BARCELONA--Eduardo Agatângelo came to the Autonomous
University of Barcelona (UAB) from his native Angola last year
under a new program to help promising students from the developing
world earn Ph.D. degrees. But last month the Spanish government
pulled the plug on its 3-year commitment to Agatângelo and hundreds
of other students from around the world, shifting the money to
target links with Latin America. The move has left many students
angry at their host country and anxious about their chances of
becoming scientists. "This worries me greatly," says Agatângelo,
who is seeking a degree in food science. "I have no prospects to
continue my Ph.D. training in Angola."
In 1998 Spain's Agency of International Collaboration (AECI)
expanded a program, begun at the end of World War II, that awards
competitive 3-year training grants to deserving graduate students
from the developing world. The program now supports more than 1200
students from 40 countries. But last month the AECI announced that
it would transfer $3.6 million from the grants program into a new
entity, the Carolina Foundation, to support cultural and education
programs in Latin America, including science courses for biomedical
postdocs. An AECI official says the foreign grants program was too
expensive and that the students, instead of returning to their home
countries, were using the training as a kind of work placement
program to land jobs in Spain--a characterization that the students
deny. The AECI's decision means that some 900 foreign students may
soon be homeward bound. Last month the agency informed first- and
second-year students like Agatângelo that their training grants
would be extended by 1 year. The roughly 350 students who were
completing a third year without earning a Ph.D. were told that
their support would end on 30 June, the last day of the academic
year. The AECI said it would no longer grant extensions to allow
such students to finish their degrees.
The program supports more than 1200 students from 40
countries.
The news left students up in arms, leading to demonstrations in
Barcelona and Madrid. "This situation places hundreds of
researchers in a situation of economic precariousness," says
Silvina van der Molen, an Argentinean who has just completed her
third year of studies in ichthyology at UAB and was hoping to
finish her Ph.D. next year. Faculty members have also condemned the
AECI's hard line. The Spanish Council of University Rectors,
representing 64 universities, criticized the disruption to the
students' lives and work. Echoing that theme, officials at 11
universities in Catalonia say the decision "is harming not only the
Ph.D. students but also the research institutions where they are
developing their training grants and their corresponding
countries."
The backlash has sent AECI officials backpedaling. Jesús Silva,
the Foreign Office's director of cultural and science relations,
says that the agency will now give "a few extra months" of support
to third-year students on the verge of completing degrees and may
give selected foreign students a few months of grant support for
study in Spain. But university officials remain upset. The AECI,
fumes UAB research vice chancellor Joan Antón Carbonell, is "not
taking this matter seriously."
A spokesperson for the students says AECI bylaws mandate that
these grants run for 3 years. But the students may have little
legal recourse: Class-action lawsuits are prohibited in Spain, and
individual lawsuits would be costly. Unless the AECI changes its
stance, scores of embittered students will be packing their bags
for home next year.
* Xavier Bosch is a science writer in
Barcelona.