Grupo de Discussão e de Acção com o objectivo de Parar o Processo de Bolonha. O processo que mais atenta o Ensino Superior Europeu está em marcha rápida, corroendo e destruindo a qualidade, a justiça e o acesso ao Ensino Público. O direito de aprender tem que ser inabalável.
Estudantes alargaram os protestos contra o pagamento de propinas ocupando instalações de universidades em Berlim e Munique.
Em Munique, centenas de estudantes ocuparam a Aula Magna da Universidade Ludwig Maximilian e resolveram manter-se em debate permanente sobre a reforma do ensino superior naquelas instalações.
Em Berlim, estudantes da Universidade Livre e da Universidade Humboldt ocuparam também salas de aula e fizeram plenários para aprovar moções de protesto. As ocupações deverão manter-se nos próximos dias, disse um porta-voz dos manifestantes.
Em Tuebingen, no sul da Alemanha, a polícia pôs fim à ocupação da Universidade local por cerca de 200 estudantes, que depois de alguma resistência abandonaram pacificamente o campus universitário.
Outras reitorias, como as das universidades de Berlim, por exemplo, preferiram dialogar com os estudantes e negociar um prazo para abandonarem as salas de aulas.
Segundo a comissão coordenadora dos protestos, os estudantes ocuparam instalações universitárias em 20 cidades do país. Tudo começou há alguns dias na Universidade de Viena (Áustria), onde um grupo de estudantes exigiu melhores condições de trabalho e estudo. Entretanto, os protestos alastraram a vários países da Europa, embora as revindicações sejam diferentes.
Os estudantes alemães exigem sobretudo a abolição do pagamento de propinas e criticam a implementação dos chamados cursos de Bolonha, que se destinam a unificar o ensino superior na União Europeia, e a substituir as clássicas licenciaturas de cinco anos por um bacharelato de três anos, seguido ou não por um mestrado de dois anos.
Em declarações à emissora pública SWR, a ministra do Ensino Superior alemã, Annete Schavan, pediu aos governos estaduais, que constitucionalmente têm a tutela do ensino, para acelerarem as reformas do Processo de Bolonha. "A política educativa tem de ser credível e as matérias desnecessárias têm de ser suprimidas dos cursos, para aliviar a carga horária dos estudantes", defendeu a ministra democrata-cristã.
A oposição alemã solidarizou-se com os estudantes e acusou Annete Schavan de culpar os governos estaduais pela má situação no ensino superior.
Cerca de 100 alunos da Universidade de Brasília (UnB) ficaram nus ou seminus, nesta quarta-feira [11 de Novembro], durante uma manifestação de apoio a Geisy Arruda, a estudante de Turismo que chegou a ser expulsa da Universidade Bandeirante (UniBan), em São Bernardo do Campo (SP), por assistir [às] aulas usando um vestido curto.
"Pela liberdade de expressão e o fim da opressão machista", diziam alguns cartazes usados no protesto dos estudantes da UnB.
No último dia 22 [de Outubro], Geisy teve que deixar a UniBan de São Bernardo do Campo sob escolta policial depois de ser hostilizada e agredida verbalmente pelos estudantes da instituição simplesmente por usar o vestido curto.
O grupo comparou o caso da UniBan com situações de preconceito e machismo registados na UnB. Um exemplo citado durante a manifestação foram os actos de violência sexual ocorridos na Universidade, como o ataque a uma estudante de 18 anos, em Abril deste ano.
A estudante de Serviço Social e militante do Klaus, grupo da causa GLBT da UnB, Luana Gaudad, 20 anos, afirmou que "Todos os dias as mulheres e outras minorias sofrem agressões na Universidade. São agressões verbais, falta de segurança e assédios por parte de professores e funcionários. Todas as minorias, aqui, estão vulneráveis e expostas".
O protesto foi convocado pelos alunos da Sociologia, e rapidamente se espalhou por email e pelo Orkut. "Acreditamos que o movimento estudantil, assim como o movimento social, não pode aceitar nenhuma forma de agressão, machismo ou preconceito", disse Rodolfo Godoi, estudante de sociologia.
No domingo passado, a UniBan anunciou que tinha decidido expulsar Geisy devido a sua "flagrante falta de respeito aos princípios éticos, à dignidade académica e à moralidade". A onda de protestos gerada pela decisão da Universidade foi tamanha que levou a instituição de ensino a readmitir a estudante dois dias depois de expulsá-la.
Courses in Creative Enterprise and the Printing Schools and some staff members have been earmarked for redundancy by Sandra Kemp, the Head of College (appointed in February 2009) in order to align the LCC it with its "core strengths" and make up for a deficit of £1.3 million. A possible restructuring plan was communicated with just two members of the SU: Helen Gimber, SU President and Andrea Strachan, SU General Manager in late June 2009.This restructuring will mean that a number of courses in the Printing and Creative Enterprise schools will be closed. This includes the popular BA Marketing and Advertising and MA Marketing Communications degrees. From the Creative Enterprise school, only courses in PR and Creative Advertising Strategy will survive the restructuring plans. These measures involve not only high staff redundancy numbers, but also the devaluation of the degrees of thousands of current students and alumni.
Foi com espírito de colaboração e de abertura que, ainda antes de se iniciar a actual legislatura, apontei um conjunto de objectivos que poderiam constituir o Programa do Governo na área do Ensino Superior.
Em primeiro lugar, a urgência de ordenar a oferta educativa. Existem cerca de 4000 cursos registados, sendo 1874 de licenciatura ou de mestrado integrado, com mais de 800 designações distintas. Esta diversidade não é uma mais-valia do sistema e dificulta a sua legibilidade.
Defendo que cursos com um conteúdo nuclear semelhante tenham a mesma designação e que cursos com um conteúdo nuclear diferente tenham designações diferentes, o que não acontece actualmente.
