The 26 rectors of the Complutense University of Madrid can’t take it anymore and have said enough. In July 2024 they cut their already very small budgets by 35% and the drought will last at least for the next three years to repay a loan of 34.5 million euros to the Community of Madrid. And in this unfortunate scenario, on Tuesday the 26 faculty deans sent an unusual email to workers and students asking for help. “This manifesto is a call for attention and a request for help from Madrid society: to the citizens, to its political representatives, to its social and economic agents. Because defending the public university is defending the future of society as a whole”, they conclude their writing, to which EL PAÍS had access.
The principals underline that “the public university is an essential social elevator, because it offers high quality education accessible to all people and transforms merit and commitment, and not economic resources, into the true criteria for access and progress”. And they believe that regional policy goes against this aim: “The current funding model is clearly insufficient for this purpose, as it does not cover real operational costs, which poses significant difficulties for the sustainability and quality of the university system.” UCM had to take out a loan to pay year-end payroll and pay suppliers.
This document has great value in the current context, not so much for what it says in very measured words – which any rector of the University of Madrid supports – but because it is signed by the 26 rectors. Some of them are very close to the rector, Joaquín Goyache, who has decided to stop standing up to Isabel Díaz Ayuso to ingratiate himself with her to obtain sufficient funds which, for the moment, will not even arrive in 2026.
After listing its strengths – 41st place in employability in the QS World University Rankings, the three million books in its library or the importance of its research – the deans state in their manifesto that its resources are “structurally insufficient to maintain the quality standards that characterize the university in teaching, research and transfer”. To resolve the situation they propose “a realistic multi-year financing plan that guarantees the level of excellence”. Almost all of Spain’s public universities already know how much money they will receive in the coming years, and Madrid plans to include the multi-year plan in the controversial Higher Education Law (Lesuc), which is strongly opposed by the six rectors of Madrid’s public universities.
The principals regret that the Regional Executive does not negotiate the new law, because it is promoting “a model that reduces public commitment in higher education, commercializes knowledge and threatens equity in access”. They find it “worrying” that the Community promotes the approval of the Lesuc “without having promoted a broader process of dialogue, open and profound, with those who make up the university community”. The negotiations with the rectors could hardly be more bitter, even if they did not publicly oppose a decidedly insufficient budget increase.
On Friday the deans will read their manifesto at the Puerta del Sol, in front of the Palacio de Correos, seat of the Ayuso government. They hope the university community will support them then. This will be a preliminary event to the strike called by unions and associations in all public universities in Madrid for 26 and 27 November.
And in parallel this Monday, the public university platform that promotes the protest launched a QR so that students and workers can send their complaints to the Minister of Education Emilio Viciana.
