Throughout this academic year, with relative frequency and coinciding with the publication of the most prestigious rankings of all the universities in the world (Shanghai Rankings, Q. S. World University Rankings, Times Higher Education World University Ranking...), the national press has been busy highlighting the importance of universities for the future of our country and has critically analyzed the current university system. Universities are harshly criticized, and at the same time they are gratuitously blamed for being the main responsible for the underemployment, if not unemployment or the precariousness of work, to which young university students are doomed when they leave the classrooms. I do not deny that universities can do more, but I think that the causes of these labor situations are much more complex, they are very intertwined and it strikes me that, on occasions, those who protest the most are the ones who could do the most to solve them.

Although it is true that the economic crisis has a negative impact on the development of academic work, our universities are affected by a more decisive fact: over the last fifty years, the university institution has gone from being a vital paradigm to a useful knowledge paradigm, as Professor Ana Marta González, scientific director of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, rightly points out. This fact has led students, immersed in this academic style, to strive to learn procedures and techniques, and to enrich themselves with the scientific achievements of the different fields of knowledge, but not to acquire non-utilitarian moral habits. Thus, it is safe to say that the years students spend in university classrooms make them people who know more, but it cannot be said that they make them better people.

The vital paradigm radically accepts that truth is autonomous, that is, that it transcends the human person, and from this perspective, it understands that all academic work is a respectful approach to truth, since it is revealed to man when he perseveringly seeks it. The complete university student, therefore, should not aspire to possess the truth, but to be possessed by it. The vital paradigm, in final, leads to an approach staff and sincere with the truth and necessarily demands the cultivation of the most worthily human moral virtues.

It would be advisable that, from the public sector and above all, from the private sector, there should be generous foresight - relying on the magnificent university professionals that exist throughout Spain and, without short-sighted impatience, to provide universities with the freedom manager, both economic and decision-making, of which they are currently lacking. And the fact is that without freedom, and without reasonable stability, it cannot be expected that the university institution, without ceasing to pursue excellence in the cultivation of useful knowledge and some specific professional skills, develop ambitious and effective programs to promote educational conditions in university environments that allow students to freely make decisions that result in their own improvement staff, as men or as women, and thus prepare themselves to serve society generously.

We have gone through some painful years of economic crisis in Spain, which has been solved internally by the silent generosity of families and so many altruistic organizations. Fortunately, it seems that future expectations, if the antagonistic positions of our politicians are overcome, are hopeful, despite the fact that some analysts are wary of the stability of our economic growth; but the underlying problem has not been solved, because this crisis has not had its origin in the professional shortcomings of our university students, but in a loss of the ethical sense of the human person. It will not be solved, therefore, with a university conceived as a paradigm of useful knowledge, but with the moral rearmament of university levers with a deep and lively ethical dimension.