Um equilíbrio satisfatório poderia ser que a definição da designação dos cursos de 1º ciclo e de mestrado integrado fosse feita em sede de regulação, ficando os restantes ao critério das instituições.
Um segundo ponto passa pela racionalização da rede pública de instituições.
Quinze universidades, quinze politécnicos e quatro escolas não integradas, sem qualquer política de articulação entre elas ou programa de financiamento que a sustente, fazem do nosso sistema apenas um somatório de partes.
Venho propondo a criação de Regiões Académicas, agrupando ou articulando numa base regional as instituições. Apesar de esta ideia ser autorizada pelo actual RJIES, é necessário que o Governo promova, por sua própria iniciativa, a criação de mecanismos de coordenação.
Uma terceira acção é a de repensar toda a política de financiamento. É necessário fechar o actual ciclo de estrangulamento financeiro das Universidades que, nos últimos cinco exercícios, representou uma redução de 30% do esforço público de financiamento para funcionamento, medido em percentagem do PIB.
É necessário construir um novo modelo de financiamento numa base plurianual, quer em termos de funcionamento, aproximando-nos dos valores médios europeus, quer em termos de investimento, contratualizando Planos de Desenvolvimento em função dos objectivos pedagógicos e científicos.
É necessário ainda que o binómio Acção Social/Propinas seja analisado, tendo como certo que as portas do Ensino Superior actualmente se fecham, por razões económicas, a uma parte da população, que é necessário aumentar a taxa de escolaridade neste nível de ensino e que as propinas são das mais elevadas da Europa.
Em quarto lugar, é necessário clarificar o conceito de autonomia. Com as recentes reformas da administração pública e o RJIES, temos hoje um quadro de funcionamento, em termos dos constrangimentos burocrático-administrativos, ainda mais limitativo do que há quatro anos. Entreabre-se a possibilidade de aproveitar a via das fundações públicas de direito privado, mas urge que se definam com clareza os mecanismos simplificados que esta via comporta.
O quinto e o sexto pontos apontam, respectivamente, para o retomar do processo de avaliação, corrigindo o erro que constituiu a interrupção do sistema de avaliação antes de pôr a funcionar uma alternativa, e para uma reaproximação entre as Universidades e o sistema científico – sabendo que nenhum país pode ambicionar a um sistema científico de qualidade sem assegurar igualmente o desenvolvimento das suas instituições universitárias.
Fernando Seabra Santos Reitor da Universidade de Coimbra e presidente do CRUP
Cerca de um terço dos alunos de baixo rendimento deixaram a universidade entre 1995 e 2005.
O aumento de propinas levou ao afastamento de alunos de famílias com baixos rendimentos.De 1995 a 2005, período em que foi introduzido o modelo de propinas nas universidades, o ensino superior ficou mais elitista. Foi esta a conclusão apresentada por Belmiro Cabrito na sua intervenção no FES 2009 [O financiamento do Ensino Superior], conferência dedicada ao financiamento superior organizada pela Universidade de Lisboa (UL).
Segundo os números apresentados pelo professor do Instituto de Educação da UL, a percentagem de alunos de rendimento baixo no ensino superior desceu um terço nesses dez anos, especificamente de 12,5% para 8,5%. Quase todos esses alunos foram ‘substituídos' por estudantes que vêem de famílias de rendimento médio, com a percentagem a subir de 69,9% para 73,8%. A percentagem de alunos de rendimento alto e médio alto manteve-se essencialmente igual, passando de 17,6% para 17,7%.
Belmiro Cabrito comparou estes números com os dados da população geral do censo de 2001, que dividiam o país em 9,9% de rendimento alto e médio alto, 52,1% de rendimento médio e 38% de rendimento baixo. "O grau de equidade da universidade portuguesa, é bastante baixo, remetendo para uma universidade ainda de elites. Em termos evolutivos, o elitismo da universidade portuguesa agravou-se", conclui o economista. "Esta tendência é notória e deve-se provavelmente à nova política de propinas. Em 1995 a média de pagamento de propinas era de 300 euros. Em 2005 passou a ser de 900 euros".
A primeira intervenção do dia coube a Luísa Cerdeira, que apresentou algumas das conclusões retiradas de um inquérito realizado em 2005 a uma amostra de alunos universitários. No que respeita às propinas, os estudantes responderam que, se estas aumentassem menos de 50%, os alunos tenderiam a ir trabalhar para pagar os estudos. Se o aumento fosse para mais de 50%, a tendência é para abandonar os estudos, sendo que essa tendência é maior ainda no ensino privado.
"Os alunos consideram que o ensino superior é um bem público que deve ser suportado pelo Estado e não concordam que as propinas sejam um factor de melhoria da qualidade do ensino", lembra a administradora da UL. A maioria também discorda da criação de um valor da propina ajustado em função do rendimento esperado após a obtenção da formação superior.
O papel do Estado Outro dos valores comparados na sessão remeteu para a comparticipação do Estado no financiamento do ensino superior, mantendo-se a tendência que aponta para valores de 44% para o Estado e 56% para os estudantes. "Não houve mudanças significativas no sentido de uma maior participação do Estado na prestação de um serviço público. Estes valores tornam-se ainda mais significativos se compararmos o dinheiro que cada um destes grupos tem à partida", comentou Belmiro Cabrito. Nicholas Barr, professor inglês que esteve presente no primeiro dia da conferência e é conhecido como um dos maiores defensores do sistema de propinas, utilizou a sessão de debate para defender esse modelo. "É importante fazermos uma distinção. Uma questão é dizermos que o ensino superior deve ser acessível aos mais desfavorecidos, o que deve acontecer. Outra bem diferente é dizer que o Estado o devia disponibilizar de graça", defendeu o professor dando o exemplo de um bem essencial como o da comida. "Querer facilitar a compra de comida para famílias mais pobres não quer dizer que ela deva ser disponibilizada de graça para todos".
