The Spanish university: a propitious scenario for corruption

The Spanish university: a propitious scenario for corruption.

Do not fear the reader: this is not a text about the scandals of the Rey Juan Carlos University. This time it is a question of describing situations that usually take place in the Spanish university, in which each individual teacher enjoys a freedom for whose acts, with rare exceptions, he or she does not have to account to anyone. Specifically, I am referring to three aspects: the way of lecturing, the curricular material and the evaluation.

            In the Spanish university, each teacher may choose the didactic methodology he or she pleases, which may range from the mere reading - I suppose tedious - of notes or of the contents of a PowerPoint presentation to a style of teaching based on a dialogue with and between students. For our education authorities, a class has been accomplished if the period of time devoted to a teaching session has been covered.

            If this is serious, the more so is the freedom that teachers usually have to determine the curricular content of their subject. I am aware that there are departments - and there could even be universities - that establish the syllabus for each subject, which must be covered by the subject's professor or professors. However, it is very common for the content of each subject not to be controlled, so that we may find, for example, that a syllabus of the subject "Social Structure" is actually a syllabus of the subject "Social Change".

And, finally, I move on to what is by far the most serious problem: freedom - and possible arbitrariness - when it comes to evaluating. A teacher could arbitrarily favor a student (by raising his grade or demanding of him a lower effort grade than for the rest). At most, a student protests if he has failed, but he does not, nor could he, if he considers that his grade should be as high as that of another mate. Claims for an exam - or a work - are on individual basis. Only in the event of visible favoritism - as it has been with Pablo Casado - could a protest be organized - which, on this occasion and as in so many others, has been initiated by the press. An easy solution would be for every professor to return, with the corresponding observations, the exams to his students, who - in this way - could compare their evaluations with those of their classmates.

            These sources of arbitrariness that I have pointed out could be solved if each of these three issues -especially those related to curricular content and evaluation- were controlled democratically by the departments and not by each teacher. If the evaluation of each student were entrusted to a different teacher than the one who has taught him or her, there would be no other option than for the curricular contents to be the same or similar in each subject. If, for example, the evaluation -or part of it- consisted of an oral presentation, perhaps the dictation of notes or type-test examinations -which are easy to correct and deter student from complaining- would begin to be a thing of the past or would have less impact on our teaching.

The president of the Conference of Provosts recently said that university autonomy is the autonomy of the university and not of the professor individually considered- or of the shady company that someone might set up. However, reality seems to contradict this assertion. Perhaps in private universities there is more control over these aspects that I have pointed out. The problem is that perhaps we are replacing the arbitrariness of each professor with that of the owner of the university (which is sometimes a sect like group like Opus Dei or the Legionaries of Christ or followers of Lehman Brothers). 

            I end with a quote from the book recently published by the coordinator of the PISA reports, Andreas Schleicher:

Many years ago, I acquired my degree in physics, and that remains the qualification recorded in my curriculum vitae. But if I were sent to a laboratory today, I would fail dismally at the work, both because of the rapid advances in physics since I earned my degree, and because I have lost some of the skills that I have not used for a long time. In the meantime, I have acquired many new skills that have not been formally certified.

Unlike what Schleicher tells us, Pérez Rubalcaba - otherwise an excellent politician - after more than three decades dedicated to politics, decides to re-enter his post as a university lecturer in the speciality of Chemistry without this not posing any problem. It is true that Pérez Rubalcaba, like Schleicher, has acquired new skills that have not been formally certified - in fact Pérez Rubalcaba also teaches a master's degree in political communication - but it is disconcerting (or at least it seems to me) that someone who has been away from scientific research for so long - and who could perfectly opt to retire - can join such a work after such an extended period of absence from university teaching.