The rectors denounce that several ministries evade their responsibility to manage and pay the contribution of scholarship holders

They warn that the universities are paying the contribution of the scholarship recipients and not the companies or public administrations

   MADRID, 5 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Crue Spanish Universities has denounced that the Government ministries that have promoted Social Security contributions for scholarship recipients and many regional organizations have "evaded their responsibility in the administrative management and payment of these contributions."

Specifically, the rectors have given as an example what happened with the ministries with powers in Defense, Justice or even Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, among others, which have written to the universities "to request the change of the regulatory agreements so that the university institutions are the ones that assume all the management and payment within the new system".

"In the case of the autonomous communities, only some have assumed the cost, but in no case the management," says the Crue in a statement, collected by Europa Press, in which it warns that, despite the fact that the responsibility of managing and paying the contributions of the scholarship recipients falls on the entities receiving the student interns, both companies and public administrations "have ignored this obligation."

For this reason, the rectors affirm that it has been the universities that have "had to assume these tasks", since in the case of companies "more than 98% have evaded the payment of contributions and 100% their administrative management ".

The universities, despite their many financial difficulties, have assumed the cost of these contributions (about 9 million euros annually as long as the bonus is maintained) and, above all, the "enormous effort" of administrative management represented by the 400,000 internships. esteemed and that is forcing these educational institutions to increase their staff of technical, management, administration and service personnel, to acquire digital platforms and to train their staff.

Spanish universities have come to apply, as of January 1, 2024, the Fifty-Second Provision of Royal Decree-Law 2/2023, of March 16, which establishes the Social Security contribution of students who carry out the curricular practices included in their study plans.

Crue highlights that "the enormous size and heterogeneity of the student group raises numerous doubts when carrying out the registration and withdrawal processes." Although some of the doubts have been resolved, they detail that "many others still remain to be resolved that affect, for example, how to act with students on outgoing or incoming mobility or with students who are currently receiving medical treatment within the coverage." that is provided to their parents through MUFACE.

The universities feel "aggrieved", in comparative terms, to know how the Government has assumed the management and cost of the internships corresponding to the vocational training students, "without giving the same treatment to the university students, which establishes an obvious principle of discrimination".

Likewise, they express their surprise at seeing the "high degree of improvisation and confusion with which this measure is being implemented." "In this entire process, universities have not been consulted or informed through the normal channels of a loyal relationship between institutions," they say.

Universities are also concerned about the "inaccurate" information that is being disseminated, in which intern students "are wrongly identified with scholarship students; in which curricular internships are confused with extracurricular internships, even though these are very different. nature and treatment, or in which we talk about situations such as the chain of practices that, logically, have no place in the implementation of a study plan".

Given all of the above, Spanish universities want to record their full willingness so that the new system can be applied with all the guarantees and they want to convey peace of mind to their students, as they will continue to act with the responsibility and institutional commitment that characterizes them and ensure always for the best training and employability of its students.