North Rhine-Westphalia (DE): Tuition Fees Abolished!!

In the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) tuition fees were abolished again today, after being introduced in 2006!

That reduces the number of federal states with tuition fees in Germany to eight (out of 16 in total), out of which general tuition fees are still charged in four states and tuition fees for students who study longer than expected in all eight.

In 2005 the federal constitutional court rules that the introduction of tuition fees is legal. In 2006 many states across the country began to use that verdict and made students pay (usually around €500 per semester + administration charges of between €50 and €250). Massive protests took place against the fees since 2006. Railway, city-centers and highways were blocked, ministries, classrooms and lecture halls occupied.Thousands were attacked and detained within 12 month in 2006/07 alone.

Together with North Rhine-Westphalia general tuition fees were abolished again in four federal states (Bremen, Saarland, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse).

Of course this doesn't fundamentally change the education system. But at least it gets us closer to one of the three main pillars of the International Joint Statement: Access to education for all!

Here is an overview of protests during the summer 2009 in Germany.

Aber is occupied again!

After a very successful rally and march at the university Aber Students Against Cuts have occupied A12 lecture theatre (Hugh Owen).

The march saw approximately seven hundred students, lecturers and people of Aberystwyth marching from campus to the Old College, where we occupied the building to make our voices heard to the senior management.

We are committed to not disturbing lectures or the open day that is happening tomorrow, and look forward to the contributions from students and lecturers to the debate on education.

We want to remind senior management of the commitment they have to education and to us.

A full statement of our demands and reasons for occupation will follow tomorrow - right now it's nearing midnight and we've had a full day. We're settling down to do some work and watch films.

Come down and visit us, even if you just fancy a cup of coffee!

Para uma Nova Europa: a Universidade luta contra a Austeridade (declaração comum do Encontro)

Nós, os estudantes e trabalhadores precários da Europa, Tunísia, Japão, Estados Unidos, Canadá, México, Chile, Peru e Argentina, reunimo-nos em Paris no fim-de-semana de 11 a 13 de Fevereiro de 2011 para discutir e organizar uma rede comum baseada nas nossas lutas comuns. Estudantes do Maghreb e da Gâmbia tentaram comparecer mas a França recusou-lhes a entrada. Reivindicamos a livre circulação de pessoas tal como a livre circulação das lutas.

De facto, nos últimos anos o nosso movimento assumiu a Europa como o espaço de conflitos contra a corporização da universidade e precariedade. Este encontro em Paris e os movimentos revolucionários ao longo do Mediterrâneo permitem-nos tomar um importante passo tanto em direcção a uma nova Europa contra a austeridade como às revoltas no Maghreb.

Somos uma geração que vive a precariedade como uma condição permanente: a universidade já não é um elevador de mobilidade social ascendente mas sim uma fábrica de precariedade. Nem a universidade é uma comunidade fechada: as nossas lutas pelo bem-estar, trabalho e a livre circulação de conhecimento e pessoas não param à sua porta.

A nossa necessidade por uma rede comum é baseada nas nossas lutas contra o Processo de Bolonha e contra os cortes na educação que a Europa está a usar como resposta à crise.

Sendo que o Estado e os interesses privados colaboram no processo de corporização da universidade, as nossas lutas não têm o objectivo de defender o status quo. Os Governos pagam a fiança dos bancos e cortam na educação. Queremos fazer a nossa própria universidade – a universidade que vive nas nossas experiências de educação autónoma, pesquisa alternativa e escolas livres. É uma universidade gratuita, conduzida por estudantes, trabalhadores precários e migrantes, a universidade sem fronteiras.

Este fim-de-semana partilhámos e discutimos diferentes linguagens e práticas comuns de conflito: manifestações, ocupações e greves metropolitanas. Criámos e melhorámos as nossas reivindicações comuns: acesso gratuito à universidade contra os aumentos de propinas e custos de educação, nova acção social e direitos comuns contra a dívida e a financeirização das nossas vidas, e por uma educação baseada na cooperação contra a competição e hierarquias.

Com base nesta declaração comum:

• Apelamos a dias de acção comum e transnacional nos dias 24, 25 e 26 de Março de 2011: contra os bancos, sistema de dívida e medidas de austeridade, para a educação gratuita e a livre circulação de pessoas e conhecimento;
• Criaremos um diário comum de lutas e um meio autónomo de comunicação;
• Promoveremos uma grande caravana e encontro na Tunísia porque as lutas do Maghreb são as lutas que estamos a lutar aqui;
• Encontrar-nos-emos novamente em Londres em Junho;
• Faremos parte da contra-cimeira dos G8 em Dijon em Maio.

A lutar e a cooperar, este é o nosso Comunal de Paris!

Occupation of University building in Utrecht: out of protest to education cuts in the Netherlands

In the morning of February 9th students occupied a building of the Utrecht University in the Netherlands out of protest to cuts proposed by the new right-wing government. The government is implementing austerity measures across society, using the financial crisis a pretext to hollow out social spending. Like in other countries around Europe and the world, education is no exception to this rule.

The proposed cuts to education include:

• a 3.000 Euro fine and no right to free public transport for students who have more than one year delay in their Bachelor or Masters programme, regardless of the reason;
• no more study-financing for Masters students;
• cuts to higher education institutions resulting in the estimated loss of 4.000 jobs.

The occupiers want to send a clear message to the government and to society in general, “Education is a right not a privilege”, and we will not stand by while our right to education is being hollowed out. We also stand in solidarity with our fellow students and knowledge workers in other countries who are struggling for similar goals.