Em resposta a esta teoria, Belmiro Cabrito lembrou que, embora a compreenda, "num país com 38% dos seus cidadãos com rendimento baixo, recuso-me a acreditar que só 8,5% não sejam ‘atrasados' em relação ao resto da população".
Precari e studenti della Sapienza manifestano contro il governo mentre Napolitano e Frati premiano le migliori ricerche. Come sul Titanic. Il presidente della repubblica Napolitano visita la Sapienza per premiare i ricercatori meritevoli, gli studenti, i dottorandi e i ricercatori precari protestano: in due si calano dai tetti della facoltà di Lettere reggendo uno striscione che recita "La ricerca è in bilico, non tagliate la corda". L'azione di oggi si inserisce nella campagna "La Gelmini non ci merita" e rilancia le mobilitazioni di questo autunno contro i tagli e la riforma annunicata dal governo per fine Ottobre.
Gli studenti e i precari dell'università "La Sapienza" di Roma hanno manifestato durante il convegno in cui il presidente Giorgio Napolitano e il rettore Luigi Frati hanno premiato le migliori ricerche dell'ateneo. Letteralmente appesi a venti metri d'altezza, un ricercatore precario e una studentessa hanno aperto uno striscione con il messaggio "La ricerca è appesa a un filo, non tagliate la corda" davanti al Rettorato. La protesta è continuata anche durante la premiazione in Aula Magna: sono stati esposti cartelli che richiamavano all'attenzione del presidente della Repubblica i provvedimenti del ministro Gelmini sull'Università e sulla ricerca.
Students work at terminals in a state-of-the-art library at Tsinghua University in Beijing. China is plowing money into top universities while also establishing vocational programs and enabling more students to go to college.
Across East Asia, governments are funneling resources into elite universities, financing basic research, and expanding access to vocational and junior colleges, all with the goal of driving economic development.
Hong Kong and Singapore, compact port cities that have lost their traditional importance as logistics and manufacturing centers, are rushing to turn themselves into centers of innovation.
China has invested in a group of select universities that it hopes will become globally renowned hubs of technological and scientific research, while in South Korea, leaders are spending billions of dollars on projects designed to spawn top-notch laboratories and attract foreign universities as partners. And as Taiwan's economy loses ground to China, it is trying to draw top talent through aggressive international recruitment.
Asia's approach to higher education contrasts markedly with that of the United States, where, even before the global recession hit, the percentages of state budgets dedicated to higher education have been in steady decline.
"Out here the government is looking at education as a driver of the country's future, so it isn't last in line," says Rajendra K. Srivastava, provost of Singapore Management University, who spent 25 years at the University of Texas at Austin.
Continuar a ler o artigo...As American educators fret over a "dropout crisis," some Asian countries report graduation rates in the 90th percentile. Many of those graduates are in strategic fields like engineering. Jee-Yeon Kim (above) studies electrical engineering at Korea's National NanoFab Center. The goal is to produce students who will contribute to indigenous research.
In Texas, he recalls with dismay, "when they were allocating the state budget, education was one of the last things to get approved."
But while the government-led push is quite different from America's decentralized approach, Asian college and government officials say they are taking cues from the United States. Specifically, they hope to replicate America's post-World War II path to growth.
"Asians have studied very carefully the reasons why Western populations are now successful," says Kishore Mahbubani, a dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. "They realize that unless you create good universities and attract the best minds in the world, you can't move into the next phase of development."
All this is against the backdrop of declining American dominance in global research. A 2008 National Science Foundation report found that patents filed by inventors living in the United States had dropped from 55 percent in 1996 to 53 percent in 2005. The foundation attributed the change to an increase in filings by Asian inventors.
The U.S. share of "highly influential" papers published in peer-reviewed journals also fell, from 63 percent in 1992 to 58 percent in 2003—a drop that reflects the rise of China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, the report's authors noted.
"Innovation and its handmaiden, R&D, is driving the global economy," they continued, "and we are seeing more nations recognize this by creating their own version of U.S. research institutions and infrastructure."
The United States continues to lead the world by most measures, including financial support for higher education, top scholarly work, and the production of patents. But Asia is emerging as an increasingly strong competitor.
"It's not so much that the U.S. is on the decline but that the Asian universities are rising," says Gerard A. Postiglione, an expert on Chinese education at the University of Hong Kong. "They're rising along with their economies."
A Shift in Power
Those economies, like their Western counterparts, have foundered in the past year. The South Korean won plunged to an 11-year low in March. Singapore's economy is in a crippling slump, with its Trade and Industry Ministry predicting a contraction of 4 to 6 percent by the end of the year. Hong Kong will probably show a similar drop, and Taiwan has seen a double-digit dip in exports over the previous year. Only China posts continued growth, but the country's future is uncertain, with development likely to augur the death of its manufacturing economy as China prices itself out of the cheap-labor market.
But while many U.S. states slash their higher-education budgets, East Asian countries have faced the crisis by funneling more resources into the future. Certainly the stimulus bill approved by the U.S. Congress this year earmarked millions of dollars for higher education. But that money will run out in the next couple of years.
In contrast, recovery financing in China, South Korea, and Singapore supports basic research and the creation of programs in key fields for innovation. The assumption is that such projects will boost economic growth.
"What we see out here is that if we can get a better educated population it will attract the higher-value industries," says Mr. Srivastava. "We're trying to move up the growth ladder."
Inviting Partners
Whether investment in higher education directly translates into a robust economy, which also depends on factors like tax and trade policies, and an overall culture of innovation, is debatable. But Asia is steaming ahead on faith.
Intent on repositioning its economy around biotechnology and medical sciences, Singapore has invited graduate programs from leading American universities, including the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Duke University, to set up in the tiny city-state, housing them in campuses near state-of-the-art science parks to facilitate the development of spin-off companies.
