B. Regarding the characteristics of reformation of higher education
B1. Structure and content of studies
In this context, the Bologna Declaration demands the cutting of the duration of pre-graduate studies to 3 years. Their split will be in two cycles, from which the first one will be pre-graduate and the second one graduate. Similarly, the Declaration promotes a common structure of Higher Education, set to the following model; three years of pre-graduate studies, two years of graduate honors, three years of doctorate (3-2-3). Government’s statements about “lax commitments” and the borders of keeping the four-year or five year studies are manipulative. From the moment that powerful imperialistic countries have already moved on to the institution of three year-graduate studies (bachelor), it is certain that in the name of “compatibility comparableness”, the three-year model, will be generalised and our universities must toe the line. Even if, in our country, pre-graduate studies remain temporarily at four/five years as the Education minister claims, so as to cut down reactions, the fact is that they become equal (professionally with the Order 89\48 and academically based on the Bologna Declaration) to the three-year studies of foreign universities (bachelor). So easy, in the future, with the argument that the fourth year adds no value, studies could become three-year. Besides, in the two day process that has been held in our country for the propagation of the decisions of Bologna, the basic instructor, Guy Haug, general councilor of CRE and editor of the labour text of the session of Bologna, repeatedly pointed out that in the new model, studies will be valued not on the basis of their duration but of the credits that are going to be gathered during them. Four-year studies may be valued even of lower level than three-year studies.
It is obvious that the basic point of Bologna’s decisions is not the interference of barriers in the completing of university studies by their simple split in the pre-graduate and graduate cycle. Determinant is the reformation of study schedules, so as through a brief, three-year “education”, the only knowledge to be transmitted is limited and segmental business skills, for a partial and due to employment of its graduates, in the frame of frequent profession turn.
It is significant that only Medicine is excluded from Bologna’s regulations, under the condition that it will be restricted to six years, since the free, until today, access to specialist subjects may be abolished. With reference to Law studies, Mechanics and other specialisms, accession of the bachelor will lead to limited access to business. For instance, a bachelor graduating from Law School would not be able to practice law but would become an executive bank clerk or an assistant at a lawyer’s office. A Bachelor graduate of Technical University would not be allowed to practice their profession autonomously but they could work as software operators without knowing how to estimate scientifically the results.
It is obvious that obtaining a certain business skill during the limited time of three years can be achieved only at the expense of necessary scientific background, of specialism and of the laying on their positions of practical directions and knowledge that are dismantled of their notional basis and consolidated, flattened, standardised and segmented. It is about a system in which the development of skills in handling tools plays the primary role in removing creative and scientific thinking. This leads to low quality mass education, without resources and substructures, far-off researches and adapted to cheaper forms of teaching.
Generally, the distinction between studies in Universities or T.E.I. consists in that the first ones are composed in the basis of a general notional content, which does not lead to a specific scientific speciality, whereas the second one in the basis of a professional speciality which does not have the necessary notional background. Both types of studies do not fulfill the conditions of a high-level scientific speciality that is the purpose of Higher Education. However, lately, this distinction begins to blur by creating new departments, in Universities, of similar content of those of T.E.I..
Bologna’s decisions and differences between studies in Universities and T.E.I. will become more unclear because of their downward equation.
At the same time, the hostility of capitalism, towards several forms of intellectual activity that Marx pointed out is emerging in the studies of social sciences. This hostility is reflected through
Β2. Graduate studies
This is the reason why, the non-aligned model of university education does not concern every Higher Institution. Top universities of powerful imperialistic countries, like Great Schools of France, Imperial, Oxford University, Milan Technical University etc., apply only typically, the structure of the two study schedules unified and unharmed. Characteristic is the fact that, in France, the conferment of the degree and rights of “master” to the unified study-cycle graduates engineers of Great Schools is nomothetically consolidated. The fact that governments of our country have never gone against the confrontation (outside of Greece) even of the five-year studies of our universities equivalence to the lower three-year studies of foreign universities, is a shocking proof of their homage. Even though, at the same time, degrees of several departments of Greek Universities are of Higher level than degrees (e.g. master) of several universities of England, USA and other countries and that is widely acceptable by those who are aware of the situation in universities.
So, we ensure that graduate studies (most of them and for the majority of students) will not be the kind of scientific thorough examination on a certain scientific section, but mostly the kind of a professional training that may be received during business life and determined by enterprises.