We're sending delegates to the Paris meeting, so see you there.

Student Action Comittee Utrecht

University funds slashed by almost £1bn

Universities express alarm as budgets for teaching and research are cut back.

England's universities were told today they will have their budgets slashed by nearly £1bn over the next academic year.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), which funds universities on behalf of the government, said £940m would be stripped from universities' budgets for teaching, research, buildings and other areas, a 9.5% cut.

Universities said they were alarmed and feared they would be in for "a rough ride".

In a letter to vice-chancellors, the funding council said budgets would be cut to £6.5bn for the next academic year (2011-12). Hefce said it recognised finances were tight and that the settlement was challenging.

The teaching budget will be reduced by £180m to £4.3bn – a 4% cut in cash terms.

The research grant will be cut by £17.4m to £1.6bn – a 1.1% reduction. Future grants will be concentrated on departments with higher quality ratings for their work – mainly the bigger, more prestigious universities, the funding council said.

Funding for raising the proportion of students from the poorest homes at university will be frozen at £144m. There will be no increase in funds to help keep students on courses if they are at risk of dropping out.

Grants for capital projects, such as new buildings, have been cut by 58% in cash terms to £223m. Last academic year, universities received £532m for building works.

Universities were also told that they will have an in-year (2010-11) cut for the first time: they will now receive £190m less than they had planned for this academic year.

A one-off fund to create 20,000 extra university places is being stopped – a reduction of a further £255m.

The cuts come as universities face unprecedented demand for places. Last month, the universities and colleges admission service (Ucas) said nearly 600,000 university hopefuls – an all-time record – had applied for a place on a degree course beginning in 2011. Applications have risen by 5.1% compared with this time last year, and 583,501 candidates are chasing a place this autumn. Ucas said this was the highest number since it started collecting data in 1964.

Ministers have said that the government will continue to fund an extra 10,000 places in 2011, as they did last year, but this will be withdrawn by 2012.

Universities will continue to face fines if they exceed the cap on places in 2011-12, creating an incentive for universities to keep tight control of their numbers. The fine will be £3,750 for each student from the UK or the European Union recruited above their permitted limit.

Click here to read the full article...Sir Alan Langlands, Hefce's chief executive, said the funding council was trying to help universities make a "smooth transition" before they could charge higher fees in 2012. Universities will be able to charge up to £9,000 a year – almost triple the current level. Many institutions had anticipated the challenges ahead before they could increase their fees and "many have already taken difficult decisions to reduce their costs", he said.

He recognised the financial settlement was challenging and wanted to "minimise uncertainty in a difficult transitional year".

David Willetts, the universities minister, said he had asked for the teaching budget to be protected as far as possible.

"Higher education, like other areas of public spending, has had to take its share of savings," he said.

In December, MPs voted to raise fees from £3,375 this autumn to a maximum of £9,000 a year. Willetts said he expected this to bring an increase in income of 10% by 2014-15.

"It is essential that universities move quickly to prepare for the different environment in which they will operate in future years, striving to meet the aspirations of students for high quality teaching. As well as benefiting from investment in student support, the higher education sector will continue to benefit from sustained ring-fenced investment in science and research," he said.

Paul Marshall, director of the 1994 Group which represents small, research-intensive universities, said the cuts would mean "a rough ride for the UK economy".

"In his spending review statement last year, the chancellor referred to universities as the jewel in the UK's economic crown, but the sweeping funding cuts confirmed in today's letter show that universities will need to work harder than ever to make their contribution."

Gareth Thomas, Labour's shadow universities minister said: "This year is the first of a hugely difficult three years for universities as 80% of the university teaching funds are axed [over that period], with some universities set to lose all their public funding.

"The decision to cut so much from university teaching budgets, the massive cut to capital funding and then to load the cost on to the next generation of students by trebling tuition fees is unfair, unnecessary and unsustainable."

Universities are expected to receive their individual budgets next month.

Petition Against the reduction of funding for adjunct faculty in public Greek Universities

Background (Preamble): On December 2010, the Greek Ministry of Education announced a 15-20% reduction in funds for adjunct lecturers and professors teaching at public Greek Universities. The announcement came four months into the Fall 2010 semester, when at the time, adjunct faculty had already been teaching without a signed contract and without having been paid at all for the semester! As a result, either adjunct faculty salaries have to be drastically reduced to reflect the pay cuts, or a large number of them have to be laid off for the Spring 2011 semester, thus reducing the number of courses offered for students. At the same time, the Greek Ministry of Education delays the appointment of elected tenured-track faculty for about 2 years and refuses to open new permanent academic positions to cover for the lost adjunct faculty positions. All this puts Greek Universities under tremendous stress and many Departments will not be able to function properly; this is especially true for smaller regional Universities, whose teaching and research activities depend upon adjunct teaching staff.

The reduction of funding for adjunct faculty is part of a broader attack on public Higher Education that includes pressure on Universities to start charging students with tuition, to accept business-style academic management, to seek funding from private corporations, to reduce the total number of Departments and Schools and to eliminate tenure for assistant professors. As a result, hundreds of adjunct lecturers and professors, many of them with many years of academic and research experience, are facing massive lay-offs.

