“However, since his report in 1997, we have seen the steady rise of the for-profit university sector, particularly in the United States. This sector has a clear purpose: to make money by selling courses. Insofar as this is convergent with the other purposes identified by Dearing, fine; but if, for example, universities were to lose the capacity, as they would under Gats, to cross-subsidise their teaching to allow delivery of intrinsically unprofitable subjects, then significant swathes of subjects would disappear. The advancement of knowledge in those areas would also vanish.”
“Higher education is not a commodity. Public funding through a variety of algorithms recognises, explicitly or implicitly, national need in specific subject areas, and in the UK it is the vehicle for the delivery of social equity through programmes such as widening access. All this would become more problematic were full inclusion of higher education in Gats enacted; universities would probably have to cease to play this type of higher societal role. The only criterion would be profitability.”
Geoffrey Alderman, Dean of the American InterContinental University in London offered another view;
“For some times many countries have operated blatantly unfair policies in order to slow down and stifle, if not to obliterate, the activities within their borders of foreign deliverers of higher education.The General Agreement on Trade in Services, which seeks to ensure greater freedom in the delivery of services across national borders, would abolish these monopolistic practices. A lot of nonsense is talked about “for-profit” higher education providers. All universities in Britain have shareholders. In most cases, there is only one shareholder, the government, which enjoys absolute control over all taxpayer-funded higher education institutions. In the for-profit sector, universities have many shareholders to whom institutions answer. This structure widens opportunities for funding and also acts as a safe-guard for the institution against dominance by just one political stakeholder.”
One British university that wants to go full steam ahead and run themselves as a ‘university business’ is Imperial College, London. Sir Richard Sykes, the founder of GlaxoSmithKline will hope to take home £200,000 p.a. as the new rector. Imperial currently has an outstanding reputation both academically and in research, has 53 spin-off companies and recently signed a new £20m deal with Nikko Ltd. Although Sykes admits
“My parents paid not a penny for my university education. If I had had to pay I probably wouldn’t be here.”, he wants full fees to be implemented with grants to be available for some students and is a strong advocate of the free market being allowed into HE. He said
“That’s what will bring the competition and drive excellence. If we just say to students, ‘you can go to any university and we will pay for you,’ we will still have 148 universities in this country and I’m not sure we need them. We’re a small country. Everything we do is loss-making and it’s just crazy. If we could charge the full economic cost for teaching and research, then universities would be a lot healthier.”
Recently NUS President Owain James wrote in the THES;
The National Union of Students is concerned about the detrimental impact of the General Agreement on Trade in Services on the provision of services in post-16 education. While we welcome more freedom more freedom for students to study abroad and equal treatment of foreign teachers, Geoffrey Alderman’s “level playing field for public and private providers” could mean the following for the United Kingdom:
-Limits on overseas/private higher and further education provision would not be allowed
-Foreign education providers could access state subsidies
-Government subsidy in the form of student support could also be deemed an unfair advantage.
-The Department for Education and Skills might be limited in helping to start initiatives such as the e-university as they would have to give equal treatment to any similar foreign provision
-Education policy could be constrained as Department for Edcuation and Skills regulations would have to pass a World Trade Organisation “necessity test” to prove that they achieve a “legitimate objective” and that no commercially less restrictive alternatives are possible.
-The UK’s interpretation of “services supplied in the exercise of government authorty” could be eroded and allow challenges to funding attached to public-private partnerships.
Despite the public services exemption, most universities and colleges are involved in some commercial activity and would not be covered. The NUS’s concern is not how individual governments interpret public service exemption, but the way a WTO dispute panel would adjudicate over an issue.
Gats could dramatically encroach on the UK’s ability to make post-16 policy and posit regulations onto colleges and universities to achieve educational aims, rather than commercial objectives.”
At their recent conference, the NUT voted to back a national demonstration against the privatisation of public services. The National Union of Teachers conference, meeting in Bournemouth, unanimously supported a fightback to defend the public sector. Delegate Hank Roberts said
In the 19th century, private enterprise was proved incapable of providing clean water for all. Public education was brought about when the state was forced by growing working-class political agitation,”
A Recent GATS demonstrations was in Denmark on the 20th of March. 25,000 demonstated in Copenhagen, at the same time similar demonstrations occured in 3 other major cities, already in the morning airport personel closed down Copenhagen airport blockading all entry/exit road and paralizing all flight traffic. Several major factories across Denmark went on strike. About 10,000 students participated in the demonstrations.
I got this from educationet
Will
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