It is obvious that there will be a wide variety of graduate studies and that the reproduction of social elite will be growing through certain graduate departments, through the doctorate cycle and mainly through those universities excluded from the measures, maintaining the unified kind of studies.
B.3 Credit points system and educational mobility
The purpose of the flexible adaptation to the market needs is enforced through the foreseen legislative adjustment for generalized practice of the system of credit points. With this system, a course may be surveyed and categorised with the pretence of measurement and transfer of the value of teaching-hours that someone attended successfully, even in different departments, institutions and schools, in or out of the typical educational system and in whichever country of the EU.
Input of the credit system is going to serve the promotion of personalised, articulated, study schedules (so-called “by-sectional”) that are scattered and created through the integration of the courses of different departments and interests, without a scientific coherence and with the satisfaction of the market as an exclusive purpose. Inside the limits of a generalised practice of credit system, the way is open for the connection even of the completely degrading IEK with uppermost education. Increased mobility of their owners for modulating an appropriate structural framework is based on it too. “Diploma supplement” is becoming a necessary tool for the decryption of complicated specialities and obscure titles that will come up.
Aside from scientific debasement, this system has got an ideological purpose as well, the cultivation of a social conformism, an assenting apprehension in student youth. That is that the ability of everyman to work (“employability”), is connected to their ability to appreciate the correct demands of their employers and recall appropriate training, while unemployment is a result of their lack of adaptability.
Another important aim of increasing mobility (of students, tutors, researchers) and generalising the credit system is the ability of “flexible” and immediate removal of talented scientists and experts to the powerful universities of the countries of E.U., where researching activities of crucial meaning for capital are held.
On the whole, the importance that has been given in that kind of educational mobility aims at a parallel familiarity with the labour mobility (that, contrary to USA, is at a lower level in countries of E.U.), which will allow capital to ensure the cheapest scientific labour wherever, whenever and however it is needed.
B.4. Acceleration of privatization
Lastly, subsumption of the whole function of Public Universities to market’s needs has been promoted and can be summarised to the following:
In a few words, Universities are pushed to act more and more as capitalistic enterprises, with lawful and unlawful means, imposing on popular needs, science and study levels, deflect all of their interests to how to ensure bigger incomings. For this purpose companies have been founded to administer their fortunes and interlink Universities with enterprises that promote the subjection of university activity to the demands of market. In this framework, control of the elected collective university organs at university activity is minimised and the centre of making decisions is moved to an impermeable structure, immediately linked to power centres (government, imperialistic organisations, monopolistic enterprises). Participation in the management of Universities by representatives of companies leads to the transmission of control and management to fewer members, or even to single people like technocrat managers.
Reaction to this policy on the quality of science and Universities is of great importance catalytic.
Better academic is not any longer the one with the most prestigious scientific and teaching work but the one that attracts more funding. The current law that modifies the status quo of Research Centres (which come under the control of the greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology), anticipates the connection between the promotion of researchers and the amount of funding they bring to the centre. This strategy, obviously, will be expanded soon at Universities, too.
Enterprises will be able to decide the structure and content of studies based on their advantages (the legislative framework of T.E.I. already anticipates the participation of the media of enterprises). A significant effect is exerted for this purpose by communal programmes, like comet, for the contact between Universities and companies, and Esprit, and modern programmes such as Socrates and Leonardo.
Simultaneously, interest of university tutors on the educational work is reduced, many of them consider teaching as part-time job, and turns to hunting of financiers and to superficial, non substantial works that bring up profits sooner, like researchers of studying content.
These progresses associate with the expansion of “flexible” business relations of researching and didactic staff, by conventions of private right, conventions of work, hiring of seasonal or time workers. In the most of the new departments that have been founded by a EU grant, the majority of tutors are under temporary contract. Generally, through the communal financing, a new, scientific, managing and technical labour is shaped in Universities, that works under difficult conditions and is used to suppress the working rights of permanent staff. This new reality which continuously expands negatively affects the level of studies and mostly comes in total opposition to academic freedom, creating a numerous category of workers, immediately reliant, under the threat of being fired, from ascendant powers.
Anticipation of the Declaration of apperception of sectional studies, even if those have been materialised out of the typical educational system, leads to their de facto legalisation, considering that maternal Universities which greed foreign countries, lavishly ascribe distinctions to graduates of their profitable branches.
