Neoliberalism comes to Europe

Read More......

I study abroad in Madrid, Spain, at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where I take classes for American students as well as some classes for general students in the Facultad de Politicas y Sociologias (Political Science and Sociology). I went to my regular 13:00 class, sat down outside the classroom on the 4rd floor and waited for the teacher to show up. I started hearing shouting from somewhere, and went to the middle of the hallway and looked down the opening to the main floor and saw about 200 students marching down the hallway. Students started flooding out of classrooms as the march went from one end of the building to the other, climbing the stairs and going back, until finally there were probably 4-500 students right in front of me. Turned out I was standing right next to the bossman's office. The students were chanting stuff like "Fuera la policia!" and "policia nacional!" and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't catch, but they were jumping up and down and having fun so pretty soon I was shouting too. Why not? A big guy was pounding on the door with his motorcycle helmet and people were cheering, but after a bit no one was coming out, so rather then lose energy they marched outside to the parking lot and left me there.

I saw some people from my class and asked them what the heck that was all about. Turns out it was about the "Plan de Bolonia" or the Bologna process. This refers to an agreement by the Education Ministers of the European Union in Bologna, Italy in 1999. The stated goals of this process are academic reforms, such as simplifying the transfer of credit between European universities by creating the European Credit Transfer System, universalizing the equivalent of the undergraduate and graduate degree system in America, and doing away with a somewhat confusing degree system now whereby some degrees that require 3 years of training would have the same title as 5 years, and other essentially technical details regarding curriculum.* The end goal would be to improve European higher education "competitiveness" and standing in the world's education systems.

It all sounds pretty innocuous, and you are probably wondering why Spanish students are so crazy at this point. Well there are other things being imposed on European institutions of higher education that give one pause. The plan calls for reduced public spending on education, which forces institutions to recapitalize, most likely through tuition fees or investment in private companies. Most European universities are very cheap, practically free. One student I talked to after the protest said that he pays 1000 euros for the year, or roughly 1300-1400 dollars in today's ever fluctuating dollar-euro conversion. If Bolonia were implemented, this student probably wouldn't be able to afford to attend.

The academic reforms pose a number of problems within themselves, as well. By condensing curriculum into more hours and less semesters of study, and requiring more hours of credit per semester, it would make it very difficult for students to work and study at the same time, meaning only students with access to the necessary money beforehand would be able to go to school, and coupled with the tuition increases, this would be more closely in line with how the system works in the US, where university attendence is heavily skewed towards the well off and elite, and where "first generation college student" is still rare and impressive enough to be praised (perhaps why the plan is derided as the "Americanization" of the higher education system). The fiercest critics here deride the plan as concentrating the knowledge economy in the already well off classes.

But the main sticking point in all this is the "corporatization" of the universities. There are a few issues here. The first is that the academic reforms would be made with an eye towards corporatizing the curriculum, or reducing a major to its core components to essentially create corporate workers. This would be accomplished by placing curriculum requirements in the hands of the government, who could set credit requirements and eliminate departments or studies as it sees fit. Ironically this represents the great fear of the American left AND right, by giving power to corporations and government. Don't you love it when political opposites can come together? Critics here in Europe say that it would turn institutes of higher learning, which are supposed to be about the learning aspect, would instead become 'diploma mills' that are simply creating workers (squarely a leftist critique). The corporate aspect of this comes from a report done in 1995 by a leading European industrialists lobbying group. Money quote:

The ERT hopes that adding the practical vision of the company to the well-documented opinions of specialists in this field, can help bring about the urgent changes that, in our view, require the current education systems in Europe.

(translated from Spanish) Essentially, critics see this the corporations using government to turn the university system into a sort of farm system for their interests. Americanization, indeed. There are some legitimate good things in this plan, I believe. It would expand on the current exchange program run by the EU, Erasmus, by creating the credit exchange program. This can only lead to increased cooperation among universities. And a similar degree system to the rest of the world would let European students more easily market themselves on the open market. But the attempt to slip in privatization reforms is a classic neoliberal policy a la the World Bank and certain American corporate interests, which I want to get into in later posts, but for now I will say that the protest I was thrust into is a part of the larger 'anti-globalization' movement, which is really an anti-neoliberalism movement. For more on this, read The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein's bible on the rise of "Disaster Capitalism" and the neoliberal takeover.

And the protests are going on all over the world, not just my little corner. This blog posting lists examples of the global protests at schools around the world. One that was in the news here recently was in Italy.

29/10/2008 Protests across Italy continue. Up to 50.000 people protested on the Piazza Navona (Rome) alone. During the protest fascists tried to lead the demonstration, which resulted in clashes. A few students were injured and 20 of them arrested. Twelve schools are being currently occupied by students in Rome alone and more than 150 + 20 faculties across the country. In Milan students clashed with police forces. Acording to the ministry of internal affairs more than 300 demonstrations took place in Italy since Oct.1st. In Naples students occupied the central train station. A general strike is planned for tomorrow. (corriere.it, uniriot.org [for more pictures and clips; in Italian])

Students are riled up on this, as you can see from the many examples at that website. The reason the students here were chanting "Fuera la policia!" or "Kick out the police" was because a similar protest last week in Barcelona ended in the arrest of 30 students by police on campus, and students here aren't exactly thrilled at police intruding on their campus.**

More to come, including a comparision to American schools, more on neoliberalism, and how I ended up getting interviewed after the protest(!).

*Update: I got this wrong. The curriculum changes are more substantial then 'technical', according to a professor at UCM. Not only would the curriculum become more 'corporatized' but the basic requirements for many majors would be substantially changed. According to this professor, students would have to obtain training in subjects that bear no relation to their career goals, deriding it as making "law students learn about gardening and architecture students learn about changing tires." Indeed. Which is as American as college football, when you think about it
**Update: Turns out, students last week were officially charged with crimes for initiating a protest at Universitaria Autonoma de Barcelona last March. The story is here (in Spanish).