We protest against the reduction of funding for adjunct faculty in public Greek Universities and we demand from the Greek government:

• to immediately provide Greek Universities with all the necessary funding for adjunct teaching staff;

• to immediately appoint all elected University faculty;

• to put an end to the expansion of precarious academic employment;

• to open new academic positions, thus allowing Greek Universities to achieve academic excellence.

To sign the petition go to http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41910.html.

Reunião Internacional de Movimentos e Colectivos Estudantis: em Paris, 11-13 de Fevereiro de 2011

De Londres a Viena, de Roma a Paris, de Atenas a Lisboa, surge uma nova Europa. Os estudantes, os precários, os cidadãos e os imigrantes, as massas lutam pelas suas vidas e seu futuro nas frentes de batalha da crise. Lutam para reconquistarem os seus direitos e a riqueza que produzem juntos todos os dias. Revoltam-se contra as medidas de austeridade que explora o nosso presente e nos rouba o futuro. Expressam a sua fúria contra a arrogância do poder.

Depois do consenso colectivo conseguido nas reunões do “Bologna Burns” em Viena, Londres, Paris e Bologna o ano passado, e este ano no encontro “Commoniversity”, em Barcelona, Edu-Factory e a Rede de Educação Autónoma unem-se para convocar uma reunião europeia de quem participa nesta luta comum, com o propósito de criar uma poderosa rede europeia das lutas dentro e fora das universidades. Um espaço trans-nacional para discutir e desenvolver nossa capacidade política colectiva, para lançar um contra-ataque às políticas que afectam a universidade e o bem-estar social e para construir um futuro para tod@s.

Em conferências e workshops, painéis e assembleias, vamos propor uma discussão em torno das questões-chave da universidade, produção de conhecimento autónomo, redes de activismo, organização política trans-nacional e o comum.

Agora é o momento para nos levantarmos, juntos, colectivamente e individualmente, para recuperar nossas vidas e construir uma nova Europa, baseada nos direitos e na liberdade. Chegou o momento para reivindicarmos o que é nosso: tudo.

Student protests in Netherlands

Today Friday January 21 there was a first national student protest in The Hague to protest the reforms on higher education by the new government (Christian/Corporate with support from neo-racist Wilders party). First there was a boring manifestation on the 'designed protest' zone Malieveld with some 15.000 students. Even the sub-minister for education was invited to speak to the crowd. Hew as pelted with fruit and disappeared again as the crowd started to become unruly (a big explosion in the back of the crowd was a sign to move into town). The official student organizations had delivered 400 'guards' who acted in cooperation with the police to maintain 'order'. Droves of people then started to walk into town center, without any central organization, but with some smaller 'book bloc'-groups.

Meanwhile police unsuccessfully tried to force people to walk back to the (central) station to take the train. After some time and for unknown reasons they riot cops and even on horses and with dogs attacked the students trying to go home. Meanwhile 'downtown' the situation became tense in front of the Binnenhof (government buildings) and at the building of the ministry of Education. At both places riot cops defended the buildings and attacked the demonstrators.

At the Binnenhof police couldn't sweep the Plein square because their vans with riot cops couldn't reach the place because they were being blocked by a sit-down-blockade, so they had to beat those up first. After that they chased all the students from the square, with horses and cars. There was a bit of throwing back, but not much. The official student organizations have declared to feel sorry for the 'violence' and to be on the side of the police. Many students understand now that they will have to organize separately from them and from below. As happens so often with repressing protest the demonstrators lernt a thorough lesson about the functioning of the state.

University of Birmingham occupation

Why are we in occupation?
We are in occupation because the university are placing many jobs under threat, causing unnecessary stress to staff and causing long lasting damage to the development of the university Birmingham. Staff Job losses are already affecting the student experience, job losses at sociology essentially reduced students degrees to what they could gather out of the library, theology cuts reduced the number of staff departmentally to 20. Right now research fellows in the School of Education have been formally placed at risk of redundancy after a review that as unfair, inaccurate and rushed, find out more about this case on our blog see (web link). We demand that the university makes a pledge to not make any unnecessary cuts, to run all reviews, with an external advisor, take into account staff/student criticism, give staff fair opportunities for input and take all decisions to democratic bodies like the senate.
For the education staff we believe this entire process must be restarted, this time done fairly and the staff in the education department given an apology, for the needless stress caused them by the manner of the review. We demand the university does everything in it is power to keep fees down and pledges to make sure that education remains a resource that all can access. We demand that plans to cut scholarship budgets in College of Engineering and Physical Sciences are reversed. We demand that the university is open with it cuts to Geography, biosciences, environmental sciences, the medical school, European Languages, Ancient and Medieval Studies, Theology and Religion and African Studies International Development Department that it has outlined in the sustainable excellence plan We demand that the university criticizes the Browne review as a socially regressive plan and that David Eastwood apologises for his role in encouraging cuts and fees.

Art attack per il tuo Book Bloc: regalo per Natale

Call in solidarity with the students and precarious workers arrested the 14th of December in Italy

Please sign and circulate: http://www.petitiononline.com/edu2010/petition.html.

The 14th of December was another great moment of struggles in Italy. One hundred thousand high school and university students, precarious researchers and workers from all over Italy demonstrated in Rome on the day in which it seemed a vote of no confidence would be passed on the Berlusconi government. Berlusconi and the right saved themselves, but in the streets of Rome and many other Italian cities the movement expressed its mistrust of the government.

