Bologna’s decisions and reformation in higher education
Bologna declaration was signed in June 1999 by 29 Ministers of Education of the member states of the E.U. and other European countries under its influence. Its aim is to assign a common frame of “flexible” organization and function of universities, with intent to their subsumption to the monopolistic benefits and to the promotion of a business apportionment, which will inevitably bring reduction of the scientific potential. This reduction is in progress by the replacement of its majority by a “flexible” semi-skilled and cheap labour, without rights and with the illusion of a university title.
The basic cause of this reformation comes from the fact that the huge increase of capital’s centralisation and particularisation and the deepening of European unity, give to capitalists the ability to organise the production with less highly skilled-scientific potential. Simultaneously, current means of production, having incorporated the standard part of the intellectual business, facilitate the deduction of scientific potential and its replacement by a mass group of operators of new technology, which they cannot understand.
Shrinking of scientific potential is not necessary, today, when science continually obtains a bigger role in all sides of social production. Diminution of the education of people is a condition for the oppression of labour, the manipulation of their conscience and the creation of docile “European citizens”.
This is a result of a judgment of the monopolistic capitalism that subjects the development of productive forces, first of all the human ones, in the limits of the monopolistic super-profit.
The Bologna Declaration was fairly called an “educational Maastricht” as long as it aims at the gradual congruity of the systems of Higher Education of E.U., the creation of the “European Area of Higher Education”, that will be the key to the promotion of the mobility and the employability of the “European citizens”. This is a congruity that concerns the main, communal imposition of monopolistic conditions and rules for the functions of Higher Education and does not presuppose its total step-up. On the contrary, it leads to the amplification of the inequalities among the few Universities of the elite and the mass of the other institutions. Categorization of Universities is foreseen, in communal and national level, even in their inside, among various schools, departments, the tutorial staff and their graduates. Besides, as a text of the movers of the Process mentions, the purpose of categorisation is not the imposition of a united educational system, but the “organization of differences” among the educational systems of E.U. This could not be otherwise, because the inequality and the amplification of the class contrasts are basic characteristics of capitalistic development.
It should not get past any readers that the Bologna Declaration is an adopting and particularisation of the Sorbonne Declaration that came before (25-5-1998) and was legalized by Ministers of Education of Germany, France, UK and Italy. It is a product of the “strong” capital of E.U., which aims at its confirmedness through the imposition of its demands in the organization of Higher Education and the improvement of the conditions of its competition towards other imperialistic centers (U.S.A., Japan).
The Bologna Declaration generalises and systemises changes already underway, accelerated in the last twenty years through national and communal regulations, with intent to adapt Public Universities to the general reformations of the capitalistic economy and the labour relationship. These changes correspond to the developed monopolistic shape of a grown-up capitalism, a synthesis of the state and monopolies, and characterized by the organic connection between Public Universities and the needs of capitalistic reproduction, and their transformation in a kind of capitalistic business. So, these reforms are marked by the abandonment of this precept, that Higher Education is a public good, which must be provided with state care. Responsibility for ensuring its financing, goes to the university community and its cost to the concerned themselves. In these limits, differences between the public and private sections are deleted and a new profitable exit for the capital is open.
The basic cause of this reformation comes from the fact that the huge increase of capital’s centralisation and particularisation and the deepening of European unity, give to capitalists the ability to organise the production with less highly skilled-scientific potential. Simultaneously, current means of production, having incorporated the standard part of the intellectual business, facilitate the deduction of scientific potential and its replacement by a mass group of operators of new technology, which they cannot understand.
Shrinking of scientific potential is not necessary, today, when science continually obtains a bigger role in all sides of social production. Diminution of the education of people is a condition for the oppression of labour, the manipulation of their conscience and the creation of docile “European citizens”.
This is a result of a judgment of the monopolistic capitalism that subjects the development of productive forces, first of all the human ones, in the limits of the monopolistic super-profit.
The Bologna Declaration was fairly called an “educational Maastricht” as long as it aims at the gradual congruity of the systems of Higher Education of E.U., the creation of the “European Area of Higher Education”, that will be the key to the promotion of the mobility and the employability of the “European citizens”. This is a congruity that concerns the main, communal imposition of monopolistic conditions and rules for the functions of Higher Education and does not presuppose its total step-up. On the contrary, it leads to the amplification of the inequalities among the few Universities of the elite and the mass of the other institutions. Categorization of Universities is foreseen, in communal and national level, even in their inside, among various schools, departments, the tutorial staff and their graduates. Besides, as a text of the movers of the Process mentions, the purpose of categorisation is not the imposition of a united educational system, but the “organization of differences” among the educational systems of E.U. This could not be otherwise, because the inequality and the amplification of the class contrasts are basic characteristics of capitalistic development.
It should not get past any readers that the Bologna Declaration is an adopting and particularisation of the Sorbonne Declaration that came before (25-5-1998) and was legalized by Ministers of Education of Germany, France, UK and Italy. It is a product of the “strong” capital of E.U., which aims at its confirmedness through the imposition of its demands in the organization of Higher Education and the improvement of the conditions of its competition towards other imperialistic centers (U.S.A., Japan).
The Bologna Declaration generalises and systemises changes already underway, accelerated in the last twenty years through national and communal regulations, with intent to adapt Public Universities to the general reformations of the capitalistic economy and the labour relationship. These changes correspond to the developed monopolistic shape of a grown-up capitalism, a synthesis of the state and monopolies, and characterized by the organic connection between Public Universities and the needs of capitalistic reproduction, and their transformation in a kind of capitalistic business. So, these reforms are marked by the abandonment of this precept, that Higher Education is a public good, which must be provided with state care. Responsibility for ensuring its financing, goes to the university community and its cost to the concerned themselves. In these limits, differences between the public and private sections are deleted and a new profitable exit for the capital is open.
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr