These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the Rumor team, formed by Xavier Burruezo & Sergi Consul.
One of the strangest things happening in the University studies in Spain, is the fact that our Spanish Business Schools are amongst of the world’s best, and the rest of the Universities rank really low. For instance, on 2010’s The Economists MBA ranking, IESE made the fifth position, when looking at the best engineering University ranking, you have to wait until 95th position to find the first Spanish university.
There are a lot of reasons why this might be happening: tradition is an important point, and, for us, the key difference, is money. The enrollment fee in IESE is over 50K€, to enroll in Stanford is 42k$ per year, in Oxford (for now, it’s going to rise next year), it around 3250pounds.
Are we saying that the whole problem is money? NO. But in it does makes a difference. Increasing the enrollment fees to a certain point, with a good plan for grants for people with lack of money, might help solving part of the problem. If they let the Industry enter the Universities, let them pay for research, let them have the Caprabo Laboratory, or the Abertis building. Just as it’s done in the United States, where you can walk through Stanford’s campus and see the Hewlett Building in front of the Packard Building, or in UC Berkeley in the Engineering Building (Cory Hall) you can see the National Instruments laboratory and so on.
Another interesting point to review is the enrollment tests students have to go through to enter University. Nowadays, around 95% of the student mass has access to the University. With time, that has brought University levels down. A good way to improve is to move from a free market system to a quality-based system. A system where the student is required to have some previous knowledge with great grades, not a system where the student can enter one University because there are 400 seats and only 200 apply, so everyone can enter.
And last, but not the least; we have to change the k12 education. More technical classes are needed, more practice based classes…By raising the engineers and researchers salaries, we might get to be more compelling to kids; we need to leave the geek stereotype out and embrace it…
Lots of changes that cannot happen overnight, but with time, commitment and money they can be made!