South Korea hopes do the same with undergraduate institutions. Its Songdo Global University Campus, a new development on Songdo, a man-made island in the Yellow Sea, is designed to entice foreign universities to establish branch campuses, with the goal of enrolling 12,000 students by 2012. The project's developer hopes the universities will interact with the research arms of multinational companies, turning Songdo into a global business hub.
In 2005, Taiwan allocated $1.6-billion for elite universities, aiming to have 10 of Asia's top universities or departments by 2010.
"Every university here is putting a lot of effort into increasing the number of English-language programs," says Angela Fan, deputy dean of international affairs at National Yang-Ming University, in Taipei.
In its bid to become "Asia's world city," Hong Kong is advertising generous research money and relaxing caps on international enrollment. In 2012 its universities will switch from a three-year system inherited from the British to a four-year program with a broader curriculum—a move designed to make them more competitive.
And China is doing everything at once. The country has attracted attention for its success in jump-starting its top universities through a plan known as the 985 Project. But the country's policy makers are equally focused on improving access and overhauling vocational education. Plans include expanding access to higher education on a scale comparable only with postwar America. "They're developing a strategy of walking on two legs," says Qiang Zha, an expert on Chinese higher education at York University, in Toronto.
A Shifting Power Dynamic
The effectiveness of these campaigns varies, but few dispute that East Asia's higher-education push has produced some notable results. With the exception of Taiwan, all the East Asian upstarts now have universities in the top 100 on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings (although they rank much lower on the more research-focused "Academic Ranking of World Universities," by Shanghai Jiao Tong University).
One measure of Asia's impact is its effect on countries that traditionally dominate global higher education. In 2006 experts at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development prepared a report for the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based research group, praising South Korea for near-universal high-school education and noting the rise of China and India. The report stressed, "There is no way for Europe to stop these rapidly developing countries from producing wave after wave of highly skilled graduates."
Ma Wanhua, a professor at Peking University Graduate School of Education, spent last year on a fellowship in Germany, where she says she was frequently approached with questions about Chinese policy. "Many European countries are starting to think about the 985 Project as they try to build up their own research universities," she says.
The power dynamic is shifting within the region as well, with China making the biggest waves. Analysts say Japan unveiled its Centers of Excellence program, which entails generous grants to select institutions, in response to China's reforms.
Michael Spence, vice chancellor of the University of Sydney, recently said he fears losing Chinese students—which at his institution make up 40 percent of international students—not to universities in the West but to China's own.
Regional development is not a zero-sum game. Discoveries published in international journals are available to all researchers, and strong Asian universities can be a boon for Western academics seeking collaborators. Better training also means more qualified candidates for U.S. graduate programs.
But while it is impossible to know how many Chinese students now choose China over, say, Australia, it is clear that more now elect to stay close to home. Unesco's "2009 Global Education Digest" found 42 percent of mobile students in East Asia and the Pacific remained within the region in 2007—up from 36 percent in 1999.
No Choice but to Change
Concern over Asia's rise is hardly new. "The idea that the U.S. is falling behind Asia in education is an old one," says Ann White, director of the Institute of International Education, in Hong Kong. "I remember hearing it when I was in university 25 years ago."
Hysteria about the loss of U.S. dominance dates to the 1950s, when pundits sounded alarms about the rise of Soviet universities. Five decades later, Ms. White says, the evidence doesn't bear out the claim that the United States is being eclipsed, pointing out that inquiries at her office from students in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Macau who want to study in the States are at an all-time high.
But others note that even if the United States remains the gold standard for now, Asia already outpaces the States in some important areas. As American administrators fret over a "dropout crisis," Asian countries report graduation rates in the 90th percentile.
Many of those graduates are in fields of strategic importance, like science and engineering. The long-term vision across the continent is of producing students who can contribute to indigenous research.
Asia has few alternatives, policy makers say. Small countries like South Korea may be fine for the next two decades, but beyond that the outlook is grim unless they can spur innovation, says Hee Yhon Song, a longtime economic planner for the Korean government who is spearheading the Songdo Global University Campus project.
"We need to improve the quality of Korean universities fast enough to preserve the technology gap between Korea and China and India," says Mr. Song. "The Chinese tiger is growing fast. If we are too slow, the Korean horse will be attacked."
Demographics are another pressure. Birth rates have plummeted across Asia in the past few decades. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Macau have the lowest birth rates in the world, and South Korea is not far behind.
With the number of graduating high-school seniors dwindling, these countries have to look abroad merely to keep enrollment steady.
Hong Kong has steadily raised its cap on international and mainland-Chinese students at public universities, from 2 percent of the total student body in 1993 to 20 percent today. The famously cramped territory has also marked two swaths of land for the establishment of private universities. The new institutions, which won't be subject to caps, may take students that have been locked out of other universities.
The shrinking number of native-born students is behind Taiwan's internationalization as well. More foreign students will not be enough to save some universities, however; in 2006, the Ministry of Education stipulated that institutions that receive low scores in periodic evaluations will be shut down.
But educators and administrators across Asia talk about the enrollment bind as a positive thing. A sense of urgency persuades leaders to preserve resources for education when policy decisions get tough, says Mr. Song. "If they understand that it's a survival strategy, they allocate the money."
The United States, by contrast, often appears slow to act, in the eyes of Asian administrators.
"The United States has been dominant for so long that it tends to take its position for granted," says Jongryn Mo, dean of Underwood International College at Yonsei University, in Seoul. "I am not sure if it understands the challenges arising as the rest of the world catches up."
U.S. Example, Asia Autocracy
It helps that several East Asian powers are governed by technocrats who are adept at making sense of economic forecasts. These leaders were educated at American universities, where they saw how the higher-education system worked firsthand. Now they hope to replicate it.
