NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9553

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From: New Liberation News Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: NLNS: Trading Away Education
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/* Written  9:57 pm  Dec 20, 1992 by [e-mail] in igc:nlns.samples */
/* ---------- "NLNS PACKET 3.6 *** 12/11/92" ---------- */
Trading Away Educational Standards
Naomi Klein, Candian University Press
****The economic policies of globalization may be taking North
American education out of the hands of the public and placing it firmly in
the hands of corporations with growing political might.
    With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the
road to becoming international law in the new year, students in Canada, the
U.S. and Mexico say their schools stand to be turned into profit-generating,
high-tech corporate playgrounds whose agendas will be subject to the fickle
winds of "competition" in the ever-expanding global market-place.****

(CUP/NLNS)--Students, educators, and labour organizers fear the tri-lateral
deal will decrease their countries' tax bases as large corporations move to
Mexico where labour is cheaper and taxes lower. With federal transfer
payments on a steady decline, they say publically-funded education will
suffer.
    "If you are offering accessible university education, your tax base is
very important because without a strong base, federal transfer payments
decrease. What we are looking at is the further erosion of Ontario's
industrial base, leading to an attack on the university of social services,
including education," said Neil Walker, a researcher with the Ontario
Secondary School Teachers' Federation.
    Amie Weinberg is a member of International Student Trade,
environment and Development (INSTEAD), a coalition of U.S., Canadian,
and Mexican students opposed to the deal.
    Weinberg points to the California state education system as a
preview of what's to come if NAFTA passes. California, once famous for
state schools boasting low tuition and high quality education, has cut
education funding by 11 percent after tax-paying multinationals moved
operations to Mexico. As a result, universities have raised tuition fees and,
in some cases, have even refused to accept first-year students at all. Several
public high schools have been shut down.
    "Losing the tax base is a big part of what is happening in
California," said Weinberg.
    But Jeff White, a spokesperson for the Department of External
Affairs in Ottawa, says because Mexico only accounts for two percent of
Canada's total trade, the government does not expect Canadian corporations
to move south.
    "We don't expect any relocation of industry," said White. "There are
all sorts of companies relocate. Labour cost is only one of them. NAFTA is
only going to have a fairly modest economic impact on Canada. We expect
it to be positive."
    But critics say when the trade doors open, the demands of industry
take precedence over social considerations, as governments attempt to keep
corporations at home. The mere threat of leaving creates a climate hostile to
corporate taxation.
    Weinberg said that in the US corporate access to and control of
university resources and policy are being used as bribes for continued and
future investment.
    Jock Finlayson, vice-president and chief economist of the Business
Council on National Issues (BCNI)--a national lobby group--said more
money can't be given to education.
    "We don't see much scope to ask government to pour more money
into education. We are already overtaxed."
    But Weinberg disagreed. "Economic policy is being based
completely on how corporations can have more money," she said.

Privatizing For Dollars
    Mary Ann O'Connor, coordinator of the Ontario Coalition for Social
Justice, said the proposed International Space University (ISU) at Toronto's
York University is the "spearhead" of the growing move towards US-style
privatization in Canada.
    Universities across the world are bidding for the ISU. A board
which contains representatives from multinational aerospace firms will
decide which country is offering up the most of its resources to secure the
"investment."
    So far, the Ontario government has pledged $11 million in start-up
costs and $3.5 million annually towards operating costs of ISU if York is
selected. The federal government has pledged $15 million in capital
construction, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships for
Canadian students. York is offering land and degree status--the University
of Toronto is offering up the resources of its engineering department.
    Canadian aerospace corporations Spar and COM DEV Ltd. have
pledged $3 million to the project.
    Critics say the endeavor amounts to a public subsidy of private
enterprise because enrollment would be restricted to those able to pay tuition
costs as high as $25,000, and ISU's potential military and corporate
research will give little to the tax-paying public.
    "We see the ISU as part of the same agenda of allowing
corporations to use public resources for private gains. It is a glimpse at the
future if we don't stop free trade--the first private university in Canada,"
says O'Connor. "The way they are approaching research is by putting
private enterprise wherever there is the most advantage to corporations
without regard for the impact it has on the community."
    This direction in education policy is reflected in the federal
government's recent Prosperity Initiative.
    The federal government spent $19 million on a steering committee--
the majority of whose members were representatives of major corporations-
-to come up with a plan for Canada's future prosperity in the "global market
place."
    Eight of the report's ten areas in need of reform were education-
related. The initiative calls on schools to become primarily, if not
exclusively, media for job training and profit-generating research aimed at
making the corporate sector more "competitive."


