European University of Madrid

Spain could soon have more private universities than public ones if current trends continue. However experts are raising concerns about quality, equity and an adverse impact on public institutions.

Currently, there are 91 active universities in Spain, of which 50 are public and 41 are private. Five more private institutions have already been approved by the government, with more in the pipeline; their numbers have almost tripled in the past three decades. The newest public university, meanwhile, is the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, which opened in 1998.

While private universities’ share of Spain’s student population is only about a fifth, 2023-24 saw them claim just over half of Masters enrolments for the first time. As a decentralised country, Spain’s autonomous communities have the power to approve new universities; the proliferation of private institutions, therefore, varies in intensity across the country.

“The biggest expansion is, by far, in the Madrid region,” says sociologist Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca Rodriguez, a professor at Carlos III University of Madrid. “There is an explicit bet on private universities, while the regional government refuses to increase the budget of public universities.”

Spanish private universities are primarily owned by religious institutions or major conglomerates. They can charge far higher tuition fees than public universities, which have their fees set by regional governments, prompting criticism that private varsities privilege wealthy students and compound social inequality.

“The comparative advantage of private universities lies in offering postgraduate programmes with clear professional profiles, aimed at the labour market — doctors, managers, dentists, architects, psychologists and so on,” says Prof. Sanchez-Cuenca. “There is a sort of bottleneck regarding postgrad programmes in the public university system and private universities fill this gap.”

With the quality of private universities coming under scrutiny, a 2023 law introduced stricter conditions for the establishment of new institutions, while the national government formed a working group earlier this year (2024) to “reinforce the academic, economic, equipment and teaching-level requirements to create a new university institution”. Some new universities, however, have “(found) ways of circumventing requisites with the help of regional governments,” says Prof. Sanchez-Cuenca.