The response of the government was a huge repression: people were charged and beaten in the squares, and dozens of students and precarious workers were arrested. There is only one accusation: they resist the cuts to schools and university, to education and research, they speak up against the theft of their future, against precariousness and the lack of guarantees for their future. This is a resistance of a generation of students and precarious workers, in Italy as well as in Europe and all around the world.

We express our indignation in face of this act for people who have simply demonstrated their dissent. We affirm that we are on the side of freedom of thought and freedom to demonstrate dissent. We think that it is not acceptable to manage every protest as a police problem. We affirm that the university is a space of freedom, confrontation and the production of knowledge. We demand the immediate release of the students and precarious workers who have been arrested.

For a new Europe: University struggles against austerity. Meeting @ Paris, 11-13 February 2011

European Meeting of University Movements

From London to Vienna, from Rome to Paris, from Athens to Madrid, a new Europe is emerging. Students and precarious workers, citizens and immigrants, the multitudes are fighting for their lives and future in the front lines against the crisis.

Struggling to reappropriate their rights and the shared wealth that they create everyday. Rebelling against the austerity measures that exploit our present and rob us of our future. Raging against the arrogance of power.

Following the collective consensus of last years’ “Bologna Burns” meetings in Vienna, London, Paris and Bologna and this years’ “Commoninversity” held in Barcelona, Edu-Factory and the Autonomous Education Network join the call for a European meeting for all groups who are involved this common fight to create a powerful network of European of university struggle and beyond. A transnational space to discuss and develop our collective political capacity to counter the attacks against the university and social welfare and to build a new future for everyone.

Through conferences and workshops, panels and assemblies, we will propose the discussion around the key topics of the university, autonomous knowledge production, self-education, networking struggles, transnational political organization and the common.

The time is now upon us to rise up, together, collectively and singularly, to reclaim our lives and build a New Europe based on rights and access. The time has come for us to reclaim what is ours: the common.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: info@edu-factory.org

University of Puerto Rico students resume strikes

Student activists are organizing again after University of Puerto Rico administrators tried to undo the victory students won last Summer.

Students from six campuses in the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) system have held a series of 48-hour strikes in the last week to oppose the imposition of an $800 fee that is scheduled to take effect at the beginning of the January 2011 semester.

Students at the Río Piedras campus were among the first to go out after they held a December 1 mass assembly and voted by an overwhelming majority to strike if the administration does not rescind the new fee by December 14.

The chancellor of the Río Piedras campus used every means possible to try to stop the students from gathering, including canceling academic recess, freezing the bank account of the student council so that it couldn't pay for the sound system, and denying students the use of a space for their meeting.

But UPR students are already used to doing things the hard way, so the night before, they raised funds by approaching cars stopped at traffic lights so they could rent a sound system for the outdoor meeting that lasted five hours under the harsh rays of a sunny day at the university's athletic track.

Royal car attacked in protest after MPs' fee vote

A car containing Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall has been attacked amid violence after MPs voted to raise university tuition fees in England.

A window was cracked and their car hit by paint, but the couple were unharmed. In angry scenes, protesters battled with police in Parliament Square. Hundreds were contained on Westminster Bridge for a time by officers. Police say 12 officers and 43 protesters have been injured, while 22 arrests were made.

Prime Minister David Cameron said it was "shocking and regrettable" that protesters had attacked the prince's car. Clarence House said the royal couple were safe and attended the Royal Variety performance as scheduled.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said there would be a "very serious and very detailed investigation" into the disturbances, in which 10 police officers have been injured.

The vote will mean fees will almost treble to £9,000 a year. The government's majority was cut by three-quarters to 21 in a backbench rebellion. Three ministerial aides resigned. Only 28 Lib Dem MPs - less than half - voted for the government's plans for tuition fees. Six Conservative MPs voted against.

La vostra violenza… la nostra determinazione!

Autunno 2010: in tutta Italia studenti universitari e medi scendono in piazza per bloccare l’approvazione del ddl 1905. Rispetto al 2008, quando la legge 133 apriva la stagione di lotte per difendere il diritto allo studio, il movimento è più maturo, siamo più maturi.

E chi è dall’altra parte se n’è accorto: la discussione viene più e più volte rimandata, continui litigi in Parlamento, politicanti vari fanno a gara a timbrare il cartellino di “amici degli studenti”, i professori vengono ascoltati, ma sappiamo che la lotta è nostra e non si ferma al blocco della Riforma, le forze dell’ordine caricano, cercano di disperdere, ma raccolgono solo più rabbia e determinazione.

A Napoli, in una settimana, le scuole, le facoltà sono state occupate (l’Orientale, Lettere e Architettura della Federico II), siamo scesi in piazza sotto la pioggia tutti i giorni, per bloccare la stazione, le strade, per sanzionare il CEPU, il Mattino, la Provincia, il Comune, Confindustria.

Ieri siamo andati al San Carlo, abbiamo legato la nostra lotta a quella più generale dei tagli alla cultura, abbiamo cominciato un’assemblea con i lavoratori e gli artisti che preparavano la prima della Tosca. Ma forse era un po’ troppo e Polizia e Carabinieri che, entrati da un ingresso secondario, hanno caricato più volte gli studenti in assemblea. Ma non hanno ottenuto nulla, hanno raccolto solo più determinazione e consapevolezza dei nostri mezzi; hanno mostrato l’intolleranza di chi non ascolta e risponde cercando di distruggere ciò che si prova a costruire: l’unità delle lotte.

