Higher Education Caucus vows to fend off attacks
Over the last four years, the financial meltdown – which was sparked by reckless speculation and unregulated greed by the financial services sector – has dramatically altered the political and economic landscape of the higher education and research sector. Many governments have been encouraged by international financial institutions to take aim at public spending, including expenditure on higher education and research, as a way to cut deficits and levels of public debt.
With this context, participants gathered at the pre-Congress Higher Education Caucus on 20 July for an overview of EI activities since the last EI Congress in Berlin in 2007. Moreover, participants looked at recent trends in the public financing of higher education and research; trends in salaries and benefits; and recent reforms to higher education and research and the impact of these reforms on academic staff.
Opening the meeting, Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary of Australia’s National Tertiary Education Union, said: “In many ways, the economic crisis has provided governments with a convenient excuse for so-called higher education ‘reform’. We have seen many attempts to undermine traditional governance models of higher education institutions by weakening the voices of teachers and researchers – this is unacceptable!”
In her keynote address, Penni Stewart, President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers voiced her concerns about the continuing encroachment of the market in education. She voiced her concerns that this posed a direct challenge to academic freedom: “We must forcefully articulate why higher education and research is important as a public service. The way forward lies in reaffirming the role of higher education staff as actors in society, as those who work on the front-line daily, tackling the major challenges we face today."
In the ensuing discussion and updates about the situation of higher education in a number of countries, participants agreed not to be deterred by these challenges.
As representatives of unions of higher education and research professionals, participants seized the opportunity to develop an effective and co-ordinated response to these attacks on education.
EI and its member organisations will fend off attacks on higher education and research with one powerful voice!
