Ángel González Hernández, Juana María Madrid Izquierdo
El título de este estudio recoge uno de los fenómenos más polémicos entre la población universitaria. Se trata, sin duda alguna, de uno de los principales problemas existentes en la actual Universidad española. Su análisis requiere prudencia en la argumentación, tanto si es a favor como si lo es en contra, de este sistema de selección docente, así como en la incorporación de los diversos matices que puedan precisar con mayor objetividad y rigor la presencia del mismo o su sustitución por otro procedimiento más acorde con los tiempos que corren.
The recruiting of the University teaching staff in Spain has always been a polemical phenomenon among the universitary community, and one of the buming problems in the "universitary question". Already present before the last civil war (1936-1939), we make a flash-back to the Spanish university's social and political trajectory, from which it is only but the top of the iceberg. The recruiting system throws its roots in the poli-tical avatars of an unstable and convulsive 19th century (8 Constitutions), where the centralist State has not suficient social force to legitimate an often contested universi-tary policy, and where the tutelage role of Administration is going to transform the universitary body into State officials. After the defeat and exile oh half Spain, the chairs will be occupied almost in a "patriotíc" way by an "officials" body in charge of preserving ortodoxy, and whose ideology and partisanism have been the basic ingredients of its selection. The Spanish university's massification in the sixties, paralel to the Spanish miracles' economic deve-lopment, will suppose too a widening of the minoritary body of university's "catedra-ticos", but on the base of contractuals, readers, provisional, asistant professors ... , only to cover the teaching demand (multiplication of classes, groups, new faculties ... ) without anyemploymentsecurity nor juridical protection, and where is shows better the proli-feration of hierarchies making more powerful the already omnipotent and unique body of university's "catedráticos". The 1970 educational reform, fomented by the Mundial Bank and the UNESCO, requirement of the Spanish society's social-economic evolution, is going to establish, in the L.G.E. (Ley General de Educacion), sorne hierarchized categories of universitary teaching bodies (ayudantes, adjuntos, agregados, catedráticos) regulating its recruiting and gradual ascension by medieval examinations of about six to seven exercises in public competitions at national scale, where to body of "catedráticos" play the role of an "initiation ritual" and co-optation through the power that supposes belonging to the judging commisions and through the forces relation established by dependency and clientelism. The University Reform Law (L.R.U.) called University autonomy law, which in its three earlier project versions (LA.U.) saw three ministers fall in the U.C.D. Govem-ment (Unión de Centro Democrático, Adolfo Suárez's party for the democratic tran-sition, maintained in a legitime way in the power from 1977 to 82). It was discussed and approved within less than six months by the new Socialist Cabinet, winner of the elections in october 1982. The incidence of such a law, givingjuridiction's autonomy to the university is to harmonize the constitutional manda te so expressed (art. 27 .10) with the realities of the new powers (regional autonomic govemments) issued from the Spanish state's new structuration (from centralism to almost federation). The recruiting of the teaching staff in this last law, except an "idoneidad test"massi-ficated and no presencial that gave security and employment stabilíty to 8.000 P.N.N. teachers (profesores no numerarios, that means without official register number, in other words contracts, temporary, a.s.o.) only consisted in a calendar for making "officials" in a 3 years dela y (till 30-9-87) those no "idoneizados" through the 1984 "amnesty" (idoneidad test) and stipulated two kinds of teachers: "catedráticos" and "titulares", with the same teaching and research capacity recognized, but where the firts ones still conserv, besides a better salary, sorne little discriminatory prerogatives and academic responsabilities -further tumed away by legal subterfuges in the autonomícal statutes of sorne universities), and specially because they still form, by drawing sort, the public competition commissions that the "titulares" have to realize to have access to the first category. Finallym co-optation prerogatives that make difficult the real democrati-zation in the selection, for, as everybody says, a competition is nothing but 3 votes (among the 5 members forming the commission).