Different preferences or opposite directions? : reforms and job satisfaction at public and private universities in Spain

Recent decades have witnessed how both in Spain and elsewhere, legal reforms have helped to transform the management and governance of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). These transformations have changed the conditions in which academics work, with a knock-on effect on their job satisfaction. Although these legal developments in Spain have basically been the same for both the public and private sectors in Higher Education, the evidence gathered in this article shows that the rate of cases of loss of job satisfaction is higher in public institutions than in private ones. The article provides an initial explanation for this situation, whereby the legal reforms have been met with different organisational solutions in these two kinds of institutions.