Aspiring teachers destined to pay more than 6,000 euros for the master’s degree: “I am a public teacher, I never thought that my son would have to go to the private one”

Sara Gómez, a 57-year-old from Huelva, is having a difficult summer. His son, a graduate in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, has tried to enroll to do the master’s degree for secondary school teachers, essential to be able to class at that stage, in all Andalusian public universities and they have not taken it in any, despite having finished the race with a notable, an average grade of 7.3. The case of your son is similar to that of tens of thousands of Spanish students ―in Andalusia alone, more than 20,000 applicants are left out every year―, forced to enroll in the master’s degree in private centers if they can afford it ―its price is up to 10 times more expensive than in the public one and its offer of places already exceeds that of the public universities―, or to give up being teachers.

“(My son) cannot follow his path to get a job, to become independent. The only thing he can do is take a master’s degree at a private university, whose tuition is between 6,500 and 8,000 euros. The university system has expelled him. He has driven us out. They do not allow him to continue his path because there are not enough public places offered: very few compared to those at the beginning of his training, ”says Gómez in a letter to the director published this Tuesday by EL PAÍS. “What else can we do? get into debt The private sector is experiencing its moment of maximum expansion because the public system has stopped serving young people. And it keeps growing because public education shrinks. And families are out in the open, unprotected, stunned or beginning to normalize something that a few years ago we thought was impossible ”, she adds.

Sara Gómez, in an image provided by her.

The case of Gómez’s son touches on various issues, ranging from the educational system and the financing of public education to the labor reality of young people, whose horizon of precariousness has triggered the demand for careers and master’s degrees that enable them to practice a profession and apply for oppositions. “I am a public education teacher, my son has gone to public education, and it would never have occurred to us that we would have to consider going to private education. But what can we do? Are we going to wait a year to risk that the note will not reach him again? Surely, if he does not enter a public university in the second award, which is published very late, on September 12, we will try to go to a private one. And if we don’t have the money, we’ll ask for a loan or from friends,” says Gómez. Studying the master’s degree at the University of Huelva costs about 820 euros. Do it in a private, between 6,500 and 8,000. Gómez regrets that while in the public network they have only found the distance modality at the UNED, which has few places and a different enrollment calendar from the rest, all the private ones offer to take it online.

His son, who asks that his name not be published, assures that he had in mind to be a teacher since high school, when he decided to study Physical Activity and Sports Sciences. “I did not expect that entering the master’s degree would be so difficult. In the race, everyone considered that it was a formality, that it was easy both to enter and to do it ”. If he couldn’t do the master’s degree, what would he do? “I imagine that, like many other young people in the country, to work whatever he caught. If it could be something related to what I’ve studied, all the better, but I think it’s a bit fanciful. Most likely, he worked in a bar, in a supermarket or in any temporary job that did not require training. And I don’t know what else I would do other than that, ”he replies.

Sources from the University of Huelva lament the situation of those who are left unable to enter the master’s degree, but point out that the system “is not arbitrary, it goes by cut-off grade, just like in careers.” “The same thing happens with the master’s degree in teaching as with the one in Health Psychology, which, being habilitation, is in huge demand. But universities cannot offer infinite places, because teaching a master’s degree is very expensive, and the funding that universities receive does not even allow us to expand it. In fact, the secondary master’s degree at the University of Huelva is the one with the most students, more than 200 among the different specialties”.

Supply mismatch

The high demand and the limitations of public education have meant that, as in other educational areas, private education has found great business in the secondary master’s degree and has experienced very rapid growth. In the 2020-2021 academic year, private centers represented 54% of the almost 50,000 places offered, when in 2015 they accounted for 38%. More than a third of its offer is also online.

Increasing the number of places in public universities is not without problems either. The document 24 reform proposals for the improvement of the teaching profession, published in January 2022 by the Ministry of Education, reflected that in the 2021-2022 academic year 37,262 people graduated in the secondary master’s degree and there were, in parallel, some 10,000 retirement vacancies. In other words, except in certain specialties with the current offer, there is already a “huge mismatch between the master’s degree places and the needs of the educational system”, which would worsen if public faculties increased their number of places.

You can follow EL PAÍS EDUCATION in Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.

#Aspiring #teachers #destined #pay #euros #masters #degree #public #teacher #thought #son #private