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UNESCO in action education: Borderless Education
New technology, spiralling demand and economic liberalization are profoundly changing education. 'McDonaldizing' it say the critics. Making it accessible to vast new numbers of students, say others.
Is education a commercial service that can be traded like any other? Yes, says the World Trade Organization, which, through its General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), recognized education as a tradeable commodity in 1995. No, say angry academics and student groups around the world, who, fearing the “McDonaldization” of education, are radically opposed to the idea.
Fuelling this passionate debate has been the explosive growth witnessed in the international trade of education services over the last decade. Higher education and specialized training, especially have become big profit-spinners for private or corporate providers, and a much needed source of income for cash-strapped public universities and institutions suffering from declining state-budgets and ever-increasing numbers of students.
According to the OECD, the higher education market in its member countries is conservatively worth some $30 billion annually. In 1999 there were 1.47 million foreign students studying in tertiary education in OECD countries, an increase of more than 100,000 over 1998. Education accounts for 3.5 percent of service exports in the United States, earning more than US$10 billion annually, and two of the biggest firms selling higher education there, Apollo and Sylvan Learning, are now quoted on the stock-exchange. In Australia, which with the United Kingdom dominates the world market, education has become the third largest service export: since 1980 the number of foreign students enrolled at Australian institutions has multiplied more than 13-fold.
The range of providers has also dramatically evolved, from traditional universities and institutes of higher learning to virtual organizations specialized in e-learning, and from private companies and international corporations to partnerships between private and public groups, not-for-profit organizations and media groups. News Corporation, for example, through its subsidiary Worldwide Learning Ltd., has teamed up with a consortium of 15 Scottish Universities and 20 commercial companies to market Scottish higher education programmes globally, particularly in North America, the Middle East, Malaysia and China. The African Virtual University, which was initially established as a World Bank project, is now an independent nonprofit organization serving 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Since its inception in 1997, more than 24,000 students have completed courses in techology, engineering, business and sciences and more than 3,500 professionals have attended executive and management seminars.
160 MILLION BY 2025
The globalizing economy and job market, with its need for increasingly skilled workers, and the rise of information and communication technologies that have made “borderless education” a reality, are driving private sector growth, which is set to continue at breakneck pace. According to Merrill Lynch, a US-based investment bank, today’s 80 million students will have doubled by 2025.
Developing countries or countries in transition, are keen supporters of these developments. The latest EFA Global Monitoring Report, clearly showed that the costs of achieving education for all by the deadline of 2015 (set at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, 2000) had been seriously underestimated and that national budgets and international aid would have to be dramatically increased. However, many governments argue they simply don’t have the resources, and see foreign or private services as a means of filling the gap, and accelerating the development of national university systems. In China, for example, 36 percent of higher education students are enrolled in private institutions. In Poland, which had almost no private institutions in 1989, there are now more than 180, providing courses for third of the country’s student body. According to a series of case studies prepared by UNESCO, such new providers account for 55 percent of all “new” and “very new” universities in Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen, while in Kazakhstan 70 percent of all universities are private.
HORSE-TRADING
While few would criticize the vastly increased access to education that such developments seem to offer, many consider that “horse-trading” education will have disastrous consequences. They want it withdrawn from the list of 12 services covered by the GATS. Iberian and Latin American academics, who signed the Porto Alegre Declaration of 2002, maintain that it will lead to “deregulation of the education sector with the removal of legal, political and fiscal quality controls”, and fear “drastic public financial support cutbacks.” The British Association of University Teachers adds that it will also threaten job security, professional autonomy and status, academic quality, and will have a negative impact on academic freedom, intellectual property rights and access to education. The National Union of Students in Europe believes that “the concept of the student as a consumer and education as a product fails to acknowledge the importance of education as a social tool and runs counter to the creation of a knowledge-based society, with democratic, tolerant and active citizens.” Their Canadian counterparts argue that “it is time to protect the essential role of this public service, not to subordinate education to market forces, undermine its accessibility, and exacerbate social inequalities.”
Other GATS observers dismiss these claims as unfounded. Pierre Sauvé of the OECD describes the agreement as “arguably the most development-friendly of all Uruguay-Round pacts” and believes that “it is not likely to be a driving force or even a major consideration behind changes” already occurring in the education sector. “Governments,” he says, “can use the GATS selectively to encourage investment in sectors of their choice, subject to the conditions they wish to impose or retain […] the agreement also permits governments to maintain foreign ownership restrictions in sectors where they have made commitments (and) promotes greater predictability (but not irreversibility) of commitments, a potentially important element in attracting investment in developing countries.”
UNESCO’s main concern is to ensure that global higher education standards do not fall victim to the rigours of the market. “Quality is the issue,” says Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic, the head of UNESCO’s Section for Access, Mobility and Quality Assurance. “The Organization has long encouraged the internationalization of education and the involvement of a range of partners – both public and private. But we must also protect students from inadequate learning resources, low-quality provisions, degree mills and bogus institutions.
“The fast developments of the knowledge society demonstrate that globalization, particularly the globalization of higher education, is irreversible and cannot be stopped. It can, however be tamed through regulation and policy coordination.”
To this end, UNESCO has set up a Global Forum on International Quality Assurance, Accreditation and the Recognition of Qualifications in Higher Education. It’s task is to establish an international quality assurance framework and a code of good practice for providers of higher education. Its first meeting last October set the agenda. A second meeting to be held in Oslo (Norway, May 26-27) will further develop the Forum’s plan of action.
