Madrid, April 11, 2023. Crue Spanish Universities has published a new edition of its report La Universidad Española en Cifras (UEC), with information on the 2019-2020 academic year. This document, prepared under the direction of José Antonio Pérez García and Juan Hernández Armenteros, offers a detailed analysis of the impact that the pandemic had on university activity and an exhaustive diagnosis of the Spanish University System (SUE). The analysis is supported by data on the following: offer and demand, performance of university education, employability and quality of employment, quality of research, contribution to competitive innovation in the productive system and financing and university spending.
The aim of this iteration of UEC is threefold: first, to provide information to HEIs for internal use by each university, which is useful to compare the activity and results (institutional, academic and management) with the rest of the Spanish University System; second, to analyse the evolution of demand, supply, resources and results of the SUE in comparison with other iterations of this report, as well as with other available national and international datasets; and third, to provide rigorous information that supports the principles of institutional transparency and accountability of universities with society.
This analysis is built on the data provided by Crue’s member universities to this association and covers almost all the fundamental aspects of their performance. The analysis tries to present an evidence-based overview of the conditions, activity, and impact of the SUE in Spanish society.
The authors conclude that, since the economic crisis of 2009, the SUE has maintained a consistent trend of continuous improvement of its L&T and R+I results under very difficult conditions: a sharp reduction of public and private funding, the precariousness of its human capital and its gradual aging, as well as an excessive regulation of staffing procedures, of research and of its organisational conditions.