Trading Our Way To Prosperity
    Free trade is the answer being touted worldwide as the solution to
the current financial crisis. There is an emerging consensus between
industry and government on the role Canadian schools will play in this
changing economy.
    "The direction of education policy is not going to be directly effected
by NAFTA, but we do have to make sure our education institutions are able
to compete in today's global marketplace," says White. "In examining the
priorities for the future, we need to strengthen our research in the hard
sciences if we are to enhance our competitiveness."
    The new shared vision offers economic benefits to both government
and industry. If the corporate sector takes on the burden of funding
education, the government will have less cause to tax corporations. Taxation
gives industry little control over how its revenue is spent by schools and
government. But when they give institutions money directly, corporations
are free to make the schools and graduates suit their profit-making needs.
    BCNI's Finlayson confirms that businesses will be investing more
in post-secondary education in the next 10 years, and that the money won't
be going towards universities' operating budgets.
    "We are encouraging businessess to make strategic investments in
post-secondary education to areas like Ph.D students doing research in
particular disciplines directly related to their (the investor's) fields or beefing
an apprenticeship-type system," said Finlayson. "Business and students are
going to have to become more agressive in funding education, like in the
US."
    Jim Turk, director of education for the Ontario Federation of Labour
(OFL), said that's exactly the problem. Industry sees under-funded schools
as an opportunity for subsidized job training--something they would
otherwise have to do for themselves, he said.
    "There is a strong sentiment in the business community that the role
of education is to be job-ready. This lessens their own obligations as
employers. There is a ridiculously low level of training provided for their
own workers--one in three businesses provide it," said Turk.
    Catherine Remus, a researcher for the Canadian Federation of
Students (CFS), said the increased corporate involvement in post-secondary
education--both its funding and policy making--suits the current federal
government, which has cut more than $3.2 billion from post-secondary
education since 1986.
    "The government can use NAFTA to make its own vision come
true--a smaller government role in social services and smaller transfer
payments," she said.
    "The Tory vision is a privately-funded system of assembly-line
education, moving students through degree and certificate-granting
programs, providing them with the labour and market skills that will make
them, and their country, competitive," says Remus.
    Remus added that the new vision is a profound shift from the liberal
view of universities as providing accessible training in critical thought,
enabling citizens to participate fully in a democratic society.
    "International trade is governing our education. The type of
researching being promoted (in NAFTA) is trade-driven research, needed to
carry out the economic agenda contained in NAFTA. Gone are the wider
goals of economic and social development in each of our countries, or any
provision for research aimed at improving quality of life in and among our
three countries," she said.

The Last Days of Liberal Education
    Finlayson said that while the liberal model of accesible education is
good in theory, it hasn't worked in practice. He advocates more
specialization in post-secondary education.
    "Not everybody can and should be going off to post-secondary
education. We have a very accessible system where the quality is eroded
and we can't really afford to pour more money into it," he said. "We have to
ask are we getting the maximum return on our investment?"
    Remus said that one of the most worrisome and far-reaching effects
of the world-wide deregulation of trade is the "level playing field" effect
which makes unionized labor compete with non-unionized labor and public
schools, like those in Canada, compete with private ones in the US.
    A recent study in Maclean's [Canada's Time magazine clone in more
ways than one--nlns ed.] magazine shows that US universities enjoy 45
percent more funding per student than Canadian schools. But current
measures to increase our per student funding conspicuosly exclude an
increase in government subsidies. Instead, Canadian schools are facing cuts
in enrollment, tuition fee increases and increased "strategic" corporate
sponsorship.
    "When it comes to creating a level playing field in education, what is
going to stop the growth of American-style privatization of educational
services, increasing use of lower-priced American textbooks, or worsening
conditions for Canadian faculty--all of which are unacceptable from a
Canadian perspective," said Remus.
    In Mexico, where there are no tuition fees for public universities, the
situation is even more drastic. Since rumblings of a free trade agreement
with the U.S. began, the Mexican government has been threatening to
impliment tuition fees, limit the number of students who go to university
and the time they are able to spend there.
    Massive student strikes in Mexico last year successfully postponed
the reforms.
    "The Mexican government is trying to mimic what is happening in
the states," said Weinberg.
    The unquestioned assumption in the government's current economic
policy, intimately tied to free trade, is the idea that government must
organize the public sector to suit the needs of "investors." With government
powers weakened in the name of "harmonization" in the proposed
agreement, Remus worried that the face of Canada's social programs will be
altered irrevocably."
    "NAFTA will perpetuate an economic climate and limit government
powers to the extent that it will be very difficult to reverse these trends,"
says Remus. "While such a system will cost the government less money,
the real price that Canadians will pay is loss of public control."

Canadian University Press can be reached at 126 York Street, Suite 408
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 5T5 Canada; [phone].

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