Non siamo scappati, siamo rimasti insieme, anche sotto la Questura, per aspettare i due studenti fermati e subito rilasciati e poi siamo tornati all’Università, ancora in tanti. Abbiamo deciso di continuare, ci siamo guardati negli occhi e abbiamo capito che non ci avevano spaventati e costretto a fare un passo indietro; che hanno provato a farci indietreggiare ma non ci sono riusciti. Ora siamo ancora più consapevoli dei nostri mezzi e consapevoli che facciamo paura, che quella minoranza che decide sta cominciando a fare i conti con quella maggioranza che lotta.

A history of Student Revolt

If they block our future, we’ll block the city! Notes on the university mobilizations in the italian Autumn of 2010

The image of the Leaning Tower of Pisa occupied by students traveled the world over, ending up on the BBC and the front page of the Financial Times in a matter of hours. A mirror image was taken a few days later: a besieged Parliament, closed off in their backrooms to approve an unpopular law while outside the country was blocked by the new generations. Two years from the “Anomalous Wave” movement, university students are once again the ones politically translating the lurking conflict latent in the world of education.

The Gelmini law passed the House but its passage was anything but painless. The parliamentary agenda was accompanied by a week of radical organization, both intense and capillary, extending to every Italian city. The “Wave” was not followed by a tsunami but by many small shockwaves that made an already unstable government tremble for a day (the 30th of November).

The forms practiced in the mobilizations were varied: the occupation of universities, didactic suspensions, metropolitan paralysis, blocking the main nodes of transportation (stations, ports, airports), attempted interruption in institutional buildings and the squatting of national monuments.

Every initiative tried to synthesize the radicalism and the communicative nature in their acts. Protest actions generally resulted from assembly discussions between hundreds of people and virally circulated across social networks, not excluding word-of-mouth and direct communication, reinforced by assembly practices as reclamation of commonfare practices.

Click here to read the full text...Class struggle in Temples of Knowledge

Intelligence for seizing the moment, the political use of the network, bending mainstream communication devices, ability to synthesize a wide political discourse; all these attributes confirm how the highest political composition of class in the country is condensed into the student today.

Comments and editorials seem to be aware of this, macroscopic if compared with the misery and auto-referentiality of political parties and presumed social élites. From the newspaper Repubblica to cultural circles, all the way to the random gestures of opposition leaders (which, however, have been mostly ignored by students), everyone realizes, suddenly, that students are here and that they are not pacified whatsoever, nor have they been reabsorbed into the current productive and political configuration.

If the empathy that the movement draws out is an acquired and pacific fact, the challenge that these bodies thrown into the Italian piazza are posing isn’t so. The pure face of a subject that talks about “saving the public university” is easy to like, the political sense of an alternative system less so. There is the impression that behind the (thinly veiled) acquiescent façade that a part of the cultural lobbies are putting up towards the students, there is a deep fear of much broader claims and a terror that these claims find conflictual generalization throughout the entire social body.

This is because the questions that students are asking, whether they know it or not, are directly linked with a social stratification that is evermore brutal and rigid and that seems to be the only possible future for new generations. A stratification in which access to the university no longer functions as a principle line of demarcation, having been totally incorporated into the corporate university, with an infinity of artificial conflicts that determine the rhythms of any academic career according to the logic of differential inclusion.

This is why students, from their first year of enrollment, have the experience of being inside a gigantic factory in which every passage is already determined while they are constantly hearing voices from the outside telling them not to have any illusions about their working future.

The pubic school has always worked like a double track anyway: on one hand an institution of social promotion, on the other a mass disciplinary machine for future workers and citizens – a kind of macro social regulator that guaranteed the exchange between consensus and future promises in a systemic framework.

With the crisis of stockholding capitalism, school’s mediating function has completely broken down, now acting like a mere parking lot: “no more upward mobility” says Capital to the new generations.

Underneath the hashed and rehashed slogans of the inviolability of Culture, the specter of class struggle is haunting the Temples of Knowledge.

European Framework, Italian Anomaly

These observations force us to make both a more general comparison and a correct declination of the question at the height (or the gravity) of the Italian anomaly.

The student mobilizations this fall should be interpreted on multiple levels. One immediate and contingent one, in the occasion of the parliamentary discussion on the Gelmini law; a continental one, that measures the propagation of student mobilizations on a European scale; and a third, that identifies the link between renewed conflict in education and the financial crisis.

The House of Representatives passing the law is interesting above all for the space of political subjectification that is opened inside a composition that the previous Wave partially participated in. More than a result, it is important to measure the growth of subjective potency that this brief but intense experience has produced. Even if the numbers aren’t as high as the Wave, the force of the new movement must be measured in its capacity to produce an acceleration and radicalness in social movements. Everything happened in under two weeks but has left a deep impression in the subjective constitution of the many people who participated in such a brief but intense season of struggle. Grand discussions made way for a more direct need for action and intervention. How to affect change, disrupt and hurt the adversary have been the main questions. For the first time, students effectively went on strike directly inside the corporate university, sometimes even being able to totally paralyze didactic and administrative functions. All this over the whole surface of society, asking what it means to go on strike today, to interrupt the whole capitalist cycle. This is where the reasons behind metropolitan blocks and the interruption of traffic and communication fluxes come from.

On this level, the European lesson – especially from France – has been indispensable.

