The Law on Universities will reach the Council of Ministers "in the coming weeks"
The Minister of Universities Joan Subirats /
The Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats, intends that it be definitively approved in this legislature.
The Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats, announced this Monday that his Department plans to take the preliminary draft of the Organic Law of the University System (LOSU) to the Council of Ministers "in the coming weeks", since the idea is that it be definitively approved in this legislature.
As the minister stressed, it is "a law that wants universities to be more connected with society, that wants to internationalize the system", but it is also a regulation with a "firm focus on rights" that, in addition, "revalues the teaching function", "reduces the precariousness" of teaching and research staff (PDI) and provides universities with more funding.
"It is a law that is urgent, we need to have a new regulatory framework to face the challenges facing the University, which offers the tools to face this change of era", added Subirats. "A law that addresses today's problems and prepares the University for the future."
At a press conference, the minister and the general secretary of Universities, José Manuel Pingarrón, highlighted the main lines of the draft bill, which they released to the media on Monday.
The LOSU, as both have stated, intends to put an end to job insecurity, stabilize the system and rejuvenate the workforce, since the average age of Doctors is 40 years and the stabilization age is between 45 and 46 years.
To this end, it is stated that teachers with a temporary employment contract may not exceed 20% of the teaching and research staff (PDI). The figure of the associate professor is also modified, whose teaching will now be limited to 120 hours, as well as the figure of the visiting professor, whose contract duration will be limited to two years. Likewise, a new substitute figure is created, which will replace the PDI with the right to reserve a job.
In addition, the Law, as Pingarrón has indicated, designs a more stable and shorter academic career. As Pingarrón has pointed out, the idea is that in 10 years a person who becomes a university professor stabilizes in the system: the candidate enters the University with a 4-year predoctoral contract to do the thesis, and once the thesis is finished, they will be able to access one of the postdoctoral contract positions through a 6-year contract. If at the end of those 10 years, the teacher has accreditation for any permanent figure, then they will become part of the system.
The Law also includes other changes. Thus, it will collect an improvement in public funding, in order to reach 1% of GDP, since, as Subirats has lamented, in recent years funding has dropped by 20% and the University has not recovered the level investment you had in 2009.
