Civil service exam academies: €300 monthly fees from age 18

The business of civil service exams: €300 per month from age 18

A civil service exam academy with **one thousand students and fifteen teachers** bills nearly four million euros annually. The talent pool is no longer made up of retrained graduates: it consists of 18-year-olds moving from high school to virtual classrooms, with families paying about 300 euros monthly for a public position that, at best, arrives four years later. The figure cited by some managers is a round number: **16,000 euros per aspirant**. Preparing for *oposiciones* (competitive exams for public service positions) has ceased to be a generation's Plan B and has become the primary academic decision for the next.

This phenomenon, described from within the business itself, has three pillars. The first is the teenager who finishes high school and, instead of enrolling in university, signs up for a study program. The second is **people with two degrees and two master's degrees** who have spent three to five years in the labor market, assessed the landscape, and returned to square one. The third is young people—many of them women—seeking a permanent position, a stable salary, and an organized life.

How much does it cost to prepare for police or Civil Guard exams?

Prices range from 110 euros for an in-person course to access the basic scale of the *Cuerpo Nacional de Policía* (National Police Force) to the **300 euros per month** cited at the high end of the sector. The range is not small and explains one of the primary discrepancies in the matter: some argue that no one pays that fee for four consecutive years, and that with existing competition, the average price is much lower.

The counterexample brought to the table is one of the largest academies in the country, with branches in Málaga, Madrid, Leganés, Ávila, and Valencia, which offers that access course for 110 euros in an in-person format. It is a volume business: many students, proprietary study materials, virtual classrooms, and little industrial structure. With a thousand enrolled, turnover skyrockets.

There is significant consensus regarding the profile of those who pass, and it does not favor the narrative of the teenager fresh out of high school: it is estimated that **around 90% of those who secure a position** belong to the group of graduates who have already worked in the private sector. Long-term preparation involving several attempts remains a matter for those with more years and more stamina.

From high school to the academy: the three profiles sustaining the business

The first is the most striking. Kids who, at age 18, go directly into preparing for exams without attending university, with parents assuming the fee as if paying an investment. If the process drags on for four years, the joke costs those 16,000 euros mentioned in industry conversations. A steep price, some ironize.

The second profile has grown most in both volume and qualification. People with two degrees and two master's degrees who tested the labor market, saw what was there, and were frightened away. It is not a late vocation: it is an escape with clear ideas.

The third adds a nuance rarely mentioned in standard analyses. A significant part of the student body consists of young women who see the corps as a stable career, a predictable salary, and a schedule that does not need renegotiating every quarter. The appeal of a **permanent position** no longer discriminates by gender or educational level.

Why does a doctor want their child to be a doctor too?

Because they have seen what lies outside. The reasoning is repeated with uncomfortable frankness: children see their parents' salaries and free time, and they are certain. The healthcare career has become the exception within an educational system whose degree has lost value: no one undergoes surgery without certification, but in half a dozen trades, the employer cares little for the paper.

That is where the narrative gets stuck, because the figures clash. **5,000 net euros per month** circulate in primary care: about 100,000 gross if prorated over twelve payments. In response, it is argued that in most communities, an associate doctor with three or four shifts and fifteen years of seniority earns **3,000-3,500 net**. The difference is explained by supplements: exclusivity—nearly 1,000 euros—geographical dispersion, and on-call shifts. In the Basque Country, Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canary Islands, the figures are rising; in the rest, they are not.

The salary debate reaches a foundation in real estate. A medium-priced home can hover around 450,000 euros in certain areas, and against that backdrop, any comparison between public and private salaries changes character. At the high end, a surgeon in a leading private hospital earns around 10,000 net euros. This is not your average provincial doctor.

From engineering to a permanent position: the shift in narrative

The generation that entered the labor market in 2008 and 2009 grew up with the mantra: _study computer science and you will conquer the world_. Fifteen years later, those professionals earn **2,000 euros** when they are employed, and many have packed their bags. Engineering stopped being the promise and became the evidence against the official narrative of talent.

The consequence is a labor market split in two. On one side, a private sector with mediocre pay, tax pressure, and waning expectations. On the other, public employment as a refuge behind bars. And in the middle, the uncomfortable question: when the collective aspiration is a predictable salary, who will finance the next decade?

Who pays for the positions: debt, the printing press, and the Greek precedent

That is where the part no one wants to face begins. Some argue that **public debt is already around 200% of GDP** and that current spending continues to be financed with money coming from the ECB's _printing press_. The day that source is closed, the adjustment will be harsh. The precedent is not in the textbooks: **Greece approved the dismissal of 30,000 civil servants** and planned to save 6.6 billion euros by the end of 2012. The myth of bulletproof employment fell with them.

Critics of the system add that the design itself is absurd from a spending standpoint: private academies are paid to instruct those who will later manage public resources, instead of financing schools for civil servants. Part of the analysis speaks openly of castes, with a country split between those paid from the state payroll and those who sustain the structure through their billing.

How many of those kids signing up at 18 today will still believe, a decade from now, that the position was a refuge and not the last door closing?