7 out of 10 master's degrees cannot be studied in Catalan.

BarcelonaOnly 32% of master's degrees are taught in Catalan at Catalan public universities, three percentage points less than three years ago. That is, seven out of ten master's degrees are taught in Spanish and English. If you combine bachelor's and master's degrees, the Catalan offering is 65%, although this is also three percentage points lower than in 2022. The goal is to achieve 80% of undergraduate teaching in Catalan, and this is far from being achieved.

As announced this Thursday by the Department of Research and Universities, Catalan is stuck. 74% of undergraduate subjects are offered in Catalan, but these figures refer only to public universities (seven out of twelve, the most diligent with Catalan). Furthermore, they only specified the offering and not the actual language of instruction. Twenty percent of undergraduate subjects are taught in English, and 34% in Spanish (four points more than three years ago), percentages that do not add up to 100 because some subjects can be taken in more than one language.

The plan to strengthen Catalan in universities and research was launched in 2022, promoted by the ERC (Spanish Regional Government of Catalonia). This Thursday, the Regional Minister for Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat, took stock and stated that in three years, more than half of the program's objectives have been met, and a further third have been initiated. One of the objectives currently underway is the language accreditation of teaching staff. Since 2010, it has been mandatory to have at least a C1 level of Catalan, although this requirement had not been audited and standardized until the plan's rollout.

Currently, 74% of the 22,000 teachers in the country have Catalan proficiency certification—remember, C1 is the level that can be certified upon completion of secondary school—which is a sufficiently high percentage, considering that there are a number of teachers who do not meet the language requirement. For example, if they teach a foreign language.

Theses in Catalan and a record number of foreign students

Another black hole for the language is the search for and transfer of knowledge in Catalan: only 11% of doctoral theses are read in Catalan. The majority (54%) are read in English and Spanish (33%). David Ballabriga, head of the department's Language Policy Office, admits that "this is a low figure, which is part of the context of the internationalization of research and dissemination." However, they have included the language requirement in the grants to publicly funded Catalan research groups, which have contributed some 800 abstracts in Catalan of their publications. One hundred grants have also been awarded for writing doctoral theses in Catalan.

Internationalization is one of the objectives of the Catalan university system, which finds that the provision of master's and postgraduate degrees in English is a tool for competitiveness and substantial funding. For the regional minister, "the use and promotion of Catalan must be made compatible with being an innovative region and an international ecosystem," she asserts. In fact, Montserrat is celebrating the record number of international students in the Catalan system this academic year: 37,000 students from outside the 307,000 university students, 12% of the total.

"That enriches the system. We don't believe international students will hinder the plan. It's not about choosing between Catalan and opening up to the world," affirms Montserrat. Specific itineraries are also being developed for these students. Universities, in fact, have expanded their efforts to welcome non-Catalan-speaking students with 500 activities, 11 courses in their countries of origin through the Institut Ramon Llull, and 3,481 students enrolled in introductory Catalan courses.

56 complaints in the semester

The minister doesn't believe that 80% teaching is too ambitious for 2026, but it does require "a certain pace." Among the objectives that remain unresolved, key issues include establishing a C2 language requirement for students enrolling in the teacher training master's degree, an agreement that has not been reached with the universities. Special language pathways for the strategic degrees outlined in the National Pact for the Language also remain to be developed, as there are professionalizing studies in the fields of health and justice that force students without a minimum knowledge of Catalan into the labor market.

The twelve universities have a language complaints mailbox that constantly collects criticism, either due to the change in the language of instruction or the lack of courses offered in Catalan. Complaints have been increasing thanks to a targeted campaign, and in the first semester of this academic year, 56 complaints were received, more than in the entire 2022-2023 academic year. In 2023-2024, 141 complaints were received, one hundred more than the previous academic year. According to the department, 70 percent of complaints are resolved. For Montserrat, as universities implement their own language strengthening plan (five have not yet started), the numbers will improve exponentially. "The plan is alive. We will adapt it. We want transparency," the minister concluded.