SPAIN: Student numbers holding despite population fall

Spain has seen a big drop in the number of young people over the past 10 years but predictions this would lead to a shrinking student population have proved inaccurate. More people staying on at school and new kinds of degrees at universities have helped to boost the proportion of Spaniards in higher education.

A decade ago, there were around 750,000 young people of the right age to enter university. Today there are just 450,000, representing a drop of around 40%. But the numbers entering higher education have remained fairly stable over this period, confounding predictions of a major shake-up at Spanish universities.

In 1999, 311,000 people started first degrees, the following year this dropped to 290,000 yet in 2006, this figure had risen again to 307,000.

"Demographic change has not had much effect on university enrolments," says Marc Ajenjo, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona's Centre for Demographic Studies. "There has been some variation but not significantly."

When enrolments dropped to 290,000 in 2000, many saw this as the start of harder times for Spanish universities. They predicted that all institutions would have to compete much more fiercely to attract students and that some newly established private universities as well as those in less populous regions would struggle to fill their places.

Ten years on and these predictions have proved to be only partially accurate. Spanish universities are undeniably more used to competition and pay more attention to selling their wares than before. However, much of the competitive spirit is played out at masters level rather than first degrees and, under the influence of the Bologna process, the most dynamic Spanish universities see themselves as competing with the whole of Europe rather than exclusively with their Spanish counterparts.

Two factors may explain why student numbers have remained stable in spite of a dwindling pool of young people, according to Dr Ajenjo. In 1996, the school leaving age in Spain was raised from 14 to 16: "Until then the four years prior to higher education were not compulsory and raising this to 16 meant people were more likely to stay on in education."

Second, universities have introduced many new courses in the last few years, thereby attracting people who might not otherwise consider higher education. At the same time, some traditional degrees in areas such as the arts or physical sciences have found it increasingly hard to attract students.

"So someone who might formerly have been studying Greek philology or philosophy is now likely to be studying market research techniques," says Dr Ajenjo.

The Spanish government has taken advantage of the changes brought about by Bologna to rationalise the range of subjects on offer. In 2006, it reduced the number of approved first degrees from 140 to just over 80. Many unpopular subjects in the arts or technical fields were either merged with other disciplines or disappeared completely.

rebecca.warden@uw-news.com