At least since 2006, with the anti-CPE movement (maybe with some timid anticipatory elements from the Italian struggle against the Moratti reform in 2005), the struggles across the world of education are, in all senses, conflicts that call labor legislation into question. Since then, with yearly punctuality, these struggles have been seen in practically every European country, stronger in Western European countries (France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria and now England) and in a somewhat lighter but significant form in newly acquired states (like Lithuania and the Czech Republic). The capillary and common denominator of all these movements point toward a great cycle of struggle against the “Bologna Process” with which, only 10 years ago, the constituting European Union foresaw the homogenization of higher learning on the continent.

When one speaks of homogenization, standardization is always intended. This means regularization of difference (which could instead be a resource) but also promotion; a homogeneity that aims at bettering things, to the highest degree. It didn’t work. To stay within these bothersome “European parameters”, the Bologna Process was articulated across the board as education and research cuts. On a deeper level, it tried to redefine education as the production of precarious and flexible workers who held the qualities asked for by businesses and companies.

The European student struggles over these last 5 years should be interpreted as the standstill and failure of this process.

If we look at what is happening in Ireland today, and the promises that these measures are announcing for other pieces of Europe, we can measure how the failure of the Bologna Process somehow accompanies the failure of the European Union as an exclusively Money First union.

The last and most important level that this struggle (and all the other ones that are investing the world of education even outside of Europe) must be measured on is its direct contact with financialization devices.

The Gelmini reform has the tendency of prospecting a complete dumping of educational costs from public spending to individual students, through the institution of ‘debt’ that students will have to negotiate with banks in order to enroll and follow courses. A mortgage on one’s own future that has already been the norm in Anglo-Saxon countries for years. Last year American students and this fall English students revolted against the intensification of this very device. The university planned by Gelmini, Tremonti and Sacconi goes in this direction, with the wholly Italian particularity of having many other resources available. Tracing the lines that connect these movements, even though geographically distant and different in the power of numbers and radicalness, is indispensible for understanding what grounds we will have to fight on in the coming years. The first answers that we have observed and participated in over the last few years demonstrate how new student movements are the principle, and at the moment the only organized reaction to the global financial crisis.

The Legacy of the Wave: Steps Ahead and Unanswered Questions

Having measured the multidimensional and problematic light that this new and important season of struggle must be seen in, before looking beyond and moving forward, a comparison to the previous cycle of mobilizations in and around education it might be useful.

The Wave movement that spread throughout every university in the fall of 2008 represented a breath of fresh air in the Italian swamp. The slogan “We won’t pay for the crisis” synthesized an attentive interpretation of the current situation and became a political program for struggles to come, identifying the crisis as an anchorage point from the point of view of the actions of precarious subjects and students.

As many have already stresses, the importance of this movement couldn’t be limited to its success or failure in blocking the reform. Rightly so, a symptomatic approach aimed at gathering the new and possible elements that a new social composition offered prevailed. The result of this struggle pushes us to the same considerations.

Yet, even in repetition, new and significant differences have emerged.

The dominant rhetoric of the Wave sketched a uniform university of students equally affected by the proposed reform. Rectors, professors, researchers and students were all on the same plane, omitting the material reality of hierarchies, powers and roles.

This weakness, that the counter-rhetoric took advantage of, was confirmed by the constant obsession of students looking for support from professors and university élites. As if the requests of the movement were not strong enough to do without their baptizing. Today, the movement has mostly done without this “support”. It hasn’t even looked for it, the memories of the previous experience still freshly vivid.

This contradiction, that has always been inherent to the world of education, has remerged in a condensed form in the struggle of the researchers who threatened and practiced their “unavailability” of bearing the burden of excess work imposed by the corporate university.

An exemplary moment of the battle happened at the beginning of the academic year with the Rector of Bologna threatening to suspend and replace any researchers who refused this burden. Many spoke of the “Marchionne Model” applied to the university. During an interview, one researcher from Bologna refused this representation, preferring to talk about a “sense of responsibility” for the fate of the public university. Inside what was expressed as a conflict of opposite and partial interests the adage of the general interest popped up.

Between becoming class and staying corporation, Italian researchers chose the latter, being easier in the short term but a losing strategy in the long run. As this movement and the Wave before it have demonstrated, only students have the numbers and the quality for overturning the whole of power relations inside the university. Researchers certainly occupy a central role in the corporate university. Strategically, however, they have to know how to understand a political alliance with students as necessary and immediate, abandoning any velleity of integration and collaboration with a university élite that wholly incarnates the emperor’s clothes.

The Next Step: Generalizing the Protest

Politically recomposing conflictual subjects inside university departments isn’t enough! If, as we have suggested, the last few years have been witness to a virtuous circularity of reciprocal stimulus and grit between student movements on a European level, looking towards Europe also means understanding the processes of generalization and transversal character of the social conflict that some of these experiences are starting to show.

For the first time in France, we have seen the limits that cunningly confined the limits of student struggle with a dominant media narration broken. It is true that the occasion was offered by a space of wider social struggle, by an unprecedented attack against Labor and Welfare. But what is significant is that high school and university students were blocking their institutions and the streets… all to oppose a retirement reform! This gesture is immediately political for how it breaks the fences of the social and generational compartmentalization that biopower uses to segment and control social struggles.

Taking advantage of this means continuing down a double and simultaneous path: coming out of the universities to socialize the struggle and bringing what is starting to move against the crisis and the measures ordered by the other side into the Academy. What has always been practiced by small avant-gardes must be socialized as the commonfare of the most generic student composition. If it is true that students have been the first to explicitly oppose crisis capitalism, it is also true that they can’t do it alone, in Italy and elsewhere. How to continue and intensify a constant practice of aperture, circulation and connection between struggles must therefore be posed as our main objective over the next few months.

