Preface to the second edition

Three years have passed since KKE’s theses were first published and a plethora of evolutions in Higher Education has happened in the meantime. These evolutions, though, did not overturn, but rather confirmed the markings, conclusions and propositions of this document.

Specifically:

• Anyone following the issues of Higher Education will have realized and assumed that the coming Bologna processes, between the European Education Ministers in Prague and Berlin, as well as those that are coming in 2010 (a milestone year for completing the conservative reformation in Higher Education) will not improve at any level the Bologna’s agreements of 1999. Their exclusive purpose is to control (every two years), the application of the E.U.’s goals and at the same time to set intermediate priorities for the promotion of these reactionary measures in all state-members.
• In this direction, 3 years ago, the law on the supposedly “step-up” of T.E.I. (Technological Educational Institutions) was enacted. The situation, though, is of T.E.I. worsening instead of improving, confirming dramatically our critic’s point and justifying our position for the necessity of a “Unified Higher Education”, with the scientific view of studies as a basic priority. The situation appears ominous for T.E.I., since the basic priority of the Conservative government’s educational policy is the extension and expansion of the categorization and inequalities of Higher Education, through the evaluation and “free enterprise” function of institutions.
• In general, the governmental plans of Nea Dimokratia (ND) and PASOK (the former government) for Higher Education are similar. They could not be different, because the educational policy of these two parties is determined by officials in Brussels. So, the fact that even their current views have already been foreseen and commented in this document should not come as a surprise. In other words, the ND reassures, at every opportunity, their attachment to the same goals that PASOK had promoted, since these goals converge to the strategy of big, monopolistic capital which the two parties serve. Especially, the basic points of government’s commitments for Higher Education (undermining the Public and Free character of Universities and T.E.I., extension of privatization under the threat of retrenchment of the national resources and general connection between evaluation and financing, appointment of managers for the improvement of business activities of institutions, debasement of studies by substituting the scientific knowledge with “due” training, tension of class barriers and multiplication of selective procedures inside Higher Education, abolition of democratic rights and exacerbation of autocracy inside the institutions pervaded the previous government’s (PASOK) schedule. In an attempt to erase every sign of variation, PASOK hurried officially and courageously, to advocate in favor of private “universities”. As if this was not enough, PASOK announced, through a “competition” of pre-election promises to big capital, the unification of the Ministries of Education and Employment, so as to not foster any illusions that the real goal of reformation is the complete adaptation of education to neo-medieval labour relations and in others inhuman commands of the Market-Goddess.
  
  

  It is obvious that in these conditions, of coordinated fires and relentless attacks against every social value (like the ones for the Free and Public-social character of Higher Education) the propositions of Κ.Κ.Ε. on Unified, Public and Free HIGHER EDUCATION in the service of the scientific and social development, obtain more significance. The need for broader awareness of these propositions lead us to reprint the following text (which represent a challenge of our times) in order to rally opposition and direct our people’s fight (inside and outside of the Higher institutions) for radical changes in education and society