Academic masters of investigating initiation, specialization, professional direction… Great part of the financing of the new studies of postgraduate falls on the company and the pupils.
The private financing consists of two fundamental routes, the investments of companies or institutions and the rates of the students, who in the postgraduates and masters are increasing progressively. Facing favoring the access of the students to this type of degrees, noticeably more faces, the Ministry of Education and Ciencia (MEC) have replaced the traditional non-refundable aid (scholarships) by mechanisms of future payment for the costs of the university degrees (actually a hypothecating loan).
This new concept supposes another qualitative jump in the conception of the education and the public aid. The students are passing to be scholarship holders to borrowers, that is to say, clients of the own MEC or a banking organization that provides an amount to them given for the development of the studies superiors. In Great Britain, the first European country in which the high rates were compensated with the financing by means of loan-rent, the scholarships totally have been replaced by this type from financing the study.
Of this form, today in the Spanish State two types of educative loans public exist: the calls properly “grant a scholarship-loan” and those that are calld euphemistically like “loan-rent”. On the one hand, the grant a scholarship-loan is destined to students of first and second cycle, and must like unique aim facilitate to the students the conclusion of their university official studies. Minimum credits of of 3,000 Euros and maximum of 9,000 Euros can be solicitd, that will be financed between the MEC (70%) and one banking organization (30%) that agreement with the MEC has. A period of amortization of three years plus another one (first) of deficiency will be applied, whose interests will be accumulated in the three remaining years. The total liquidation will be realised by equal monthly payments.
In addition, the MEC has specified that the type of interest that is applied will be based on the European Market Interbank (EURIBOR), plus a differential of 0.3 percentage points. Once deduced the subsidy of the MEC, the total of interests that are derived from each operation it will be assumed by the students and the banks in a proportion from 2 to 1.
This new system of financing of the study generates a mercantile relation in the educative panorama, where the banking organizations like an outstanding actor enter game. These will be those that, through present legislative frame, will have the paper of financial creditors of the university studies, abriendo the doors of a new niche of market, the credits for the study, that, as they point all the interbank indicators, have not stopped to grow three years in the last. In this sense we are in danger that what now sells to us like an exception, soon one becomes a norm to be able to accede to studies superiors.
On the other hand, them loan-rent is directed to those titleholders who want to finance the cost of the official studies of masters in Spain or any country of the European Space of Educación Superior (EEES), as well as to facilitate a monthly rent to the students wish who it. The one that outside minister of Education and Ciencia, Maria Jesus San Segundo defined, them before the Senate like: “A pact between generations. The generations that public work and contribute with bottoms are financing the postgraduate students who, as well, will give back the given money when they work” (University Newspaper, 17-04-2006). The loan-rent consists of an initial payment of up to 6,000 Euros, being able asking for in addition a monthly amount to up to 800 Euros per month of official duration of the masters, until a maximum of 21 months. Both first years of use of the loan will be of obligatory deficiency, plus the period that subsequent to passes until the first day 15 of March both years of the company/signature of the contract. The budgetary grant that has destined the MEC for this type of loans is of 50 million Euros, therefore the number places will be closed when this amount is run out.
Hypothecating ballast of 15 years.
The term of amortization will begin to count itself from the exercise following to that one in which the rent of the student exceeds in the previous exercise the basic threshold taxable general and of ahorro/IRPF of 22,000 Euros/year. The loan will be amortized in eight years. In any case, the debt will be extinguished flowed out 15 years from the formalization of the operation. The amortizations of the Final Borrower will be linear and quarterly, and it will not be able to surpass the annual total of 1/8 of the contracted total debt. The loans rent, at least, suppose a hypothecating ballast of 15 years for the majority of the students who decide on this option to be able study of postgraduate and masters.
A mortgage to reach a greater labor qualification than will have to give back to comfortable terms once the student reaches a gross remuneration of, at least, 1,571 Euros to the month. Nowhere it is mentioned the increase of the wage level in these assumptions 15 years of amortization. According to a previous study to the approval of them loan-rent, still with the implementation of this type of credits of financing of the studies, the postgraduate will be the opportunity so that the universities, maintaining a total number of students probably smaller than the existing one in the studies of Degree, conceive a horizon in which, as it says to professor Vicente Grouse, “30% of the total of students are postgraduate at least students, of which a 10% would be in doctorate programs” (Encounter “the engineers and architects before Europe”, UPM, 2004).
Elitización of the postgraduate.
This will suppose not even that, at least, between a 60% and a 70% of the titleholders of Degree will not be able to accede to the postgraduate studies, mortgaging its immediate future. Actually, the Degree – common degree for all the university students adapted to the needs of the labor market will be the last step for the majority of students, taking place de facto the elitización of the postgraduate.
This system of financing worsens the competition between the universities by the limited resources, causing that “the distinguished ones by their quality take the best part and those than they do not receive only bottoms to assure his subsistence. Thus there will be competition and this one, as they create some, generates efficiency and, as we know others, it generates inequality now”, as Albert Corominas explains in “About the Spanish University,” (Meanwhile, nº 68-9, Barcelona, 1997).
The essence of this new turn was summarized by the previous Advisor of Education of the Community of Madrid when it declared three years ago that “the universities cannot aspire to live exclusively on the public budget that has a limit; whatever more private bottoms obtain, more bottoms is going to give the Community to them; a good financing will allow the Madrilenian universities to compete and being a referring one in the world”.
