Good news for anyone who wanted to study in Spain but didn’t have a strong background in Spanish language and literature.

Jack Grove at Inside Higher Ed has the story:

Spain seeks to attract more foreign students

Spain has scrapped its university entrance exam for foreign students in a move to establish the country as a major destination for overseas study.

The Selectividad exam, which has been removed with immediate effect, has long been viewed as a barrier to increasing Spain’s relatively low number of international students. It will be removed for Spanish students in 2017-18, with regions set to unveil their own standardized exams.

Only about 74,000 foreign students were enrolled at Spanish universities last year, compared with 425,000 studying in Britain and 300,000 in Germany, official figures show.

But the removal of the test – which the education minister, José Ignacio Wert, branded “Spain’s biggest obstacle to increasing inbound student mobility” – may now allow the country to exploit the growing demand for higher education in Latin America and the Middle East, experts said.

“The exam was in Spanish and based on the Spanish educational system, with parts of it on Spanish literature, so it was very hard for overseas students to pass,” said Antonio de Castro Carpeño, dean of undergraduate studies at IE University, a private institution based in Segovia and Madrid.