2023-12-13 11:34:37
This Tuesday, the rector of the UOC, Àngels Fitó, warned the Parliament of Catalonia that the university is “at risk of collapse” due to its “frozen financing in a very demanding context in terms of the cost of the technological resources that a university like the UOC needs to stay up to date”. Fitó has conveyed this notice in the appearance she made before the Research and Universities Commission of the Catalan chamber, on the occasion of her appointment. The rector explained that the public subsidy to the UOC has been “frozen since time immemorial”, while the university’s activity “has been expanding” in recent years, as requested almost a decade ago by the Government. of Catalonia.
Fitó has gone back to 2014 to remember that, at that time, the Generalitat asked the UOC to undertake growth to “provide more coverage and service to all citizens.” “Since that moment, we have not stopped doing it. Although the entire range of degrees is adjusted to public prices, the subsidy represents 20% of our budget and we do not have the financial capacity to be able, among other things, to compensate for the loss of purchasing power of the human team that, with their commitment and effort, has made it possible.” Since 2014, this purchasing power has been reduced by 10%, and it has not been able to be compensated because the economic structure of the university does not allow it. In any case, lately a contribution has been obtained from the Government that will allow the subsidy income of this year’s budget to be increased by two million euros and consolidated for next year. “This opens the door for us to be able to make a salary review of around 3%,” explained Fitó.
Risk of technological obsolescence
The rector has also warned that the UOC faces a “risk of technological obsolescence” that may hinder its possibility of growth. Fitó has stated that, as a technological ‘company’, the UOC should allocate 10% of the budget to satisfy “a growing need”, which is to update, improve and preserve its technology. In this sense, the university must face issues related to cybersecurity, artificial intelligence or cloud infrastructure, which have a “huge” impact on the budget. “With a budget of around 165 million euros, we can only dedicate 13 million to technology, a figure that is less than 10% and which we spend, 50%, simply to keep what we have in operation,” explained Fitó. “We have little capacity to evolve or introduce new changes,” added the new rector of the UOC.
The rector has assured before the different parliamentary groups of the Catalan chamber that if the 2014 subsidy had been updated by price and activity, taking into account that the university has doubled degrees and students, this subsidy would have to reach 54 million euros. and not in the current 30-odd. In terms of investments, it should be around 10 million and is currently at 4.5, which is practically the same figure since its founding. “Just updating the CPI would mean 5 million euros more compared to the current subsidy,” Fitó added.
Despite the difficulties, the UOC grows
Despite this financial situation, the rector explained that the UOC is satisfied with the coverage that has been achieved and the launch of new degrees. However, she has not hidden that the risks that threaten the university leave “little room for maneuver to evolve” towards a desired horizon, which is to become “the best online university in the world.” Fitó has defended the UOC as “a state structure”, dedicated to “lifelong” training and that certifies “an efficient trajectory”, capable of doubling the number of students with frozen current and investment spending. The only subsidy increases that have been made correspond to compensation for the reduction in rates, or to specific cost increases. The subsidy for deployed credit (that is, made available to students) has been falling by more than half over the years. However, with a 49% increase in staff, the UOC has multiplied its recruitment of research projects by three (9 million in 2023) and has multiplied its teaching capacity by two. For this reason, the priority is to guarantee the purchasing power of the people who have made it possible.
Fitó recalled that the UOC is a university with a vocation to fulfill the public mandate of “giving access to quality higher education” to groups that otherwise “would have been left out” of these teachings. “We are very aware that the UOC is a university created by the Government, with a public mandate that wants to be preserved, approved unanimously by the Parliament of Catalonia as a private law foundation in order to have an agile operation that adapts to the specific demand in each moment,” Fitó highlighted. With 87,150 students, Fitó has defended that the UOC, which has been the first to obtain quality institutional accreditation from the AQU, is a “systemic” and “inclusive” institution, and has highlighted that it is the university with the most students has in Catalonia and the second in the State. “The UOC is a successful experiment in our country with a dropout rate more typical of a face-to-face university than an online institution: students who start at the UOC finish their studies,” highlighted the rector. 36% of the students come from higher-level training cycles or from tests for those over 25 or 45 years old. For this reason, the rector has stated that the UOC is “a second chance device” for “profiles with a more complex career and, in many cases, of lower social origins.”
Research, cooperation and future challenges
The rector has also highlighted the university’s research results and its level of scientific production, comparable to any other university in the Catalan public system. “We are making a very evident effort to advance this frontier research, which links technology with the different areas of human activity,” Fitó stressed. She has also highlighted the global nature of the university, since it contributes to the internationalization of Catalonia and allows people who live abroad to continue their higher education studies. At the same time, he highlighted that the UOC facilitates the democratization of higher education and that it carries out cooperation in Latin America to give prestige to online education, with the aim of having “the positive effect that it has had in Catalonia.”
Before the parliamentary committee, the rector also shared the ten challenges that the UOC has posed to project itself into the future and become a world reference in online education, taking into account that it not only aspires to serve new generations of students, but also thinks about the requalification of the entire working class, keeping in mind the concept of “lifelong training.” “Technology can allow us to provide personalized solutions for students, who must make a choice for the future,” she said.
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