The United States government says it will be more aggressive in getting higher education services covered by the controversial General Agreement on Trade in Services.

With talks aimed at expanding the agreement already underway at the World Trade Organization, representatives of the Bush administration speaking at a conference on trade in educational services in Washington last month indicated greater trade liberalization in the sector is becoming a critical component of the country's international agenda.

"Greater trade in education services boosts America's balance of trade and promotes peace," Douglas Baker, deputy assistant secretary with the Department of Commerce told the conference sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.S. Department of Commerce. "Our goal is to create the conditions for international competition in education services with minimal government intervention."

The American government says a number of countries have barriers in place restricting international trade in education. According to U.S. negotiators, such barriers include laws recognizing post-secondary education as a product of the state and not a "proprietary function," policies that restrict market access to foreign education providers, restrictions on foreign ownership of universities and colleges and legislation that prevents or limits the accreditation of foreign education providers.

Joseph Popovitch, assistant U.S. Trade Representative said the U.S. wants these barriers to trade eliminated through the agreement, and claimed this poses no risk to a country's higher education system.

"Existing commitments in education and training under the GATS are small in number, and thus the U.S. will be striving to obtain more commitments from fellow WTO member nations," Popovitch said.

"While there are a lot of fears being expressed that this would mean the WTO would dictate education policy, the reality is there is great flexibility within the agreement allowing nations to maintain the right to regulate this sector."

Nevertheless, critics worry that including education services in the agreement could have serious implications on the quality and character of post-secondary education.

"I have some real concerns about the GATS," said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education. "I see a lot of risks and I just don't see any insurmountable obstacles standing in the way of international education."

Last year the council, along with the European University Association, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation issued a joint statement urging their respective countries not to make any commitments in education under the agreement.

"Higher education exists to serve the public interest and is not a 'commodity'," the statement said. "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."

Donald Johnston, secretary-general of the OECD, dismissed criticisms.

"The inclusion of education in the GATS has generated a heated policy debate, but the criticisms have been founded on misinterpretation and over-interpretation," Johnston said.

"A variety of claims are being made that GATS is a threat to public services like education because it forces governments to privatize. In fact, GATS rules do not dictate policy for the public sector. Countries are free to decide for themselves what services they want provided publicly and they are free to regulate."

However, Canadian trade analysts Scott Sinclair and Jim Grieshaber-Otto say Johnston and other proponents of trade liberalization are guilty of their own misinterpretation of the agreement.

"The GATS creates legally enforceable rights that foreign governments can invoke on behalf of their commercial service providers," Sinclair and Grieshaber-Otto concluded in a recently published study of the debate over GATS. "This threat can reasonably be expected to steadily erode the public, not-for-profit provision of essential services such as health, education and water. The biggest threat to public services in the GATS is that it legally entrenches their commercialization wherever foreign, for-profit providers get a foothold."

CAUT president Vic Catano says he is troubled the U.S. government is pushing ahead with plans to bring education services to the GATS negotiating table in spite of opposition from American colleges and universities.

"We have to make sure the U.S. does not win commitments from Canada on education services," Catano said. "The risks of including education in the GATS are just too significant to ignore."