A powerful international coalition of universities in North America and Europe has issued a joint declaration calling on governments to keep education services off the table during trade negotiations now underway at the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the American Council on Education, the European University Association and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation say no country should make any commitments in education under the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

"Higher education exists to serve the public interest and is not a 'commodity'," the statement says. "Given this public mandate, authority to regulate higher education must remain in the hands of competent bodies as designated by any given country. Nothing in international trade agreements should restrict or limit this authority in any way."

The joint statement, issued to governments in September, also warns against the intentions of some countries, including Canada, to make commitments in the GATS only on "commercial" education services while protecting the public education system. The university associations endorsing the statement say it's impossible to draw a neat line between public and private providers.

"Public and private higher education systems are intertwined and interdependent. Therefore it is impossible to effectively separate out certain subsectors, e.g., adult education, or certain types of institutions, e.g., 'private providers,' for the purposes of the GATS without impacting other parts of the system," the statement reads. "It is extremely difficult to clearly define which education services are supplied strictly on a commercial basis due to the public-private mix in all systems and within many institutions of higher education."

The group warns the implications of including education in the GATS could be enormous.

"Very little is known about the consequences of including trade in education services in the GATS such as on the quality, access and equity of higher education, on domestic authority to regulate higher education systems and on public subsidies for higher education. The potential risks ... could be very significant."

The statement also confirms CAUT's long-standing concerns that the general exemption for public services in the GATS remains ambiguous and open to conflicting interpretations.

"(H)istory shows that exemptions to international agreements such as the GATS tend to be interpreted narrowly by trade dispute panels. For these reasons, it seems unrealistic to assume that public education at the tertiary level is exempted from the GATS," the statement concludes.

CAUT president Tom Booth said he is pleased that university administrators agree the GATS poses significant dangers to post-secondary education in Canada and abroad.

"There seems to be a broad consensus emerging within our sector that bringing education into trade deals like GATS would seriously jeopardize the public mandate of universities and colleges," he said. "Right now, the challenge is to make sure governments and our trade negotiators get that message."