In China, policy makers looked closely at the California system's master plan before coming up with their two-pronged approach of simultaneously developing mass and elite institutions, says Mr. Zha, the Chinese higher-education expert in Toronto.
Others say infusions of cash to elite universities in Korea, Taiwan, and China are a nod to America's hierarchy of universities.
"The Korean system is very much the U.S. system," says Nam Pyo Suh, president of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, explaining that the country's private universities outnumber its public institutions, and only a small number of those are allowed to excel.
But the abrupt creation of an elite group of universities in South Korea, China, and Taiwan has yielded resentment at institutions excluded from the financial trough.
"We were given a lot of money," says Ms. Ma, referring to Peking University, "and people say, 'What have you done with it?'"
And while Asia's rise may be cut on a U.S. model, the continent's strong commitment to education grows out of a very different style of governance.
Autocratic governments like China and Singapore have the luxury of planning two or three decades in advance. China, which routinely maps out targets to 2050, is expected to unveil a long-term plan for higher education soon—a document that would be unthinkable in the United States. Such countries also have an easier time pushing through unpopular measures, such as mandates that universities offer a set portion of courses in English, which tend not to sit well with faculty members who didn't study overseas.
"In Asia, there's a belief that you need strong government intervention to create good universities," says Mr. Mahbubani, of the National University of Singapore. "In the U.S. there is an assumption that the government does not need to intervene because society will somehow work things out."
Some Asian observers now hold up the global economic crisis as proof that government intervention is necessary. A financial mix that includes substantial endowment money, for example, is feasible only when an economy is in full swing. U.S. universities, Mr. Mahbubani points out, are suffering: "I don't know how they're going to cope in hard times."
An Asian Model?
Beyond a financial and policy commitment, however, it is difficult to discern a larger pattern in Asia's education push. At the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education meeting in Beijing this past spring, some representatives hinted at developing an Asian answer to the Bologna Process, the European effort to adopt uniform degree standards. But most agreed such a process is still far off.
"Asia has always put a lot of emphasis on education for economic development," said Anthony Cheung, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, as he prepared to host a group of Asian university presidents in May. "Now we need to see whether there are any commonalities in our approaches."
At the national level, those approaches have their detractors. Professors in South Korea complain that students study hard in high school—and then abruptly stop.
"They speed up and up until they pass the gate of the university," says Shin-wha Lee, professor of international relations at Korea University. "They don't read Tolstoy, they don't read about democracy, they don't read Marx."
Asia's high graduation rates may simply reflect a lack of academic rigor. In Korea degree attainment is such a sure bet that in the early 1980s the country briefly instituted a "graduation quota" that, before popular protest forced the government to drop it, required universities to fail a specific number of students.
And some say China's push has happened too fast. In the past 10 years, universities were cut loose from central-government financing and encouraged to balance their books. But tuition remains tightly controlled by the government, a gap that forced many universities to take out high-interest loans from local banks. Today many are in debt.
China's student-faculty ratio has skyrocketed, meanwhile. Even with millions of young people vying for scarce jobs, employers complain about the quality of recent graduates.
"China has moved from an elite system to a mass one in five or six years," says Mr. Zha. "In other countries it took 15 or 20 years to accomplish that jump."
In a report released this May that contrasted in tone with its earlier warning about the rise of Asia, the OECD said China needed to raise its spending on higher education to ensure quality. Similarly, in 2003, the consulting firm McKinsey emphasized that quantity is not everything, estimating that only 10 percent of China's 1.6 billion engineers are qualified to work in multinational companies.
Cooperating Across Borders
But in the long run, financing across the region seems secure. The East Asian countries are moving closer, meanwhile, by cooperating on research and dual-degree programs. In crafting a fourth public university, Singapore has settled on two collaborators that reflect the city-state's dual orientation, courting an unnamed Chinese university along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Taiwan is debating whether to admit students from China, a potentially historic move for two countries that still have no diplomatic ties.
Hong Kong's leading universities, meanwhile, are building branch campuses across the border with mainland China in Shenzhen, in an area once dominated by low-end manufacturing. The goal is to take advantage of Chinese-government funds for basic research, says Thomas Wu, director of academic links at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
"The government is trying to redo southern China as an area of technology transfer," he explains, adding that his university's Shenzhen program will enroll up to 200 mainland Ph.D. students. "If that succeeds, then increasingly we will have a role as a center of applied research."
Like administrators and policy makers across Asia, he connects his predictions to the economy. "What's very interesting," he adds, "is how the Chinese economy recovers."
Students and faculty members demonstrate against plans to raise tuition fees and cut workers.
In the sweltering California heat with their placards, posters, red armbands and chants of "no cuts, no fees, education should be free", the demonstrators packed in to Sproul Plaza at the centre of University of California Berkeley campus today meant business.
The crowd cheered and passing cars hooted as speakers implored them to fight state authorities' plans to hike student fees and lay off workers.
Daniella, a petite second-year Latina undergraduate sitting quietly in the shade echoed what many making the rallying calls were articulating. "My whole life I wanted to come here. If they increase the fees I will have to drop out. We have to fight this."
The Berkeley protest was one of many held across California in an unprecedented day of action directed at university authorities and state governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger as he attempts to curb the state's multibillion-dollar budget crisis. Faculty, students and unions from the University of California's 10 campuses including its two most prestigious, UCLA and Berkeley, joined forces in what was the biggest student protest for more than a generation.
The scale of the protests has come as a shock to state authorities. What began as a marginal dispute in the summer between university faculty and their management over cuts in salaries has in recent weeks escalated into a statewide walkout by students and faculty as well as a day of strike action by campus technical workers against layoffs and diminished terms and conditions.
The turning point came two weeks ago when university authorities warned of savage budget cuts to deal with a $750m (£466m) shortfall and mooted huge increases in the cost of tuition. "UC regents vote next week to raise student fees, already up 250% over the last decade, by an additional 30%," was how one group of protesters summed up the situation today.
