Iona Napier
MADRID’S Complutense University is desperately seeking private investors after drastic spending cuts have left it out of pocket.
Professors fear this may lead to the privatisation of Spain’s largest university, with patrons and sponsors participating in the running of the institution and its infrastructure.
It is the latest public body to seek private help after the central government approved a ruling to allow investing companies to help out.
‘Sponsors’ will vary between ‘collaborators’ who give between €10,000 and €30,000 and ‘strategic patrons’ for companies contributing over €500,000 per year.
Encourage institutional bankruptcy, ‘save’ them with private investment, then install party ideologues – not academics – as managers. That is the neo-con and neo-liberal corporatist strategy for converting important, accessible public universities into corporate training schools for legacy elites and investors who would stop Spain’s move towards broader education and democratic thinking.
In other news we have got a nice new theme park (the largest in Andalucia) opening elsewhere, perhaps the ex-students and ex-teachers can get work there? Spain thinks that’s more important.