The Sánchez Government strengthens university students' rights with the new Statute: housing, conciliation, and academic unemployment

The price of a room, work schedules, and family responsibilities will have more weight in university life. The Government approved this Tuesday the new University Student Statute, which specifies the obligations of campuses to facilitate reconciliation, incorporates accommodation costs into scholarship criteria, and expressly includes the right to academic strike.

The norm replaces the 2010 Statute and develops the 2023 Organic Law of the University System, known as LOSU. Its guarantees extend to public and private universities, their affiliated centers, and lifelong learning, both in face-to-face and hybrid and distance education.

The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, led by Diana Morant, has agreed on the text with the rectors and student representation. Crue Universidades Españolas, the University Student Council of the State (CEUNE), and the Coordinator of Representatives of Students of Public Universities (CREUP) participated. Its development will oblige universities to specify procedures, plans, and services that affect daily issues, from changing an exam due to care responsibilities to receiving psychological attention.

Measures for Housing and more scholarships

The Statute establishes that scholarship programs progressively incorporate the cost of accommodation when studying implies changing residence, along with the socioeconomic situation and the real needs of the students. It also entrusts universities with facilitating and promoting dignified accommodation, with "adequate" prices in their own facilities, and offering information on residences, agreements, and housing pools in the city or nearby municipalities.

This regulation is joined by another decision of the Council of Ministers, which approved 45 million euros to boost about 2,000 university accommodation places in a first phase. The aid will finance projects from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha in Albacete, Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Burgos, Jaén, Jaume I of Castelló, and the City Council of Lleida. These are actions to expand the offer, whose commissioning will depend on the execution of the projects.

The new regulation is incorporated into a scholarship policy that already includes 2,700 euros in residence aid for those who meet the requirements of this course's general call. The estimated budget for scholarships and aid for 2026-2027 amounts to 2,559 million euros and covers university and non-university education. The Statute adds the criterion of accommodation cost to progressively orient these aids towards the needs of those who must live away from home.

In mobility programs, the text guarantees that scholarships are paid before the stay is made and strengthens student participation in their design. It also includes the portability of state aid, to be enjoyed anywhere in Spain regardless of the place of residence. In their concession, in addition to grades, the set of training activities carried out, including micro-credentials, will be valued.

Studying, working, and caring

All universities must develop general conciliation plans that allow combining studies with employment and family life. This provision covers the different modalities of education and includes instruments such as part-time enrollment or temporary suspension of studies, in accordance with the rules of each institution and its organizational possibilities.

One of the most concrete guarantees affects exams. Students will have the right to another evaluation date and time in cases such as the care of dependent persons under their charge or the death or serious illness of direct relatives. These circumstances will also allow justifying absences. Evaluation calendars must take into account whether the student is enrolled full-time or part-time.

The Statute also recognizes access to free and accessible psychological and mental health care, with support units and prevention and intervention protocols for suicidal behaviors. The need for these services appears in the study published by the Ministries of Universities and Health in 2023, in which approximately half of those who responded presented symptoms of moderate or severe depression or anxiety. The text also incorporates protocols against harassment and cyberbullying.

For students with disabilities or specific educational support needs, universities must adapt teaching, evaluation, and internships, as well as participation in mobility programs. Permanent tutoring for students with disabilities and accessible services are foreseen. The guarantees extend to food, with healthy and appropriate options for those with specific needs, and to coexistence, through mandatory rules and a joint commission.

Academic strike and guarantees

The right to a total or partial academic strike is expressly included in the Statute. It was already in the LOSU of 2023, and now it is incorporated into the framework that develops student rights. Each university must regulate its conditions and the procedure for declaring it, with the participation of student representation and respecting the right to education of other students.

The approval comes at a time of mobilization for public university and housing. On October 14, there was a strike day at the Complutense University of Madrid that linked both demands. A general strike for wages, housing, and prices is also called for November 11, promoted by CCOO and UGT and supported by other organizations, including the Student Union.

Students will have the right to know the teaching guides before enrolling, with information on content, faculty, language, modality, internships and evaluation, and to receive classes in the announced language. In the digital sphere, the Statute protects personal data, authorship of works and disconnection, with exceptions for extraordinary communications. Among academic duties, it includes avoiding fraud in tests and assignments, also through the inappropriate use of generative artificial intelligence.

External internships must have cooperation agreements and academic and professional tutelage. These may include expense compensation when established by state regulations. Advice on career opportunities for studies and student participation in university decisions is also reinforced. Social, cooperation, sustainability, cultural and artistic activities may be recognized with up to six ECTS credits in degrees.