Right now, Italian students are facing several important deadlines: the Senate discussion of the law and the construction of a national day of mobilization against the Berlusconi government on the 14th of December. Both of these occasions will continue to be infused with the call for a general strike by the main Italian union, the CGIL. These important moments for speaking out cannot, however, overshadow: 1) necessary work to be done and constant internal sabotage of the reform; and 2) the preparation and organization of the coming conflicts.

US education and the crisis, by Michael Hardt

Governments across the globe are dramatically reducing funding for public education and raising university tuition rates. These measures are often cast as a response to the current economic crisis but really their implementation began well before it. Whereas in Britain, Italy, and other European countries students battle police in the streets and experiment with new means to protest such government actions, there is a relative calm on U.S. campuses.

Forty and fifty years ago US student movements were among the most active and innovative in the world, not only protesting against militarism, racism, and other social hierarchies but demanding a democratic reform of the education system. Why today do US student movements appear so far behind in response to this global crisis of education?

There have, in fact, been significant student protests in the U.S. in recent years that have not received widespread attention. The most important of these are the student movements to protest raises in tuition in the public university system in the state of California. Tuition in the University of California system had risen gradually to double over the course of a decade but the sudden additional increase of 32% in November 2009 set off the student protests. In the largest and most widespread actions on US campuses since the 1970s, students occupied university buildings and mounted demonstrations.

The primary focus of the California students has been the social inequality created by higher tuition rates and lower funding of the university as a whole. The poor are obviously the first and most severely affected by the changes. The widening class division, the students insistently point out, corresponds closely to racial divisions, since black and Latino students constitute a large portion of those most affected by the higher tuition fees.

The modest successes in the project to open university education to a wider population in a previous era are being gradually reversed. For the past 30 years, explains Christopher Newfield, professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, “the public universities, which most US students attend, have been systematically underfunded, restricting all educational gains to the top quarter of students by income and destroying the country’s previous global advantage in educational attainment.”

Click here to read the full articleThe California student movement has been significant but not nearly as intense, widespread, or sustained as its counterparts in Europe. One obvious reason for this difference is that changes in the US university have been more gradual and smaller. Tuition at public universities has long been higher in the US than in most of Europe and recent increases have been relatively modest. The 32% increase in California in 2009 is dwarfed by the proposed increase in Britain of nearly 300%. A second factor that could contribute to less student protest in the United States is that university conditions are not unified at the national level. Public university funding and tuition rates vary widely in different states and the extensive system of private universities creates even more significant variation.

The most significant reason for less student activism in the United States, however, may derive from a much deeper national condition. The social value placed on education for all, especially higher education, has declined dramatically. This is certainly true for other countries as well but the fall has been more precipitous in the United States. Student politics can only gain a powerful voice when university education is a social priority.

Consider, in contrast, the US government response to the “Sputnik crisis.” Within the frame of cold war logic, the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite was considered a challenge to US security and its position in the global system. In response the United States substantially increased university funding, especially in science and technology. The mission was not limited to advanced scientific training or to military advances but rather spread though all levels of the education system, with widespread and varied consequences. Even Donna Haraway, the pioneering feminist theorist, often refers to herself as a “child of Sputnik.”

The increase of knowledge and intelligence across society was a national priority. Mass education advances contributed directly to the economic growth of the US economy. And furthermore, in the context of this educational project, the student protests of the 1960s and 70s found a loud voice in national debates.

Whereas one can say that the launch of Sputnik made the United States smarter, the attacks of September 11th, perceived as the primary challenge to the national position in this period, only made the country more stupid. The “war on terror” has given priority only to the most limited military and technological knowledges and the idiocy of security dominates public discourse. In this atmosphere arguments for advances in mass public education as well as student demands for equal and open access to the university carry little weight.

The importance of mass education for economic development is no less today than it was 50 years ago, but the economic significance of the fields of education have changed. Along with a wide range of economists, Toni Negri and I argue that in recent decades the dominant sector of the economy has shifted from industrial production to what we call biopolitical production, la production de l’homme par l’homme, involving the creation of ideas, images, code, affects, and other immaterial goods. If this is true, then the mass education of engineers and scientists is no longer the primary key to economic competitiveness. In the biopolitical economy mass intelligence – even and especially linguistic, conceptual, and social capacities – are what drive economic innovation.

University policies throughout the world have not kept pace with these changes. The private money that universities solicit to compensate for the decline in public funding is dedicated overwhelmingly to technical and scientific fields. The human sciences, which are increasingly relevant in the biopolitical economy, are deprived of funds and wither. In this case the student demands actually point in the direction of economic prosperity. The current student protests thus reconfirm a general rule of politics, that social struggles proceed and prefigure social development.

I am generally skeptical about laments of the decline of American civilization. In fact, I foresee the loss of military dominance heralding a much more dynamic and creative period of US social development. But the failure to make mass education at all levels a social priority is certainly one factor indicative of decline. And I interpret the relative calm of US campuses in face of economic crisis and cuts as a symptom of that problem.

It's now or never: British students call national demonstration for 9th December as Parliament votes on fees

Clare Solomon, President of London University, launched the greatest round of student activism yet as parliament set a date for a vote on the hike in tuition fees.

She called for a massive effort by all student activists to make the national demonstration on Thursday 9 December the greatest mobilisation ever by students.

