Ayuso anuncia un modelo estable de financiación para las universidades en la nueva ley regional.

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has stated that she is working to ensure that the new regional university law, known as the Law of Higher Education, Science, and Universities (LESUC), has «a stable funding model» for the region’s universities.

She expressed this on Sunday from Miami during the second day of the institutional trip to the United States, alongside the Minister of Education, Science, and Universities, Emilio Viciana, and several rectors from public universities who are accompanying her.

«We are working on a new regulatory framework that will provide even more legal certainty and the best years for the university in Madrid to have a stable funding model that allows each university to grow based on its own projects, the potential of a researcher, and the quality of its publications, among many other parameters,» detailed Ayuso at a meeting with Hispanic students and representatives of the Spanish community living in Miami.

The funding of public universities is one of the most relevant aspects being negotiated in the new law, as rectors have been alerting for months about the «financial suffocation» they are facing.

The draft proposes a funding model divided into three parts: a basic one for personnel and investments, another for specific needs such as infrastructure, and a third for objectives. It also suggests that public universities will have to «cover at least 30% of their total expenditure chapters» with «sources other than transfers made by the Community of Madrid.»

PROMOTION OF SPANISH CULTURE

Regarding the objective of positioning the Community of Madrid as the world capital of Spanish studies, the reason for the trip to the United States, Ayuso has outlined some of her Government’s initiatives in this regard, such as the Hispanic Heritage Festival.

«We are promoting Madrid as the capital, not just of Spanish, but of Spanish culture, since there are other cradles within our country. To achieve this, we work in different areas so that we become the home for everyone and the place where the audiovisual sector, the gastronomy sector, and all aspects of culture, know they have a home in Madrid,» expanded the president.

Towards the end of her speech, Ayuso lamented that, as a regional government, «there are a series of regulations and bureaucracy that, being at the state level,» limit them. «I would liberalize licenses, bureaucracy, and taxes much more,» she explained.