In a move that will reignite debates around racial inequities in education one group demonstrating labelled the proposed hike in fees as "twisted and racist", saying it would mean more low-income and ethnic minority students would be unable to afford a college education. They also criticised proposals to increase the proportion of out-of-state students - who pay markedly higher fees - to 26% alleging it would further reduce the opportunities for young people from low-income groups or ethnic minorities living in California to secure a university place.
In a swipe clearly directed at the governor's office one provocative leaflet read: "Annually the state pays $49,000 per prison inmate and less than $14,000 per UC student. If the state can lock us up, it can invest in our education for one-third of the cost."
A spokesman for the group Graduate Students of Colour said: "Students of colour are asking a crucial question: Why now, and why us? California's population of college-age adults is majority black and brown. Whatever other reasons are cited, that underlying condition is left unspoken."
In recent years student demonstrations in California have been small-scale and largely single issue-led such as those held after Hurricane Katrina when students protested against the Bush administration's response in the immediate aftermath. Signs that the latest protests were different and that feelings were running especially high were evident in the run-up to the walkout with fringe meetings mushrooming across campuses to galvanise support. At UC Berkeley activists could be seen donning red armbands while at UC Davis one preliminary protest yesterday included a "naked" demonstration by a small group of students accusing authorities of "stripping" the education system.
Facebook and Twitter campaigns were also launched while over a thousand faculty members across all campuses signed an online petition rejecting budget cuts and proposing alternative ways to save money such as trimming the salaries of education bosses and senior officials plus tapping into reserve funds.
For many this latest wave of protest in California is reminiscent of the 1960s when UC Berkeley in particular earned a reputation as the epicentre of student activism when it spawned the Free Speech Movement. It was also the last time a former Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan, was governor. Author and scholar at UC Berkeley's geography department Gray Brechin, who was an undergraduate at Berkeley during the 60s unrest said the current dispute had been "simmering" under the surface for months.
He said many in the university are concerned that California's budgetary problems are being used as "an excuse" to dismantle the state's public university system and move it toward a system reliant on private donors for funding. "California is beyond broke. The wealthiest state in the nation is bankrupt. These problems began a long time ago. What we need is a more progressive tax system to fund the university, not to dismantle it."
The UC system, the largest network of its kind in the US with over 220,000 students and more than 170,000 faculty, is widely regarded as a flagship public university often outperforming privately-funded prestigious schools such as Stanford just a few miles from Berkeley in the home of hi-tech, Silicon Valley. University authorities have staunchly denied suggestions of an attempt to undermine public education.
California's colossal budget crisis has become an ever-increasing thorn in the side of the governor as more people feel the pain of cuts in expenditure on schools and other services on top of the fallout from recession. The state is an estimated $15bn in debt with no way out in sight.
Today's protests come close on the heels of another politically sensitive initiative. Just last week the governor granted early release to thousands of prisoners in a cash-saving exercise. But if the prisoner release controversy was embarrassing, the dramatic public education furore looks set not only to be a more enduring and contentious problem but possibly one that attracts nationwide attention.
A maior factura para frequentar as universidades é paga pelas famílias.
As famílias portuguesas pagam mais pelo ensino superior que o Estado. Esta é uma das principais conclusões que Luísa Cerdeira, administradora da Universidade de Lisboa, retira da análise que fez ao estado actual do financiamento no ensino superior em Portugal e na Europa. A tese de doutoramento desta economista revela como este dado pode funcionar como um factor desmobilizador na aposta numa formação mais elevada. "Em Portugal, o investimento na educação representa 11% do PIB ‘per capita'. Em toda a Europa, só o Reino Unido tem uma percentagem maior", salienta Luísa Cerdeira. "E quando comparamos os apoios públicos, aí vemos como estamos verdadeiramente mal". E como se reflecte esta situação nos números? O custo médio do ensino superior na economia de um estudante é 9.461 euros, que se dividem em 30% para despesas de educação e 70% para despesas de vida. Os dados revelam também que, entre 1994/95 e 2004/05 houve um aumento nominal de 37% dos custos dos estudantes do universitário público e 31% dos custos do universitário privado. O valor das propinas nas universidades públicas teve um acréscimo de 452%.
In Serbia, the Bologna process came with an enormous rise of tuition fees from year to year, chaos in the system and impoverishment of the curriculum.
For the tenth anniversary of Bologna declaration, the students of Belgrade universities organized a performance called "What is the price of knowledge?" in the main walking street in Belgrade. While we were sitting on the street and studying, the passers-by were invited to put a price on particular types of knowledge - What is the price of the knowledge of sociology? What is the price of the skill of playing the piano? How much should knowledge cost for that guy in the green shirt, and how much should it cost for the girl wearing sandals? For us, the price of knowledge has been changing from year to year, getting higher and higher, although the knowledge itself stayed the same.
People wrote down their prices on pieces of paper with a bar-code, and gave those to individual students. Most people, actually, thought that knowledge should be free. Some, unlike our university authorities, didn't feel competent to answer this question, so they'd rather leave after a discussion on the government's irresponsibility, the number of students needed in the labor market, the former free education... Some felt that the value of knowledge cannot be expressed in money, so they wrote under the bar-code: "priceless".
If knowledge is priceless, what is actually being bought on the Bolognese "knowledge market"? What is being bought, actually, isn't knowledge. Knowledge cannot be handed out, it is learned. What we are being sold, what our parents pay for through taxes, and then pay for again through the tuition fees, is the process of the accommodation of education to the dictate of the market, the impoverishment of the curriculum and the extinction of "unprofitable" knowledges. If this process isn't stopped, the educational space will soon be turned into a luxury mart for buying diplomas.