Revision of constitution’s 28th article, by which the communal law will prevail of the national one, will delete any constitutional constraint.
Colleges, that are already more than public Universities and T.E.I., by their apperception will be enlarged and will function so as to adjust public foundations under the patterns of uncontrollable business dexterity. Besides, the formal communal promptness towards Public Universities - with reference to serve economic infiltration - is to found branches of the lowermost level, in countries with a low level development or in countries of one-time existing socialism. That is to convert to a kind of multinational of education, through collaborations.
In this framework, a new profitable outlet is open for the private sector. With the agreement of government, the first private “University” in Corfu has been already found which propagandise that theoretical knowledge does not have sense in a society of continuous renewal! At the same time, government allows the creation of private “Universities” from variant media, such as Local Self-administration, Church etc. Besides, townships (recently township of Maroussi), in the framework of “healthy competition”, advertise that Public Universities will be cheaper than those of any private individual.
B5. Certification-Evaluation
Evaluation and connection of this policy with financing are imperative for its imposition. The content of study schedule, the substructure and the whole scientific activity stops from being criteria of quality of Universities and university studies. In their position, there is, now, their response to market’s needs, in the basis of employer’s suggestions. This response is trying to become the same with the needs of students-clients, with the deceitful argument of providing them with a job immediately.
Towards this, Guy Haug has been revelatory by announcing in an interview of his that; “quality relates with the response that studies have on real world and with the percentage of students that get along with their education, so response may exist in job market. Finally, quality has to be estimated by what students need and want and not by an abstract notion of academic knowledge”. Klaus Landfried, from Germany and basic spokesman of the process, in a similar interview of his, adds that “criteria on the level of the studies will be appointed by scientists and employers in a continuous interlocution with reference to adjust the schedules”.
Consequently, what arises is that criterion of evaluation and financing is the level of conformation with monopolistic purposes and especially;
In the basis of the findings of an “independent, from national governments, principle” which will consist of controlled scientists and employers and will take on the evaluation of E.U.’s foundations, instead of ensuring the conditions for an equivalent development of Universities, their categorisation will be promoted with a continuous increasing, among them, qualitative distance. In the first category, there will be those getting the highest gradation, named as “distinctions centres”, with a sharp choice of students, offsprings of the ruling class, where the best “brains” of the labour class will be gathered. Departments and schools not attracting market’s interest will be downgraded or closed, regardless of their social importance.
In the social schedules “Socrates” and “Leonardo”, there have already been predicted evaluation mechanisms of university activity with a respective distribution of communal financing. Simultaneously, states-members make their way to the composition of National Systems of Evaluation, by the continuously increasing participation of employers’ media. In these systems, there are certain conditions on which financing or borrowing of foundations depend. In our country, evaluation of Universities is set on a law which is going to be activated by the government, so as to bring into line its commitments in view of Prague’s process. In the framework of particularizing structures and organs to take on the evaluation of Universities and T.E.I., government has already invited on a pretending dialogue for the “enactment of a national system in terms of evaluating the quality of Higher Education”.
This draft law does not slip into the vexed question of criteria of evaluation, because their reactive goals might be given away. Nevertheless, even in that way, anybody can discover their direction, since the National Council of Evaluation of Quality, which will take on the promotion of procedures, is completely controlled by the government and supported by employers’ media.
In conclusion, the policy of the privatization of public Universities combined with the promoted procedures of evaluation cannot possibly compose a reinforcement of democratic self-administration of Universities, just as is attempted to be, behind the title of “managing and economic self-existence of foundations”. Reversely, they amplify the centralism and control of Universities by the state and imperialistic organisations that is the big capital. Simultaneously, the responsibility for financing and general ensuring of their function is transmitted to the foundations and their students.
B6. Relation between degrees and profession and perspective of graduates
On the other hand, debasement of pre-graduate studies, leads devalues the labour power of graduates, and the conditions and possibility of their employers.
More characteristic is the fact that unemployment of graduates from TEI – foundations that are already oriented to the application and satisfaction of market’s certain needs is, to some extent bigger than that of graduates from Universities. A much bigger percentage certainly of TEI students in relation with Universities, do not complete their studies, by finding out Fachochsule of Düsseldorf, institutions that have been out of pocket since 1990, by a massive inrush of highly educated and a lot cheaper graduates of the former socialist countries in the German market, are the – corresponding to TEI – Fachoschule, in which the amount of students has been reduced because of their graduates’ high unemployment.
