Copyright 2000 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 10-Feb-2* ***
Title: EDUCATION: Diplomas for Sale Make Learning a Luxury
By Gumisai Mutume
MEXICO CITY (IPS World Desk) Feb 9 - "Diplomas from prestigious
universities based on present knowledge and life experience. No
required tests, classes, books, or interviews," promises an
advertisement for a US college. "No one is turned down."
The advertisement, which appeared in electronic mailboxes, web
publications and magazines, offers bachelors, masters, and
doctorate degrees in any field of the applicant's choice. Once
paid for, the diploma can be delivered in a matter of days, it says.
The announcement sums up the transformation of teaching into a
tradable commodity - a trend that many educators find alarming.
Higher education rakes in 27 billion dollars annually,
according to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO). It is among the five biggest service export-earners in
the US.
Britain and France are also major exporters of education,
mainly selling it to their former colonies.
The conversion of education from a public service to private
commodity - seen in the growing numbers of private colleges,
declining government spending and investments by multinationals -
is not going unnoticed.
Education International (EI), a federation of 23 million
teachers and workers from 152 countries, says it opposes the
establishment of virtual schools and universities because they are
"private, unregulated institutions oriented towards specific
training courses, related to the interests of the investors
without any real quality controls."
EI is using its Global Campaign for Education to pressure
governments and intergovernmental agencies to provide free,
quality education for all before 2015. The renewed call comes ahead of its
Global Action Week for Education from April 3-8.
EI's efforts are drawing attention to the dramatic increase in
world trade and foreign investment, and the impact on citizens of
the globalisation of the world economy. According to the World
Bank, world exports of goods and services almost tripled between
the 1970s and 1997.
While there is growing acknowledgement that knowledge is a key
factor in the eradication of poverty, liberalisation of the sector
is making education accessible only to those who can afford to
pay.
Today, more than 75 percent of college students in the
Philippines, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan study at private
universities, notes academic Philip Altbach. More than half the
enrollments in Indonesia, India and Brazil are in private
institutions.
Private colleges are also the most rapidly growing sector in
Central and Eastern Europe, and in Latin America, and are
beginning to take hold in Africa, he says.
"By contrast, just 20 percent of US students attend private
colleges and universities, and the large majority in most Western
European countries study in public universities," notes a report
by Altbach, a professor and director of the Centre for
International Higher Education at Boston College.
Education International says more than 125 million children,
especially in poorer nations, are denied education because they
cannot afford the fees. The main question now, EI says, is how
developing countries will escape this vicious circle.
Nine major developing countries - Bangladesh, Brazil, China,
Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan - are home
to nearly three billion people. They also have 70 percent of the
world's adult illiterates and more than half of the world's
out-of-school children, notes EI.
And as the economic liberalisation process intensifies,
governments will be under even greater pressure to privatise
education, health care and other public services.
"In Central America, they are called 'garage universities'
because of their modest facilities and low standards. In Beijing,
there are estimated to be more than 200 new private post-secondary
institutions, only a handful of which are recognised by the
ministry of education," says Altbach.
"Yet students flock to these new schools because of the pent-up
demand for access to higher education," he adds. "Almost without
exception, private universities depend on tuition revenues to
survive. They are truly driven by market forces."
Recently, more than 40 nations included education as one of the
services covered by the General Agreement on Trade and Services
(GATS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) - a clear indication
that they believe market forces will deliver education to their
populations.
"In the wake of this transformation, teachers become commodity
producers and deliverers, subject to the familiar regime of
commodity production in any other industry, and students become
consumers of yet more commodities," notes David Noble, a historian
at Toronto's York University, in a series of reports called
"Digital Diploma Mills."
"The buying and selling of commodities takes on the appearance
of education," he says.
Since the WTO was formed, many governments throughout the world
have retreated from the universal provision of free public
education despite being parties to the UN Declaration of Human
Rights and/or the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In April, world leaders will meet at the World Education Forum
in Dakar, Senegal - convened by UNESCO, the UN Development
Programme and the World Bank - to review the plans and promises
they made 10 years ago in Jomtien, Thailand to ensure education
for all by this year.
In some areas, there has been actual regression. UNESCO
estimates that 142 million African adults are illiterate, compared
to 126 million in 1980, and some 14 countries continue to have
illiteracy rates close to 60 and 70 percent of the adult
population.
"African education has often tended to concentrate on elites
rather than to reach the marginalised masses of learners," says
Vinayagum Chinapah of UNESCO. "To aggravate matters, countries
have often borrowed 'standard' models of education for all which pay
little or no attention to country-specific issues."
In the era of private education, three types of institutions
have emerged - self-funding private colleges, public institutions
that are being privatised and higher education multinationals.
Universities are now listed on the Manila Stock Exchange while
many formerly subsidised public institutions now ask students to
pay as they compete with multinational universities - colleges in
one country collaborating with institutions or business firms of
other countries to offer joint degrees or franchised academic
products.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is currently
negotiating a stake in a global network of universities known as
Universitas 21, spanning Australia, Britain, China, Canada, New
Zealand, Singapore and the US. The project aims to create a global
network that would deliver education via the Internet.
Public universities forced to cope with the new trends have
seen differing results. Peking University has established a successful
software company to earn revenues, while professors have to
augment
their salaries through consulting.
At the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a move
by the government to make students pay the equivalent of about 140
dollars a year in place of free tuition resulted in a strike that
lasted almost 10 months, and which finally ended only because of
police action last weekend. (END/IPS/CE/gm/ks/00)
Origin: Rome/EDUCATION/
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[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
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