Fundación Banco Santander agreed to partner with Villanueva University’s foundation on the project of promoting quality higher education that will ensure a bright professional future for its students.

With this goal in mind, they created a scholarship programme based on academic excellence to benefit students enrolled in the various degree courses offered at Villanueva University and the Villanueva University Centre, associated with the Complutense University of Madrid.

The more than two hundred scholarships granted in the 2023/24 academic year allowed first-year students to begin their university studies and rewarded the hard work of students enrolled in subsequent years.

Fundación Banco Santander signed a collaboration agreement with this foundation to support two initiatives designed to facilitate access to higher education and quality employment for students at the ESIC business school and university centre.

The international mobility grants programme awarded fifteen scholarships to Latin American students for completing a master’s course in Management at the ESIC campuses in Madrid, Valencia or Barcelona.

The grants for the Online Bootcamp in Accelerated Entrepreneurship went to ten young university students with an enterprising spirit and skills in this field, enabling them to develop a business model and use the most suitable resources at each stage of the process.

The goal of the University of Cantabria is to contribute to the advancement of society through its commitment to educational and academic excellence. It offers a wide variety of unique degree programmes geared towards job placement thanks to the involvement of various regional companies in both the classroom and off-campus work experiences. The university research department is home to a number of development and innovation teams and offers R&D+i solutions to the private and public sectors.

Fundación Banco Santander supported several of the University of Cantabria’s research initiatives in different ways, such as co-financing subscriptions to academic journals and other bibliographical resources, acquiring and maintaining databases of interest to researchers, and backing the activities of the Emilio Botín digital library.

Fundación Banco Santander is an institutional patron of Fundación Comillas, a public, non-profit foundation that manages a centre of excellence dedicated to promoting the study and teaching of Spanish language and culture.

Its academic activity, based on innovation and technology, is conducted at CIESE-Comillas (International Centre for Advanced Spanish Studies), which offers a variety of graduate and post-graduate degrees and specialisation courses.

One of its main aspirations is to establish a knowledge-generating community that will attract other prestigious institutions in Spain and abroad.

Fundación Banco Santander and Fundación Universia have partnered to develop the MetaRed project and an ISA (Income Share Agreement) funding programme.

The aim of MetaRed is to build inter-university communities in order to share best practices that will help Ibero-American institutions of higher learning to advance in three areas: digital transformation, entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility.

The ISA programme is based on a responsible financing model guaranteed by the European Investment Fund. Its purpose is to improve the employability of low-income or unemployed persons by providing certified training and a specific platform that gives them access to jobs in professions with the highest demand.

Fundación Banco Santander has teamed up with the National Distance Learning University (UNED) to facilitate the study, design and implementation of several of its education, job placement and entrepreneurship programmes.

Educational initiatives include grants to encourage students to practice sport, scholarships to help students who have completed their first year continue their studies, and mobility grants for PhD candidates enrolled in the UNED’s International Doctorate School.

Predoctoral contracts, off-campus work experience jobs at centres associated with the university and awards for research, knowledge transfer and dissemination were granted to young researchers with the aim of improving their future job prospects.

Finally, one first prize and two second prizes were created within the UNED’s startup programme to enable current students or graduates to launch their own business ideas.

In 2023, Fundación Banco Santander signed a partnership agreement with Oxentia Foundation, part of the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem at the University of Oxford.

The two foundations will work together on different initiatives with the aim of building entrepreneurial networks that connect Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, so that university students can develop or consolidate innovative science and technology projects.

The year 2023 witnessed the launch of Santander X Global Challenge / Transforming the Digital Economy, a competition that invites startups and scaleups in these eleven countries to come up with innovative solutions to the challenges that digitalisation poses for industry, the corporate world and society as a whole.

Fundación Banco Santander supports Fundación UCEIF by offering a free training and advisory programme called Santander X Explorer that aims to promote talent and entrepreneurship among young people.

Candidates must present innovative business ideas related to achieving one or more of the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda.

The best proposals are chosen by participating institutions, which last year came from Germany, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Peru and the United States. During the training process, the aspiring entrepreneurs will be able to assess the viability of their projects, acquire business startup and management skills, and be introduced to key professionals in the field of entrepreneurship (investors, agents, successful entrepreneurs, etc.).