Era día 19 de Junio de 2009, se cumplían diez años de la adhesión por parte del Estado español a la Declaración de Bolonia y al oculto plan privatizador y mercantilizador que trae consigo este conflictivo plan universitario.
Estudiantes de todas las regiones y zonas del panorama estatal decidieron juntar fuerzas, aunar esfuerzos y dar un último golpe simbólico para finalizar el año. Un golpe simbólico, que pretende señalar que el movimiento asambleario antibolonia sigue vivo, y que el año que seguirá “incordiando” a las autoridades políticas y reivindicando algo tan justo y noble como un debate público y real en el que se decida el sobre el futuro de la universidad.
Alrededor de las 8 de la mañana, y tras una noche conjunta en un centro social de la Comunidad de Madrid, los estudiantes antibolonia empezaron a acudir a la zona elegida, situada en torno a la c/ Alcala, el Ministerio de Educación.
Y así sucedió, consiguieron entrar y tras un período de cierta tensión, se cerraron las puertas y echaron fuera a determinados encargados de prensa, cuya labor consistía en dar cobertura informativa a una acción social. Pero aún así, y a pesar de sus intentos de ocultar lo sucedido, se realizo una gran labor informativa y de difusión con fotos, videos.. Compañeros de medios independientes desempeñaros una esplendida tarea y mostrando así su apoyo a las luchas sociales y populares.
Al poco tiempo, miembros Antidisturbios de la Policía Nacional, acudieron al lugar de lo sucedido. Al menos 6 lecheras aguardaban en la entrada del edificio. 3 miembros de las fuerzas del estado penetraron en el edificio, donde se hallaban los estudiantes. Comenzaron a identificar a los estudiantes que se encontraban fuera del edificio.
Fuera del Ministerio, otro grupo de estudiantes, en torno a unos 15, mostraban su apoyo y solidaridad con los compañer@s de dentro, que se encontraban sentados en el Hall de entrada con una actitud totalmente pacífica y reivindicativa. Se coreaban himnos y cánticos contrarios a Bolonia que provenían de las dos partes, del interior y del exterior. Afuera, los miembros de apoyo repartían panfletos entres los ciudadanos que se acercaban y pasan por el lugar y portaban una larga y amplia pancarta que hacía referencia al Cumpleaños de Bolonia: “Dećimo aniversario de Bolonia: feliz cumple, pero ni uno más. Seguimos en lucha"
Finalmente acudieron los medios convencionales, TVE se presentó en la puerta y entrevistó a varios encargados de prensa. El panorama seguía parecido, hasta que los cuerpos del estado, indicaron a los compañeros de apoyo que abandonaran el lugar en el que se encontraban y se colocaran en la acera de en frente. Así fue. Desde la acera al otro lado del Ministerio, se continuaban lanzando voces en contra de Bolonia y en apoyo a los compañeros que permanecían dentro.
Alrededor de las 10 :45 horas de la mañana comienzan a salir los activistas que se encontraban en el interior del edificio, portando una larga pancarta en la que podía leerse:“ Bolonia cumple 10 años, Ni uno mas”. Acto seguido, los dos grupos se unieron en torno al Ministerio y comenzaron la lectura del comunicado final.
Una acción que pudo salir adelante gracias al compromiso, esfuerzo y participación activa de las estudiantes que decidieron dar un último golpe de gracia, y reafirmarse en las posturas y planteamientos que llevan defendiendo desde hace ya bastante tiempo.
Esta acción pretende ser un acto simbólico, un llamamiento a la continuidad de la lucha y una llamada de aviso y atención: seguimos ahí, con más fuerza aún si cabe. No vamos a parar de protestar y de actuar por aquello en lo que creemos. No cesaran huelgas, manifestaciones, en cierros, acciones mediáticas y ocupaciones simbólicas si son necesarias mientras nuestras demandas no sean escuchadas y tenidas en cuenta en un aspecto social tan relevante como es la educación.
Activists blocked the entrances to university buildings, occupied administrative offices, and marched in protest parades in cities including Berlin and Munich, as well as in university towns such as Heidelberg and Goettingen.
Around half of Germany's states allow universities to charge tuition fees, but most institutions do not and the system is chronically short of funding.
The marchers carried banners reading "Cough up the cash, rise up against social bandits", "Save education, not only the banks" and "Investment in education = guaranteed returns".
Organizers said 240,000 students took part while police estimated a number about half as high, local media said.
Marlene Gesche, a University of Potsdam student, was marching in Berlin because she said she felt cheated out of a decent education due to insufficient funding.
"I'm here protesting because I'm not really learning anything at my university", Gesche said. "There's no money for books. There is also often a lack of instructors".
A group of students chanted: "We're here and we're loud because our education is being stolen".
Organizers of the "Bildungsstreik" (or school strike), a week-long series of protests that reached its climax on Wednesday, said their aim was to spark an election-year public discussion about the future of the education system.
Margret Wintermantel, head of the German Rectors' Conference (HRK) of university presidents, said she could sympathize with some but not all of the reasons for the protests. "The student/teacher ratio is a problem", Wintermantel said.
But she rejected other demands of the protesters including abolishing tuition fees that some states have introduced and abandoning the European-standard bachelor and master degrees that are being phased in over several years.
"It's wrong to say that tuition fees limit equal opportunity for access to higher education", she said. "We haven't seen a decline in attendance where tuition fees have been introduced".
Some states now have fees of about 1,000 euros per year.
Germany's education minister, Annette Schavan, rejected most of the claims by the protesters, saying that on balance the German system had been improved in recent years. "Whoever says we have to do away with the bachelor and masters course of studies has not realized that Germany is part of a European-wide educational area", she told German radio.
PRESS RELEASE: SOAS directorate block occupied over brutal deportation of SOAS University cleaners who won living wage detained after dawn raid.
