Higher Education in Spain: Setting the Conditions for an Evaluative State

Abstract

Almost five years ago, when the Act for University Reform (L<y de Reforma Universitana, LRU) was passed, new expectations arose. The question of state involvement in higher education was considered in a way that seemed to augur a new future for universities based upon their individual autonomy. According to this principle, the state was expected to reduce its control over universities, their government, curricula and staff. Two aspects of these new conditions were already examined in this ournal by Julio Villanueva (1983, 1984), but his optimistic views which were widely held among academics at the time when his articles were published today need to be reviewed. After some forty years of strong political and ideological pressure over universities, the possibility of being independent was seen, above all, as an open door to the democratisation of the universities' governing bodies, as Villanueva showed. Nevertheless, in the long run, as I hope to demonstrate in this article, the need for a reappraisal of state funding in the financing of higher education, which has been neglected up to now because the old system carried on thanks to inertia during the period of transition to democracy, might lead to the rise of an 'Evaluative State' in Spain as elsewhere. Spain is well known for its demand-led approach to higher education. Recently, a senior official of one of the Autonomous Communities put it into words, saying that you cannot refuse anybody access to universities, provided he/she holds adequate qualifications-the labour market will do it, if necessary, once he/she has finished his/her studies. According to his statement this official was living in and working for a welfare state, where public subsidies were available for all those wishing to enter higher education, as well as for the unemployed. In other words, access to higher education in Spain is open to all and it is the responsibility of the state to guarantee that this principle is put into practice, especially through a, let us say, paternalistic financing of universities. But this present situation is not merely the result of a clear option in terms of social policy, but also the outcome of an inherited past, whose implications have to some extent determined what can be politically feasible today. Certainly, after a long period of strong political control over universities, a mass higher education system emerged as an implication of the overall democratisation of the country, to the extent that today it would not be feasible to introduce new or old ways of state control over universities. Nevertheless, some factors suggest that the government is looking for new, more subtle forms of control, as if preparing for the advent of an evaluative state.