A total of 23 Spanish universities have been selected for the development of university training programs for the employment of young people with intellectual disabilities, within the framework of the fourth call for grants from the ONCE Foundation, which will be implemented during the 2020-21 academic year, according to the final resolution, recently published.
The initiative, which is being carried out for the fourth consecutive year, has the financial support of the European Social Fund, through the Operational Program for Youth Employment (POEJ), and was aimed at all Spanish universities and affiliated centers.
The main objective of this program is to involve universities, as decisive agents in social inclusion, in the training of young people with intellectual disabilities, whose access to higher education is still insignificant.
Currently there are no statistical data on people with intellectual disabilities in higher education and their presence is limited to isolated cases. Globally, people with disabilities are only 1.7% represented in undergraduate university studies and the percentage is even lower when we speak of master, postgraduate or doctoral students.
Only between 5 and 6% of people with disabilities have university studies in Spain today, despite the fact that the 2020 European Strategy speaks of a horizon of 40%.