Students and allies at the University of London’s School of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have occupied the university today to protest against managers’ attacks on migrant workers.
Nine cleaners from the university were taken into detention after a dawn raid by immigration police on Friday.
Five have already been deported, and the others could face deportation within days. One has had a suspected heart attack and was denied access to medical assistance and even water. One was over 6 months pregnant. Many have families who have no idea of their whereabouts.
The cleaners won the London Living Wage and trade union representation after a successful “Justice for Cleaners” campaign that united workers of all backgrounds and student activists. Activists believe the raid is managers’ “revenge” for the campaign.
Immigration officers were called in by cleaning contractor ISS, even though it has employed many of the cleaners for years. Cleaning staff were told to attend an ‘emergency staff meeting’ at 6.30am on Friday (June 12).
This was used as a false pretext to lure the cleaners into a closed space from which the immigration officers were hiding to arrest them.
More than 40 officers were dressed in full riot gear and aggressively undertook interrogations and then escorted them to the detention centre. Neither legal representation nor union support were present due to the secrecy surrounding the action. Many were unable to communicate let alone fully understand what was taking place due to the denial of interpreters.
SOAS management were complicit in the immigration raid by enabling the officers to hide in the meeting room beforehand and giving no warning to them.
The cleaners were interviewed one by one. They were allowed no legal or trade union representation, or even a translator (many are native Spanish speakers).
The cleaners are members of the Unison union at SOAS. They recently went out on strike (Thursday 28 May) to protest the sacking of cleaner and union activist Jose Stalin Bermudez.
The occupation has issued a list of demands to SOAS management:
1. We call on the directorate to request the secretary of state to immediately release the detainees and to prevent the deportation of the three cleaners who are still in detention in the UK. 2. For the directorate to release a public statement condemning what has happened to the SOAS cleaners and calling for their immediate release and return. 3. To campaign for the return of the cleaners who have already been deported. 4. To bring all contract staff in house. SOAS should not use contractors, ISS or others. 5. To keep immigration officers from entering campus under ANY circumstances or other forms of collaboration with immigration or police. Universities are for education not for state violence and oppression. 6. A year's wage as reparations for all detained and deported staff. 7. To hold accountable SOAS managers who were complicit in facilitating the raid and detention of the cleaners, refusing to aid a sick worker and a pregnant woman. 8. To reinstate Jose Stalin Bermudez, the SOAS UNISON branch chair. 9. To respect the right to organise in Trade Unions unimpeded. 10. To provide space and resources for a public meeting to build support for the SOAS 9 and other migrants, in education and beyond, affected by immigration control and racism. 11. Amnesty for all those involved.
One of the detained cleaners today stated, “We’re honest people not animals. We are just here to earn an honest living for our families. SOAS management are being unfair.”
Joanne, one of the occupying students said: “Universities should be sanctuaries: places free of violence and aggression. SOAS’s reputation as a university has been tainted today due to the complicity of state brutality in the arrest of the cleaners.”
Graham Dyer, lecturer in Economics of Developing Countries and SOAS branch chair of lecturers’ union UCU, said: “Our fight has united lecturers, staff and students and has rocked SOAS management. Those managers are now lashing out. It is a disgrace that SOAS management saw fit to use a seat of learning to intimidate migrant workers. This is their underhand revenge and we will do all we can to stop migrant workers paying the price.”
The campaign to stop the deportation is supported by Tony Benn, MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, film director Ken Loach, and many trade unionists and student activists.
John McDonnell MP said: “As living wage campaigns are building in strength, we are increasingly seeing the use of immigration statuses to attack workers fighting against poverty wages and break trade union organising. The message is that they are happy to employ migrant labour on poverty wages, but if you complain they will send you back home. It is absolutely shameful.”
Ken Loach said: “This raid is the action of a bully. Migrant workers are amongst the most vulnerable – poorly paid and far from home. Recent action by Unison to secure better wages and conditions at SOAS was good news. Now we wonder if the SOAS cleaners are being targeted because they dared to organise as trade unionists.”
The current occupation is a reflection of broad outrage against these actions by all sectors of society. This raid is widely seen as a continuation of current trends to remove immigrant labour and to maintain impossibly low wages.
Cleaning contractor ISS used the same tactics against tube cleaners that went on strike with the result that key activists were deported. The use of immigration law is bering used for union busting.
120 professors and about 1,200 students and university workers were beaten and teargassed in the main campus of the University of São Paulo in Brazil last Tuesday (June 9).
Conflicts started after a one month strike of university workers whose employment status is being disputed due to a legal controversy over university autonomy to hire its workers without approval of state representatives. Over one thousand workers might loose their jobs. Workers started a strike on May 5 demanding the preservation of their jobs and other labor demands. On May 27, workers started to block the entrance of four university buildings because, according to them, university management was threatening workers who were using their legal right to strike. On June 1, administration called the military police to intervene. On June 4 professors joined the strike protesting police occupation of campus. on June 5, professors had a two hours meeting with management asking for a non-military solution to the labor conflict. However, common sense did not prevail and military police attacked a peaceful demonstration of students and workers yesterday (June 9). 120 professors were discussing the crisis when the meeting was interrupted by news of a police attack. A few minutes later teargas and concussion bombs exploded inside the building. Several of our colleagues and students were hurt. The academic community is shocked.
We ask the support of the international scientific and academic community by demanding university management the immediate withdraw of military police from campus and the non-violent resolution of labor conflicts in the university.
Professor Pablo Ortellado (Public Policy) Professor Rogério Monteiro de Siqueira (Geometry) Professor Jefferson Mello (Brazilian literature) Professor Thomás Haddad (Science History) Professor Carlos Gonçalves (Science History) Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades Universidade de São Paulo
Further information (in Portuguese): Associação dos Docentes da USP: www.adusp.org.br Sindicato dos Funcionários da USP: www.sintusp.org.br