She said: 'We want every college occupied in the run up to this demonstration. We want every occupation to be an organising centre for booking coaches and mobilising students for this demonstration.'

'Teachers and lecturers need to send a clear statement to their managements that schools and colleges are going to be closed on that day and that they will be on the streets with the students'.

'This is the fight of our lives and we don't intend to lose it'

John Rees from the Coalition of Resistance said: 'I expect many working people to be out with the students on the 9th December. They know that the students are just the start and that the government will be coming after them next.'

He added: 'The Coalition of Resistance will be working flat out to make this a huge demonstration and we are saying to people all over the country 'be here now, your future and that of your children is at stake'.

Attacks on Education and Student Resistance

A text by Julian Brophy about the students strong fights at Ireland Higher Education.

On the 3rd of November about 30,000 people took to the streets of Dublin in what has been dubbed “the biggest Irish student demonstration of a generation”.

Currently the Irish higher educational system is “free”, meaning that students don't pay full tuition fees (as opposed to England for example). The government subsidises higher education to a large extent, and students pay an annual registration fee at the beginning of every college year. In the '08/'09 academic year, the registration fee was 900 Euros per year. In 09/10 the government delivered a staggering blow to Irish education, raising the registration fee to 1,500 Euros per year. In the midst of the plunging the country into unprecedented levels of debt, and failing to handle the economic crisis, the government turned to the education system for easy money once again. Fianna Fail (the Irish ruling party) proposed to raise the registration fee by a further 1,500 Euros, equaling a grand total of 3,000 Euros per student, per year, to attend university. This time however, the government and its law enforcers were met with a very different reaction.

The 3rd of November protest was a surprise to the country in many ways. The most striking feature of the demonstration was the mass mobilisation of tens of thousands of students from every university across the country, resulting in one of the largest student protests in Irish history. The second striking feature was the atmosphere of
energy, anger, and an invigorated student movement on the streets of Dublin.

Click here to read the full text...The routine for student marches in Dublin is usually this: gather at
Parnell Square at 1PM, march down past the Dail (government buildings), listen to speakers on a podium, go home. The 3rd of November however was significantly different. As the demonstration progressed along its path, about 2,000 people broke away from the main protest and marched to Merrion Row, where the Department of Finance is located, and about thirty students made it inside and staged a symbolic occupation of the front lobby, with hundreds outside showing support. At this point the gardai resorted to their heavy-handed and repressive tactics, calling in the riot squad, dog unit, and mounted gardai on horses. Violent clashes broke out between protestors and the police, as the gardai violently attempted to disperse the crowds.

Students were beaten badly, some ended up in hospital and others arrested. But unlike the student protests of two years ago when the government attempted to reintroduce full fees, students did not back down. The 3rd of November was a victory for the students of Ireland, and for the solidarity amongst people who are suffering the rippling effects of the government's cutback agenda. A further indication of Irish student movement's fresh vigour was a 500 person strong protest against the Garda brutality of the day which took place the following week.

In the midst of financial turmoil and colossal IMF/ECB bailouts, the situation in regard to the future of education in Ireland remains unclear. The government has not yet unveiled precise plans, but it has ensured that the registration fee will not go up to 3,000 Euros. What is certain however is that after plunging the country into economic disaster, the government will certainly announce a significant registration increase and cutbacks to university funding.

The effects of this will be devastating to students and their families in particular, but to the Irish working class in general. The USI (Union of Students in Ireland) has estimated that it costs a student/family an average of 10,000 Euros per year to send a student to university (registration, books, travel etc.). The idea of increasing this burden further in times like these, under the facade of “free education”, is a violent attack on working people's living standards. An Irish Times survey showed that in more socio-economically deprived areas of Dublin like Blanchardstown and Finglas, the university attendance rate for students having completed their leaving cert (secondary school diploma) is between 10-14% (while in many affluent parts of South Dublin the rate is close to 100%). If these communities are disadvantaged now, then their hopes of participating in higher education after the budget announcement are close to zero, because the money simply is not there!

Not only will students and workers suffer, but universities themselves will suffer tremendously also. Cutbacks in college services will be rampant, library hours will be cut, health charges implemented, and college workers (like cleaning staff especially) will be made redundant. In the light of pursuing a profitable knowledge based economy that will serve the needs of capital, resources for the Humanities and the Social and Political Sciences will be slashed; and blatant precedence will be given to profitable disciplines like Sciences and Business.

The threatened cutbacks in education are part of a broader agenda of attempting to make people who create wealth pay for the mistakes of bankers, politicians and bureaucrats who had too much of it and grossly mismanaged it. The December 7th Budget will be a staggering blow to workers, students, pensioners, welfare recipients and so on.

Mass mobilisation is planned for the weeks ahead, with a heavy and widespread focus on budget day. Anger at having been ridiculed by the bankers and their puppet government is everywhere in Irish society right now; but prevalent throughout it also is a strong sense of solidarity. Lecturers and unions have defended the students and have spoken out verbosely against the repressive measures used by the gardai on the 3rd of November. Students are mobilising very heavily in support of the upcoming protests (one on the 27th of November against the ECB/IMF deal, and then the huge one on the 7th of December for Budget Day), with radical public meetings on weekly in colleges across the country and student-activist groups like Free Education for Everyone and Students in Solidarity beginning to gain strength again.

It feels as if a fuse has been lit in Irish society that the powerful won't be able to extinguish, and the explosion could go off any day now."