Non-EU students wishing to enrol at Spanish universities from overseas will first have to sit four 90-minute exams (6 hours total), in person rather than online, before finding out if they’ve been accepted to study at their Spanish university of choice.
That’s according to leading Spanish daily El Mundo, which reportedly has had access to the draft royal decree being proposed by Spain’s left-wing government, a measure that is proving unpopular with Spanish higher education institutions.
One exam will evaluate the budding student’s fluency in Spanish, another will check their proficiency in another language (English, French, German, Italian or Portuguese) and for the remaining two they will have to choose to sit exams in subjects Spanish high school students are tested on, such as Spanish history, philosophy, physics, chemistry, maths, biology, Latin etc.
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The Spanish proficiency exam logically has to be carried out in Spanish but for the other three the students will be able to choose from a series of languages. Up to 70 percent of the questions will be open questions rather than multiple choice, making them harder overall.
UNED, Spain’s National University of Distance Education, will be responsible for the exam preparation. There will be only two time periods throughout the year in which these university admission exams can be sat, meaning that if you miss the date, you won’t be able to go to Spanish university.
The exams will take place at UNED offices and at associated universities in countries around the world, which poses a problem for these in-person exams as UNED doesn’t have centres across the globe. Carrying out the exams at Spanish embassies with an educational council has been suggested as another possible solution.
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Dubbed the “Selectividad for foreigners” (Selectividad are the exams high school students in Spain have to pass to go to university here), university enrolment officers fear these exams will dissuade many foreign students from choosing Spain and opt for other countries in Europe which don’t require extra university access exams.
“There’s a lot of concern. It’s going to affect Spanish universities overall as it’s going to prevent foreigners from coming to study here, which gives prestige and money to Spain,” university sources told El Mundo.
“All in the context of a decreasing Spanish population as not enough children are being born. It’s going to result in financing problems for universities and give a competitive edge to our neighbours as they don’t carry out extra tests”.
Spain has already had entry exams for foreigners in the past but they were removed in 2016 precisely because José Ignacio Wert, Spain’s right-wing Education Minister at the time, considered them “an international anomaly” and the “biggest obstacle to open borders”.
Non-EU undergrad and postgrad students looking to study in Spain face another problem currently: delays in the homologación or recognition of their foreign qualifications by Spanish bureaucrats, a problem which also affects around 100,000 foreigners in regulated professions who have been waiting for years to be able to work in their fields.
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