post here the manifesto of UPIC ( http://www.upc.edu/upic/ ). For there are many voices in defense of public universities, while they advertise constantly silenced without pause demagogic slogans and propaganda without arguments of the promoters of the European Convergence.
FOR A UNIVERSITY-WIDE PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY
"Against a campaign to discredit and commodify
Since late last year has unleashed an intense campaign to discredit the public university and radically change its purpose and function. The purpose of this letter is precisely to draw attention to this campaign, which aims that the university system loses its utility.
theses campaign
The Círculo de Empresarios, a part of the press, representatives of private universities and even some people who hold positions of high responsibility in public universities have recently agreed to defend one or more of the following theses:
What you pay the student and the tuition is very little, only covers a small portion of the costs, and no right to make the rich pay the same as the poor, for which, on the other hand, obstacle access to college is not the price of tuition, but that for the wages owed. Surprisingly, these people propose solution to facilitate access to those who have less is to adjust the price of tuition to total costs, it estimated at about 5,500 € per year.
Persons trained in universities are not sufficiently useful for businesses, do not fit properly in the labor market. Therefore, at the University on people, because she is leaving overeducated, frustrated, regretful and, above, does not charge much more than if it had title. Companies should have a say in the design of curricula and even teaching.
government system of public universities assemblies, unparalleled in any other advanced country, and therefore inefficient. This leads to uncontrolled economic and organizational universities. You need another system of government executive, with a Social Council to serve as the board of directors of a company, establishing policies and naming the leading or guiding the application will respond the same to the Council itself, and not to the university community.
These theses are not new. During the last decades has been pressure to make teaching and research university in a product aimed at meeting the immediate demands of the market and thus to lose its character as a public service aimed at the entire society. But perhaps never been expressed so clearly as does the document A university in the service of society, a whole university reform program published by the Business Circle in December 2007, which states that "It is not inserting the University as part of the welfare state, a trend that has somehow been present in our recent history but to integrate more university decided in the economic and productive [...]". Changes
itself but they
Since the restoration of democracy, public university in Spain has been an important factor of social progress, cultural and economic. In these thirty years the university has diversified and new teaching, research has strongly built, templates and improved facilities and expanded the public service of higher education to more people, more diverse social sectors. Despite all this, still trailing the Franco legacy services and has also generated some new, sometimes by itself, but sometimes because of collusion, complicity or even the impetus of the Administration or pursuant to an ill-advised legislation.
The public university is an institution clearly be improved, with some of the criticisms are based on actual defects, so we are convinced of the need to reform key aspects of it. But this does not justify the claim of commodified, that is, making it serve the short-term business and raise prices to unsustainable levels for many people. We are therefore faced a choice: improve the workings of the public university or put at the service of private interests be the sole criteria governing and managing their own private business.
Bologna as a pretext
times changes are conducive to those who would carry water to their mill. And now we see how the noise originated around the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is used often to distort it, either by tendentious interpretations, or simply making up its content. This sometimes becomes an alleged European demand is just what the general interest of a person or a sector.
A university education for the future
The Bologna Declaration says, "and we agree with it, we must" promote the ability to obtain employment European citizenship. To achieve this, the university education should train for a wide range of functions needed by society, which is more than business, and must be robust in relation to the passage of time, ie it must provide people with general knowledge deep, well assimilated, and the ability to update throughout life. This training is different from the very specific business need in the short term. A myopic view and close-mindedness of the training is harmful to people and the economic and cultural system of the country that needs people qualified and able to adapt to changing knowledge and the profound socio-environmental, demographic, economic and technological expected to mark the twenty-first century. Or is that perhaps this is not the much vaunted move toward a knowledge society, but to a society with a layer majority of people with low skill and low wages?
In college, all people who want and are worth
A public university must have access to any person who meets the academic requirements, and continuity in the studies did not have any limitation other than the ability and willingness work. Adjust the prices of tuition to total costs would leave out of college to many people now have access to them. And the solution is not to provide credit to a good part of the youth would be forced to start their careers with a heavy debt. What is needed is to increase the amount of salary grants and the number of student residences, cheaper public transport for young people and take all measures to avoid the lack of economic resources is a barrier to the formation of citizenship.
asambleario A government?
The government claim that the university is assembly-is simply false. Universities operate in a framework defined by the laws and the Administration's policy. The configuration and the powers of their governing bodies are regulated by law. Social councils, with most members from outside the university, authority over budgets and staff. College is not a company, and the decisive presence of business-government bodies is incompatible with the autonomy and the right to academic freedom under the Constitution.
What should I do?
If successful campaign that we are considering, would be a strong constraint on access to college, university would rapid obsolescence and consolidate an economic model based on unskilled and poorly paid. Therefore, a social decline, cultural and economic significant. And this is a danger that should not be underestimated.
We, therefore, people who are most responsible public universities to speak out in this debate, so far virtually unilaterally, to defend the institutions they represent. He also asked the government of the Generalitat, in charge of public education and its universities.
To better serve the whole society and to extend and strengthen the public service of teaching and research university, deep changes are necessary to put an end to corporatism, bureaucracy and parasitism of public resources by private interests, both from without and from within the university, which still weigh down the performance of public universities. The government of Catalonia and public universities should implement, by mutual agreement, a process of reflection aimed at improving and enhancing its contribution to our society. In this task are to search and find active support of the majority of the university community.
May 2008 "
(To sign the manifesto https: / / www.firmasonline.com/1Firmas/firmcsinNew.asp?C=1531 )
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