There is a lack of good libraries, excess image expenses; there are too many administrative staff and there is a lack of assistance for professors and researchers.
A family, corporation, army are institutions that function without democracy. Voting from where it must not occur leads to misgovernment. The university should be a place that practices educational excellence, innovation, self-criticism and freedom. However, the public university (PU) is a bureaucratic politicised organisation in trade unions and administrations staff’s hands. It should be controlled by authority, not by politicised power, and employs mass bureaucracy that teaches too many graduates who pay 20% of costs, where dispensable parties lead: administration staff and trade unions. The Rector institution is obsolete, as are rectors voted by students and administration staff. The university is like a monarchy where the king is elected by his subjects’ votes, who obey, are paid and keep quiet. The university’s autonomy is not employed to be different, but to be similar because no-one in the Conference of Spanish University Rectors (CRUE) contradicts the government. Digitisation renders many administration staff members superfluous, and trade unions obstruct decision making by claiming more public spending and privileges. Intelligence, morale, efficiency and boldness are completely lacking, they all seek convenience, privileges. Instead of rectors acting as managers who make decisions to solve problems, they become stale from supporting immense bureaucracy and managing trade-union obstruction, which imply only two things: allow problems to fester or solve them with more expense for being prisoners of dispensable persons’ votes. A problem that affects a non-trade union dissident is never solved. The only situation in which university voting should occur is when a committee in face-to-face State exams has to select a teacher from several candidates, but they no longer exist because Zapatero eliminated them. Apart from performing our own work, teachers do digital administration tasks in our own time, but the number of administration staff members never lowers, they telework like nobody does, at least half are superfluous and they do not meet working hours. Compensating services rendered costs commissioners their own money because, for 15 years, the quantities paid for lodging and meals while travelling have not been updated. The main differences between a US or Canadian university and one from Spain lie in vast difference in libraries, and over there administration staff works for teachers/researchers. In Spain, they obstruct and slow down teachers by orders of the manager and Rectors’ permissiveness. Yet camouflaged projections of image, ridiculous university/faculty anniversary celebrations, announcing honoris causa are often expensive and allowed. We need good libraries, but there are plenty of expenses for image, too many administration staff members, and teachers/researchers require assistance. The socialist principle has been established at the PU, according to which all are equal, but a student, an administration staff member and a university professor are not. When a centre lacks administration staff and another only 100 meters away needs them, no-one can possibly make a decision, and trade unions make an effective solution impossible. There are too many UPs because there are too many graduates. University training is expensive, not an essential asset. Vocational training is discouraged and manual professionals are lacking. A childless citizen, or one with children but selects vocational training or a private university, should not have to finance the cost of thousands of university students and surplus civil servants with their taxes, whose children will have no job or emigrate for not finding opportunities. Rectors must seek morally intelligent solutions. What does that mean? They cannot resort to the easy solution of spending more. Rectors should eliminate surplus spending by amortising administration staff’s retirement and simplifying released trade unionists as much as possible. University financing is deficient, not because it is scarce, but is perverse. The indicator of the number of graduates is a corrosive factor because it encourages lowering the expected level of education insofar as the more the graduates, the more money received. Rectors must cut budgets by gradually rising student fees, where there is considerable margin. Whoever uses this service should pay for it. University cannot be paid with taxes. If a university is a quality one, its charges should be higher. It is easier to fill it with students because university access is free. Rectors, like governors, must save public spending.
Post published in Las Provincias