan, a "boost for the official languages in teaching, research and transfer" "the right for students to know in which language each subject is taught" or that "more resources be provided to universities that promote the co-official languages".
He has also expressed his chest that it will be the regional quality agencies, and not Aneca, that have the possibility of evaluating the candidates who want to apply for a civil servant position, which causes there to be different criteria depending on the CCAA, as denounced by the general director of Aneca. Among the "achievements" of ERC is also the "equalization of the workforce with the official" and the change in governance so that it is no longer necessary to be a professor, or even an official, to be a rector.
The PNV senator Rosa Peral has listed, for her part, 10 points that her party had requested and that have been incorporated into the norm. "Assessment agencies are reinforcing their accreditation and evaluation functions by broadening their powers over the accreditation of all teaching and research figures", she said, along the same lines as Reniu. It has also ensured that "universities must deepen their role as agents of linguistic normalization", "autonomous powers are reinforced in terms of university financing, maximum prices of public prices and scholarships and study aid" and, "explicitly , the capacity of the autonomous communities to carry out the coordination of the universities located in their area of competence is recognized".
The law includes positive measures to improve internationalization, because students will be able to request "the residence permit for the entire duration of the studies and one more year", instead of having to renew it annually as now, and the bureaucratic process is also improved of homologation of foreign titles, where there is now a traffic jam of 40,000 files. Another important novelty is that university professors will have to take a teacher training course before starting to teach, which will improve the quality of the training.
There is a commitment to achieve financing of 1% of GDP, although this issue has been watered down during Congress because the commitment does not obligate anything. Another issue that has not been resolved very well has been the measure to make 25,000 associate professors permanent, who have even gone on strike because in practice they are going to lower their teaching hours and, therefore, their salaries.
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