In the cathedral of capitalism, the USA, the percentage of the ones having graduate degrees and working positions corresponding to their skills is continuously reduced. There is an inclination dominating, for replacement of students of the pre-graduate cycle with graduate students and occupations correspondingly of the positions of graduates of High School and Middle Professional Education from pre-graduate cycle students. A great majority of graduates of lower educational level is condemned in contemporary jobs or stays in the margin. This fact contributes to a pathogenesis of American society, to speedy increase of foods, of its unnaturally expanded prudent system. This inclination is not, of course, an “objective” result of social development, as townsmen analysts declare, it is the result of policy that widens unemployment and generates relentless antagonism for a job position, that raises up standards that employers demands, and that lowers salaries and social reception. It is the result of a distracted antagonism of monopolies, which by using more and more highly specialised labour, advance their utilisation, and increase instead of reduce working time. Characteristic is that the majority of new graduates do not have working hours, insurance and generally no working rights, while their working hours are off the 8-hour limit.
Consequently, the chase to acquire more skills, the personal attempt of accession in the category of “best” and “select”, leads to a dead end, and the myth of our “meritocratic” society which supposedly awards the capable and hardworking ones, has already collapsed, since in our days, proletarianization of scientific potential is speedy expanded.
Besides, for most of the graduates categories, personal devaluing of professional ability, based on supposedly “substantial qualifications”, on which the market has the first word, is already reality. A characteristic example are graduates of “professional” schools, who, in order to teach, must acquire a certificate of pedagogical adequacy, except from the basic cycle of studies, and in addition they must be evaluated personally, by specific competitions or by other class criteria, such as obtainment of a graduate degree, personal interview etc.
In this context, even graduates of graduate cycle studies will not be secure in their jobs. That is a fact for the majority of today’s graduates of Higher Education, with whom they are going to be balanced. In fact, only doctors, mechanics and lawyers have a nomothetic consolidation of their professional rights. Concerning the doctors and lawyers, several measures have been adopted so as to cut short accession to professional rights (accessional exams after medical diploma, law practice school after graduating Law School, as a condition for exercising the profession, in which the insertion and graduation will be held with exams). It has been anticipated, that these standards are going to expand in mechanics, too. So, even graduates of six-year studies, graduates from Medicine School, will fail at the exams for the license of exercising the profession, are ordered to be unemployed or occupied as sanitary employees, as current developments prove.
Simultaneously, everything leads to the exposure of conditions so as to maintain any secured professional right (e.g. compulsory attendance, programs of “lifelong learning”, exams after the passing of certain years, depending on the supposedly quickness of devaluing knowledge in every science etc).
Therefore, conflict for professional rights between various categories of graduates (Universities-T.E.I., graduates of different departments with relative professional subject etc) has no point, since none will be professionally secured anymore. At the same time, though, conflict is dangerous because it splits workers and disorientates them from searching for the real guilty, that is monopolistic capital which wants no commitments and obstacles in the invasion towards employment.
B.7. Reinforcement of Universities’ role in reproduction of master ideology
The reactive structure of University education goes along with reinforcement of the master ideology of capital in Universities. Within this context, the role of Universities in reproducing this master ideology is amplified. Tens of conferences, meetings and symposia have been held every year by Universities with communal financing and for the purpose of propaganda and purification of the master political choices of big capital. The most reactive civic theories that in the past had been confronted resolutely by students’ reaction, return by wielding on consciousness, mainly of students’ youth, to subdue it under the logic of omnipotence of the market and false values of imperialism.
In the following, some points of ideological propaganda, which grows in Universities, are mentioned.
a)Promotion of the profit of monopolies and the “European idea’’ as a common profit. It is about a sequence of theories that aim at conformity and assimilation to the system. These theories are based on philosophic apprehensions of the American pragmatism. This is a theory that displays the most reactive and aggressive side of monopolistic capitalism, which is characterised by the demagoguery and deception of people, so as to shape their apprehension according to the imperialistic aspect. In relation with the theory of the American pragmatist philosopher O. James, the "value" of everything must be judged according to "payments" they bring and "our general commitment is to do what gives", by the same, supposedly, way to the needs of all classes and, finally, value is identified as what it gives to monopolistic capital. In this context, Universities rise to prominence as the basic medium of confirming the idea of European unification and class cooperation for competitiveness among European enterprises.