The Forum will also look at ways of updating the six existing regional conventions dealing with recognition of qualifications and ratified by 130 UNESCO Member States, and which could serve as a counterweight to the GATS (see box p.13). “The Forum serves as a complement to GATS, not a rival,” explains Ms Uvalic-Trumbic, “and provides a place where people and institutions involved with higher education can debate the issues from a wide range of perspectives – not just that of the market place – and decide what to do about them.”
Photo © :Ray Tang/Rex Features/Sipa, Paris : British students protest against a government loan scheme for students, and demand grants, not fees.
Globalization and the Market in Higher Education
Quality, Accreditation and Qualifications
As higher education opens up to world markets and the World Trade Organization turns its attention towards universities, quality, accreditation and qualifications are becoming issues of major concern to universities leaders, governments, students and parents. What are the possibilities of dealing with these burning issues in a concerted way? What are national and regional authorities doing to tackle what promises to be the most important issue since the development of mass higher education?
This book examines how far an international framework in quality assurance and accreditation may be envisaged and what are its limitations. Edited by Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic and published by UNESCO Publishing and Editions Economica, Paris, 2002. 224 pp., 16 x 24 cm ISBN 92-3-103870-2 Price: 22 ð¦
Study Abroad
Includes 2,659 entries on courses and scholarships in different higher-education academic and professional disciplines in 129 countries. Addresses (including Internet sites), admission requirements, application deadlines, financial aid, fees and living expenses in each country are presented in English, French or Spanish. It is available online in PDF format at: http://www.unesco.org/education/studyingabroad/networking/studyabroad.shtml
Study Abroad 2000 - 2001 (1999) is also available through UNESCO Publishing, 690 pp., 27 x 19 cm (new format) ISBN: 92-3-003606-4 Price: 18,29 ð¦ More information on the Global Forum and its activities, and basic information on GATS is available online at: http://www.unesco.org/education/studyingabroad/ highlights/global_forum/gf_info_note.shtml © 2002 Worldwide Learning Limited
GATS is not the only game
UNESCO’s regional conventions regulating mutual recognition of higher education studies and degrees were adopted during the 1970s and the early 1980s. They cover Latin America and the Caribbean, the Arab States, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Arab and European States bordering the Mediterranean. The conventions are legally binding, similar to the GATS in that they promote international cooperation in higher education and the reduction of obstacles to the mobility of teachers and students through mutual recognition of degrees and qualifications between the countries that have ratified them. The fundamental difference with the GATS lies in the fact that this latter promotes higher education trade liberalization for purposes of profit. Although the conventions need updating the include new developments in education, especially cross-border supply (the sale of courses on the internet or in the form of CD-Roms and DVDs) and commercial presence (opening private training schools run by foreign firms), they serve as a complement to the GATS by setting the standards and guaranteeing quality control. www.unesco.org/education/html/unesco_norms.shtml |
FOR
Pierre Sauvé, who works in OECD’s Trade Directorate, says increased trade in higher education can help everyone, starting with developing countries that do not have the resources to meet all their students’ needs.
What are the benefits of commercializing higher education?
Technological advance allows us to spread knowledge further, so it makes sense to think about how we can maximize the possible benefits especially since we’ve long known that investment in human capital goes hand in hand with economic development. So we should be glad to see increased trade in higher education. However, for the past few years, it seems to have become almost impossible to utter the word “trade” without setting off loud protests. We should remember that trade enriches nations. The mobility of students, teachers and ideas can be important in bringing cultures closer together.
The problem is that the North seems to have much more to gain than the South…
But would the countries of the South be better off if we didn’t allow their young people to study at the best Western universities? Some developing countries just don’t have enough money to provide the training their citizens need. A number of African countries have agreed to privatize education within the framework of WTO because they want to see foreign suppliers set up operations in their countries to add to the amount of education provided by local private or government suppliers. But isn’t there a risk of making education too uniform? Policies exist to avoid this. For example, an Indonesian law that requires education to be given in this or that language can be extended to foreign suppliers of education. So it’s mostly a matter of regulation and local political choice. Nobody’s forcing WTO member states to make any commitment in the field of education and if they do, they’re free to use local suppliers.
AGAINST
Nico Hirtt, a Belgian teacher and essayist, attacks privatization of universities as ensuring dominance of the Western educational model and widening social inequality.
How has higher education changed in the past 20 years?
Economic interests are now exerting great pressure on public services to adapt to their requirements. Schools are being asked to be more flexible so as to respond faster to the demands of the labour market. At the same time, government funding, on which universities mostly depend, has fallen.
What part does the World Trade Organization play in all this?
The commercialization of education is going to happen however the negotiations turn out. Decisions at an international level will simply accompany the trend. Market forces will lead the way. Preparatory meetings before the 1999 Seattle Summit showed how few obstacles there are to this liberalization. The only real brake to it is the issue of international recognition of diplomas.
What could be the medium-term results of this liberalization?
The danger is a “McDonaldization” of higher education, with the spread of a single formula and copy of the Western model. Faced with increased competition, universities are tempted to invest in subjects that are going to be most profitable for them, to the detriment of less profitable ones such as human sciences. They will also be tempted to move more and more towards doing research that pleases their funding sources. In the future, parents will have to spend a greater part of their income on their children’s education and that will only increase social inequality.
So what’s the answer?
We can’t resist this trend if we just stick to education because all the most human aspects of our societies are being commercialized. It’s a worldwide battle we have to wage against the excesses of economic modernization.
From Education Today, the newsletter of UNESCO’s Education Sector, October-December, 2002. Online at www.unesco.org/education/index.shtml |
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Author(s) |
Sue Williams
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the new Courier No 2
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