Education ministers from 35 OECD countries gathered in Athens in June to discuss the future of higher education against a backdrop of protests by Greek students and professors angry over a set of government proposals intended to gut Greece’s public university system.
Thousands of demonstrators clogged central Athens and scuffled with riot police before the ministerial meeting. The protests forced the Greek government to shift the meeting venue to a remote resort 40 kilometres south of the city.
Yanis Maistros, secretary of the national academics union, accused the government of using the OECD meeting as a public relations exercise in an effort to win support for its controversial education reform proposals. The proposed changes being considered included a constitutional amendment to allow for private universities.
“With protests growing every day, the government is desperate to justify the revision of article 16 of the Greek Constitution that stipulates that universities in Greece must be public, self-governed institutions and funded by the state,” Maistros said.
Academic staff walked off the job June 1 in protest against the proposals and to support students who occupied universities across the country.
At the official opening of the ministerial meeting, Angel Gurria, the new secretary general of OECD and former finance minister of Mexico, exacerbated the tension by calling for radical reforms in higher education.
“One model (of higher education) that surely doesn’t work is the one which quite a few countries are saddled with, particularly in Europe,” Gurria claimed. “In these countries, higher education is publicly financed for the most part, but is inadequately resourced to meet the costs of expansion.”
And, rather than arguing that governments should increase public funding of higher education, Gurria noted that “contributions from graduates to the costs of study can be an efficient way of increasing resources.”
His views were reflected in the final press release issued by the Greek education minister, who chaired the meeting.
David Robinson, CAUT’s associate executive director, was invited to the ministerial meeting as an official delegate with the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, an interface for labour unions.
At a forum with ministers prior to the official opening, business and labour groups were invited to comment on the themes of quality, equity and efficiency in higher education.
“Higher tuition fees, growing student debt and privatization all work against equity,” said Bob Harris, a spokesman for the trade union delegation, in urging the ministers “to put equity and equality of opportunity at the centre of our goals and value systems.”
In his address, Robinson said the growing commercialization of higher education had adversely affected the quality of education.
“Assuring quality in higher education also requires that governments and institutions recognize the importance of attracting and retaining qualified staff,” he added.
The ministerial was preceded by an OECD experts meeting in Sile, Turkey on future scenarios for higher education. Robinson was also invited to the seminar and proposed an alternative scenario for “the public service university.”
This scenario, Robinson says, puts academic values at the heart of the university and is characterized by public funding, integration of teaching and research, ironclad guarantees of tenure and academic freedom and equity and access for students.