Offices connected with enterprises that function in Universities and T.E.I., have a particular contribution in the growth of similar ideas. Their purpose is to legalise the intervention of enterprises on study schedules, and input the idea of a supposedly "meritocratic", function of capitalistic market that is interested in absorbing and rewarding the "best". Not only do they not help in confronting unemployment, but they facilitate monopolies to “gather souls’’, remove students from the only definite way of winning their rights in employment, the class fight. Especially through "career" events, in which monopolistic enterprises show their "achievements" and "social" work, in lecture theatres full of students, they try to create awe and excitement towards the monopolistic direction of society. This excitement has grown systematically by the, party of tutors connected with monopolistic advantages, through every day’s tuition, more than in the past. Of course, the effect of civic ideology on student consciousness is a very complicated procedure, which is directly and indirectly detected in the character and subject of study schedules. These sort of study schedules, through knowledge that are unconnected, segmental and often wrong and unscientific, disguises the unity of knowledge, creating the feeling of inability of knowing the world, and removes the ability of judging
b)Confrontation of the effectiveness of education depending on its economic attributes. It is based on several theories, as the one of "human capital" in the limits of which, there are suggested vulgar methods of defining the economic effectiveness of education and sharing its financing by the type of "cost-result". It is a theory that degrades the role of the human factor in production to the level of its material ingredients, and education to a "cow that provides us milk", as Engels mentioned, and not as an area of human practice which demands a “serious and enviable devotion’’. This theory and other similar ones, which view science as an "enterprise", an "extremely specialized industry", face science from the viewpoint of a "practical" businessman. This point of view leads to the complete distortion of science. Capitalistic views of science have led to an one-sided development of technological sciences, a debasement of basic and applied research, for the benefit of “reliant’’ research for direct commercial utilisation.
On the basis of these theories, there is promoted a selective, personal (in the type of loans, financing of students) and evaluation of Universities in relation to their economic attribution. This evaluation neglects, on purpose, the most determinative social, material, organising and pedagogical factors, which designate the quality of education.
c)A theory that supports that knowledge changes rapidly and the old one is devalued and useless. This theory urges the legalisation of the procedure of "lifelong training". It is based on new positivistic philosophical ideas according to which there are no natural laws and natural purpose, but natural laws are “contracts’’, “declarations", “system of suggestions", “logic necessity’’ etc. New positivistic theories state that there is no subjective reference of science and that knowledge is not an evolutionary process to obtain truth. Every time that declarations and contracts change, we must start over again. These aspects are a part of a general theory of “post-capitalistic society of knowledge’’. A theory that is the succession and renaming of previous theories about post-industrial society, and aims at disorientating from the basic cause of amplifying class inequalities, that exist in social relationships of production and ownership. Therefore, this theory tries to dissuade from class fight, and create the illusion that through the many opportunities of training that capitalism offers, class inequalities can be overcome, if everybody by themselves have the ability to utilise them right.
A point that should be added are the many seemingly scientific analyses about the supposed subjectivity of “globalisation’’ that comes out from the development of knowledge. These analyses try to hide the capitalistic character of productive relations by avoiding socio-political definitions.
In general, we must underline that new media of ideological manipulation that have come out by communal schedules and lead to the phenomena of buying out and infiltrating conscience (chasing researching programs, mobility programs, linkage offices etc.) which will be amplified by the input of a system of credit points, evaluation and generalisation of graduate studies. Invasion of foreign universities in our country, but also, amplification of linkage and networks among institutions that go along with an intense mental and politic infiltration in the source of producing knowledge, stress the ideological alienation.
- Structure of studies
In this context, the Bologna Declaration demands the cutting of the duration of pre-graduate studies to 3 years. Their split will be in two cycles, from which the first one will be pre-graduate and the second one graduate. Similarly, the Declaration promotes a common structure of Higher Education, set to the following model; three years of pre-graduate studies, two years of graduate honors, three years of doctorate (3-2-3). Government’s statements about “lax commitments” and the borders of keeping the four-year or five year studies are manipulative. From the moment that powerful imperialistic countries have already moved on to the institution of three year-graduate studies (bachelor), it is certain that in the name of “compatibility comparableness”, the three-year model, will be generalised and our universities must toe the line. Even if, in our country, pre-graduate studies remain temporarily at four/five years as the Education minister claims, so as to cut down reactions, the fact is that they become equal (professionally with the Order 89\48 and academically based on the Bologna Declaration) to the three-year studies of foreign universities (bachelor). So easy, in the future, with the argument that the fourth year adds no value, studies could become three-year. Besides, in the two day process that has been held in our country for the propagation of the decisions of Bologna, the basic instructor, Guy Haug, general councilor of CRE and editor of the labour text of the session of Bologna, repeatedly pointed out that in the new model, studies will be valued not on the basis of their duration but of the credits that are going to be gathered during them. Four-year studies may be valued even of lower level than three-year studies.
