The public system of sciences and universities in Spain is exposed to a contradiction derived from being in the hands of “two sister ministries, but headed by two different ideologies and policies and two opposite trends in their actions.” This is a summary of the situation that will be presented tomorrow, Tuesday in Oviedo, by Antonio Abril Abadín, President of the Social Council of the University of La Coruña, who will hold a conference entitled “University-Business before the New Basic Law” of the Spanish University System.” The symposium will be held at exactly seven o’clock in the evening in the meeting room of the Chamber of Commerce. Access To the event is free when you register.
Antonio Abril Abadin, law graduate from the University of Oviedo, is a government lawyer. Between 1989 and 2021, he served as Secretary General, Secretary of the Board of Directors, Director of Regulatory Compliance and Chairman of the Ethics Committee of Inditex and the various companies that make up the Inditex Group. He currently holds, among other positions, President of the Congress of Social Councils of Spanish Universities and Vice President of the Forum of Spanish Famous Brands.
In Antonio Abril’s opinion, this division that he observed in the general structure of science and universities translates into a Ministry of Science and Innovation, with the head of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which is moving “in the right direction”, to promote cooperation between science and business with community involvement and commitment; and the Ministry of Universities, headed by Podemos, which promoted “an ideological and corporate law, which would solve none of the problems endemic to the Spanish university, while maintaining an academy grounded in corporatism and increasingly limited endogamy.” In this extraordinarily technologically competitive and ever-changing global world In which we had to live.
“Giving up consensus”
Organic Law 2/2023 issued on March 22 for the University System (LOSU) will be dissected in detail by the jurist in his speech tomorrow. In his analysis, Al Qaeda receives an unfavorable score. On the one hand, the promoters of the law “concede from the beginning to reach consensus on the basis of a great state charter.” Thus, the legal text “proceeds with the minimum majority necessary for parliamentary political groups that support the government.”
The aforementioned organic law – Antonio Abril points out – “disdains” aspects such as “the exceptional nature of the Spanish model” and its important break in terms of the necessary connection with the company. It also leaves aside a report issued by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development at the request of the Spanish government itself, which recommends “redesigning university management systems to increase their cooperation with and accountability to society, and to avoid political interference.”
The state attorney notes that LOSU “questions the transfer results From knowledge and university research to the corporation,” and went so far as to say that “we need an open science that assumes that knowledge (derived from university research) is an accessible, non-commodity public good.”
In the same vein, Antonio Abril emphasizes that the Universities System Law “goes in the opposite direction” to the Science, Technology and Innovation Law, approved only months ago, “which entirely assumes the OECD “roadmap” and its conclusions, among which are: a change in Managing public sciences and improving the skills and resources of social councils at universities.
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