Brussels Urges University Closures, Boost for Vocational Training

EU Calls for Faculty Closures: Madrid Already Has 14 Private Universities

Brussels has asked Spain to close universities and redirect young people towards vocational training (FP). The accompanying argument is starkly economic: the Spanish job market cannot absorb the volume of graduates entering each year. This recommendation comes as the academic landscape has been expanding territorially for two decades, with campuses opening in almost every provincial capital. Crucially, it arrives at a time when a university degree is no longer the guarantee of stable employment it was for the previous generation.

Oversupply, lack of demand. Consensus on that.

Galicia: Three History Faculties for a Childless Population

The Galician case serves as a clear illustration. An aging community with very low birth rates maintains three Philology faculties—English, Galician, and Hispanic—and another three in History. At the Galician language faculty in A Coruña, there are more professors than students. In Ourense's History department, fewer than 200 students are enrolled across all years. The repeated calculation is simple: one faculty of each would have sufficed, with grants for those needing to relocate. The rest is ongoing expenditure and filled teaching positions.

Why Madrid Has 14 Private Universities

The current paradox: the European recommendation targets the public sector, while the Community of Madrid already has 14 private universities, and the number continues to rise. No autonomous community is willing to give up its campus. It serves to retain population, attract tech companies, and keep locally trained healthcare professionals practicing in the region. The debate isn't about having too many faculties, but whether anyone will have the courage to close one.

One detail highlights the mismatch better than any report: a university master's degree in engineering, qualifying for professional practice, had only one student in 2021. It's now around four or five. It hasn't disappeared because its continuation depends not on demand, but on the will of the center's leadership.

"Lots of Journalists, Philosophers, and Psychologists, Few Plumbers"

A more telling anecdote than any statistic: a Swiss client remarked that in his country, a plumber or electrician earns more than a lawyer, and that Spain is heading towards the same situation. Vocational training offers better job prospects, better hours, and a salary ceiling that in many cases exceeds that of a humanities degree. What it lacks is status, and that carries weight: social prestige still favors a university degree, even if the salary doesn't match. Added to this is an uncomfortable criticism from within the system itself: some vocational training teachers are engineers who have never fixed a boiler.

The Suspicions of Nepotism and Entrenched Chairs

Part of the diagnosis suggests that universities have practically functioned as a means of employment for family and associates, with departments and chairs considered untouchable. This is a recurring accusation, unverified on a case-by-case basis. The counter-argument comes from those working within: recruitment processes are evaluated based on publications, teaching, and research stays, and any tailor-made position can end up in court. Suspicion and regulation coexist, and no one has audited the system as a whole.

Taking Civil Service Exams Instead of Job Hunting

One fact confounds those who believe universities prepare students for private sector employment: a significant portion of students aren't looking for jobs, they're seeking civil service positions. They train to take public exams, and the coming years will see massive retirements in the public sector, opening up the best opportunities in decades. From this perspective, the advice to steer young people towards trades sounds like pushing them to compete at the lower end. Some even interpret this message as a maneuver to push youth into manual labor with lower wages. It's a hypothesis, not a fact, but it explains why the recommendation is so poorly received in certain sectors.

AI That Devours Degrees

And beneath it all, the elephant in the room. The list of roles that automation could render obsolete in a few years includes translators, programmers, web designers, consultants, and paralegals. In some multinational corporations, hundreds of junior programmer résumés are already discarded unread, and the little hiring that occurs is for senior profiles. The headline accompanying the warning—45% of young people use ChatGPT as a psychologist—says less about mental health than about the estimulante ilegal with which the tool has entered daily life.

The issue remains unresolved. No administration closes a public faculty while staff have a say, and Brussels cannot do so by decree. The question isn't whether there are too many graduates, but how many will end up signing off on projects that no one has reviewed.