The Government Council of the University of Oviedo has approved sending to the Social Council its proposal to modify an article of the regulations of progress and permenance in Undergraduate and Master's Degrees. The change will translate into a flexibilization of the current regulations and make calls count down only when the students take an examination process. If the proposal is finally approved, the measure will affect the current academic year (2013-2014), or in other words, the students who are currently enrolled at the University of Oviedo.

The current regulations, approved in 2010 and valid since the 2011-2012 academic year, considers that a call of an evaluation has been exahusted even when the student does not take the exam. The Rector, Vicente Gotor, and the Vice-Rector for Students, Luís Rodríguez Muñiz, informed of this agreement "approved with just one abstention" will benefit all the students. The Rector remarked that this modification was an electoral commitment that he can now enforce, after it is approved by the Social Council, the organ in charge of regulating permanence in the Degrees. The University Ombudsman had also recommended flexibilizing the regulations.

The academic institution detected that these regulations have been creating issues and harming students. On the one hand, it created a rise in the number of cancellations of enrollment, without any apparent reason, to avoid exahusting a call and the payment of a second registration during the following academic year.

Moreover, there has also been an increase in the number of requests for enrollment extension and change of dedication regime from full-time to part-time mid-course, as well as an increase in the number of requests for a grace examination after exahusting all six of the standard chances and an artificial decrease in the rate of success. In this sense, the Vice-Rector for Students explained that the fact that calls were exahusted led many students to sit for the exams without being properly prepared for them.

Therefore, the number of students who had to request a grace examination after exahusting the standard six calls for a subject reached 70 students during the past academic year.

The Rector also informed the Goverment Council about the topics discussed during the last meeting of the CRUE and the Council of Universities, and showed the concern of the universities due to the objections received by the research projects that have taken place during the past few years, since 2007.