Systems of Higher Education in an international Comparison: Spain<title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../CSS/2col_leftNav.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div id="masthead"> <h1 id="siteName"> Systems of Higher Education in an international Comparison: Spain</h1> <h1 id="subTitle"> Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Universidad Carlos III, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia</h1> <div id="globalNav"> <a href="../educationalsystem/school.html">Educational System</a> | University Life | <a href="../work/internship.html">Work</a> | <a href="../madrid/geography.html">Madrid</a> | <a href="../valencia/valencia.html">Valencia</a>| <a href="../authors.html">Authors</a></div> </div>  <div id="content"> <h2 id="pageName"> Living in Madrid as a Student </h2> <div class="story"> <p> <img src="images/vida.jpg" alt="Living" width="400" height="300" /> </p> <p> Student life in Madrid is precarious. Because of the huge unbalance between high rental costs and low wages it is not easy to study in Madrid, especially not if the student wants to live alone or in a small living community like it is often the case in Munich. A more detailed analysis of the general accomodation situation can be found in the <a href="../madrid/living.html">Madrid part</a> of this website. In this section I will go into detail about what is specific for students and recent graduates. </p> <h3> Students Residences </h3> <p> If living alone of in a shared apartment is too expensive for German students they do have the alternative of living in student residences. In Madrid this is completely different. Although there are some residences. These are not designed to be a cheap accomodation for students with little money. Instead they are more like boarding schools with full service (meals, washing, sports and social events included) and full control (curfew, namelists for visitors, gender-separation, etc.) for anxious - and rich - parents. In many residences it is common that students have to apply together with their parents at the age of 18 - a year before they even start studying.<br /> Due to this different philosophy the prices are a lot higher than at German residences. Wheras at Studentenstadt in Munich a student can get a single room for less than 200 euros, with 220 being the average, in Madrid the cheapest residences are at about 500 to 600 euros. At UC3M the cheapest accomodation in a double room is available for 570 euros. The more prestigious the university gets the more expensive the associated residence is. At La Politécnica prices are between 800 and 900 euros and the most expensive residence I've heard of is in the Casa do Brasil where students have to pay 1.300 euros for a standard room. Obviously these residences are also an additional source of income for the universities. </p> <h3> Wages</h3> <p> Since this part is mainly about university life I only investigated on wages graduates get directly after leaving university, a general analysis can be found within the work section. <br /> In Spain, the highest wages are earned by engineers with no more than 1.800 - 2.000 euros per month for a good graduate at a prestigious university - such as la Politécnica - and down to 1.200 euros for average students at average universities. As a comparison: a computer science student of the TUM earns about 3.000 to 3.500 euros after graduation. <br /> With engineers at the top of the scale other professions, such as lawyers can call themselves lucky, if they earn 900 - 1.200 euros (those are the official numbers of the UC3M - and called pure promotion by my Spanish friends). Very often they work for free just to get their foot into a company. </p> <h3> Historical Heritage & Society Issues</h3> <p> An often unnoticed fact about Spain is that they only have a very young democracy. Actually only a little more than 30 years ago dictator <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco" target="_blank">Franco</a> still ruled the country with his fascistic regime. For a very long time this resulted in a very weak economy. Only at the peak of the Cold War the search for new allies made the US establish diplomatic relations with Spain. This resulted in an economic boom in the 1960s - where cities such as Leganés or Getafe where built from scratch.<br /> For today's students the most important heritage of Franco's era was the rule that every student was supposed to study in his home town. Free movement was not an option - in contrast to the hordes of German students going to West-Berlin to avoid doing military service. <br /> Another reason that led to this "study-at-home" behaviour is the rather conservative society with the family still being valued very high and the catholic church playing a strong part for a very long time.</p> <h3> Studying at the University - Living at their Family</h3> <p> This mixture of socio-economic reasons leads to the fact that still today most students live at their parents home during their complete study. This is completely different from Germany, especially because German students value personal freedom a lot higher than Spanish do and - probably the most crucial aspect - Germans are rich enough to pay for this personal freedom. </p> <div> <em>Author: Arno Scherhorn</em></div> </div> </div>  <div id="navBar"> <div id="sectionLinks"> <h3> University Life</h3> <ul> <li>Living</li> <li><a href="courses.html">Courses</a></li> <li><a href="learning.html">Learning</a></li> <li><a href="exams.html">Exams</a></li> <li><a href="grades.html">Grades</a></li> <li><a href="sport.html">Sport</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="relatedLinks"> <h3> Related Links</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.uc3m.es/" target="_blank">Universidad Carlos III</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.upm.es/" target="_blank">Universidad Politécnica de Madrid</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.tum.de/" target="_blank">TU München</a></li> </ul> </div> </div>  <div id="siteInfo"> (C) 2008, Stefan Edbauer, Arno Scherhorn, <a href="http://www.juergentreml.de/">Jürgen Treml</a> </div> <br /> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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