Universidad de Granada

I went on a small guided tour of the University today with a small number of students from our program. Christian, one of our program directors, walked us all around the city. It was a very enlightening tour, as he told us all about the history of the university and the university systems in Europe in general. Unlike universities in the States, colleges are not built on campuses, but are instead spread throughout the city in various buildings. Depending upon the subject you are studying you are placed within a different building. It could take you up to 45 minutes to walk to other side of "campus" in the city.

Christian explained to us that, unlike the States, public schools are preferred over private and a degree from a public school is considered to be superior. The public schooling system is very inexpensive, about 1000 euros per school year! During Franco's dictatorship, parents felt that it was very important to send their children to college to educate them as much as possible. Families felt that if their kids were educated they might not fall in to Franco's ways or have a better understanding of other political systems and ways of life outside of Spain. So, as you can imagine, roughly 85% of individuals around the age of 40 have a college degree. The influx in individuals with degrees has placed an economic strain on Spain. Recently, a plumber was making almost 5x as much money as a doctor or lawyer, simply because there were too many of them and not enough jobs to support them with. According to Christian this has begun to even out, but it is still very difficult to find jobs. He told us that often times the street sweepers and trash men are actually people with degrees that could not find a job anywhere else. The younger generations have increasingly invested their time in vocational jobs outside of high school, because they no longer see the importance of getting a further education. Perhaps this explains why our 20 year old "brother" doesn't seem very motivated on a daily basis.

Back to the University itself... There are 80,000 students in the University itself. European countries have a program called Erasmus, which allows any student to apply to pay full tuition to their home university and then attend another somewhere else in Europe. The idea is that you're paying for another visiting student as they are paying for you elsewhere. The University of Granada for whatever reason has the largest number of Erasmus students each year, making it a huge school, but also very diverse. There are only two colleges in Andalucia, southern Spain, which helps to explain the size itself. However, the two universities have pilot schools in other cities that are part of the university itself.

The first building was built in 1533 and establishes UGR as one of the oldest colleges in Europe. They are currently renovating this building. The university buildings themselves look nothing like schools. Because they are randomly selected buildings throughout the city, they can be anything, an old hotel, an old house, you name it. Because they are all so different the architecture and style is unique to each building, I love this about them. Better even still, it doesn't feel like you're in a school at all. This is a picture of one of the school buildings. This is actually inside the building, most of them have center courtyards to gather in between classes. Granada loves white buildings with yellow trim... it's everywhere!