Por Redaccion 
Andalusia is the region that offers several new places in the country as a whole through its public university system with a total of 51,128, representing 20.8% of the overall supply. They are followed by the Madrid region, with 41,540 places, and Catalonia, with 38,652. These numbers refer to the academic year 2023-2024 and are taken from the report «Data and figures on the Spanish university system,» analyzed by the Ministry of University, Research, and Innovation.
When comparing the supply of this type of study with previous courses, there has been a sustained growth in the last three academic years: 0.56% compared to 2022-2023, 1% in relation to the academic year 2021-2022, and 0.82% if we consider the 2020-2021 academic year.
48.2% of the places in the 2023-2024 academic year, totaling 24,649, focus on degrees related to the branch of social and legal sciences. Engineering and architecture is the second field in terms of number of places, with 9,149 places (17.9%), while the rest is distributed among Health Sciences (7,263 places and a representation rate of 14.2%), Arts and Humanities (5,991 seats and a percentage of 11.7%), and Science (4,076 seats, representing 8%).
In this distribution, the preference of Andalusian students for careers in the social and legal sciences has had a fluctuating trajectory of increases and decreases since the 2020-2021 academic year, a year in which there were 24,620 places counted. This marked a significant decrease compared to the previous five years, when the map of this type of degree contained 25,543 places in the 2015-2016 academic year.
According to the analysis prepared by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, there has been a significant evolution in Health Sciences, which has progressively attracted more students, especially in the last two academic years analyzed, as a result of the increase in health vocations post-Covid-19 pandemic. In the 2022-2023 academic year, there were 7,094 places, and in 2021-2022, a total of 6,849. As for Engineering and Architecture, the supply has been gradually decreasing since the 2015-2016 academic year, going from 10,331 places in that period to 9,149 in the 2023-2024 academic year. The number of Science degrees has remained relatively stable since 2015-2016, with slightly over 4,000 seats.
420 bachelor’s degrees and 537 master’s degrees taught in the community
Regarding the diploma education offer, Andalusian’s university system ranks third behind Madrid and Catalonia, with 420 bachelor’s degrees taught during the 2023-2024 academic year (according to the latest statistics on universities, centers, and degrees published by the Ministry), representing 12.61% of the 3,330 titles implemented nationwide. The number of degrees increased by 6.87% compared to the 2019-2020 academic year, where 393 were offered.
The same third place is repeated in the geographical distribution of master’s degrees, with 537 degrees and a rate of 13.26%, in relation to the overall map of the national system, which includes 4,049 postgraduate programs of this kind. In this regard, Madrid and Catalonia also lead the ranking. The master’s programs in Andalusia have shown a growth trend over the past five years, going from 524 titles in 2019-2020 to 537 in 2023-2024, representing an increase of 2.48%.
As for Doctoral programs, Andalusia ranks fourth behind Catalonia, Madrid, and Valencia, with a portfolio of 153 programs of this nature, monopolizing 12.60% of the national offer, which consists of 1,214 programs. These programs saw a slightly higher increase of 3.38% compared to the 2019-2020 academic year, going from 148 to 153.
87.2% of students remain in Andalusia to study at university
87.2% of students who took the University Access Test (Pau) in Andalusia did not change their community to enroll in an academic institution elsewhere to study during the 2023-2024 academic year. This rate remained at 87% in the 2022 test and at 87.5% in 2021.
Of those who moved to another community to attend university in the 2023-2024 academic year, 4.5% went to a campus in Madrid, and 1.4% moved to the Murcia region. Andalusia’s higher education system also attracts students from other communities, with Extremadura being the biggest contributor at 19.8%, followed by Castilla-La Mancha (6.5%), Balearic Islands (5.7%), Canary Islands (5.5%), and Murcia (3.9%). Students aiming to access the universities in Cantabria, Castile and León, and Valencia also arrived in Andalusia, with percentages around 1% or slightly higher.
During the 2022-2023 academic year in Andalusia, 10.1% of the 199,725 university applicants went to a campus in a different community, while this percentage increased to 34.9% when the transfer was made within regional boundaries, involving only a provincial transfer.
Regarding the analysis by provinces, for the 2022-2023 academic year, Seville with 51,495 students, ranks as the fourth province in Spain with the highest number of students enrolled in face-to-face education with ordinary residence in the same province, behind Madrid, Barcelona, or Valencia. In Almería, the registered residence in the same province was 16,057, in Cádiz, 28,414. In Córdoba, 19,649, in Granada, 23,356, in Huelva, 11,591, in Jaén, 17,061, and in Málaga, 34,552.