- Content of studies
It is obvious that the basic point of Bologna’s decisions is not the interference of barriers in the completing of university studies by their simple split in the pre-graduate and graduate cycle. Determinant is the reformation of study schedules, so as through a brief, three-year “education”, the only knowledge to be transmitted is limited and segmental business skills, for a partial and due to employment of its graduates, in the frame of frequent profession turn.
It is significant that only Medicine is excluded from Bologna’s regulations, under the condition that it will be restricted to six years, since the free, until today, access to specialist subjects may be abolished. With reference to Law studies, Mechanics and other specialisms, accession of the bachelor will lead to limited access to business. For instance, a bachelor graduating from Law School would not be able to practice law but would become an executive bank clerk or an assistant at a lawyer’s office. A Bachelor graduate of Technical University would not be allowed to practice their profession autonomously but they could work as software operators without knowing how to estimate scientifically the results.
It is obvious that obtaining a certain business skill during the limited time of three years can be achieved only at the expense of necessary scientific background, of specialism and of the laying on their positions of practical directions and knowledge that are dismantled of their notional basis and consolidated, flattened, standardised and segmented. It is about a system in which the development of skills in handling tools plays the primary role in removing creative and scientific thinking. This leads to low quality mass education, without resources and substructures, far-off researches and adapted to cheaper forms of teaching.
- Accession of T.E.I. in Higher Education
Generally, the distinction between studies in Universities or T.E.I. consists in that the first ones are composed in the basis of a general notional content, which does not lead to a specific scientific speciality, whereas the second one in the basis of a professional speciality which does not have the necessary notional background. Both types of studies do not fulfill the conditions of a high-level scientific speciality that is the purpose of Higher Education. However, lately, this distinction begins to blur by creating new departments, in Universities, of similar content of those of T.E.I..
Bologna’s decisions and differences between studies in Universities and T.E.I. will become more unclear because of their downward equation.
- Present situation of studies
At the same time, the hostility of capitalism, towards several forms of intellectual activity that Marx pointed out is emerging in the studies of social sciences. This hostility is reflected through
a) The counterfeiting of their content and the warp of their task which comes from capital’s need to utilize them in order to reproduce its ideology, and for fear of their use to analyse and misquote economic and politic basis of capitalism (the representative element is a betrayal of the study schedules, even those of economic schools of political economy).Studies having a direct connection to capitalistic production and a part in the ideological propaganda of the system are taking their place, like Marketing, Management, Psychology of Management, Mass Media etc.
b) Their general devaluation (e.g. alteration of sociology departments to departments of producing unemployed, restricted financing through researching schedules), since their development, only indirectly can contribute to an increase in the profitability of capital.
Β2. Graduate studies
- Implications of Bologna’s decisions on the general level of Higher Education
This is the reason why, the non-aligned model of university education does not concern every Higher Institution. Top universities of powerful imperialistic countries, like Great Schools of France, Imperial, Oxford University, Milan Technical University etc., apply only typically, the structure of the two study schedules unified and unharmed. Characteristic is the fact that, in France, the conferment of the degree and rights of “master” to the unified study-cycle graduates engineers of Great Schools is nomothetically consolidated. The fact that governments of our country have never gone against the confrontation (outside of Greece) even of the five-year studies of our universities equivalence to the lower three-year studies of foreign universities, is a shocking proof of their homage. Even though, at the same time, degrees of several departments of Greek Universities are of Higher level than degrees (e.g. master) of several universities of England, USA and other countries and that is widely acceptable by those who are aware of the situation in universities.
- Measures of the composition of graduate studies
So, we ensure that graduate studies (most of them and for the majority of students) will not be the kind of scientific thorough examination on a certain scientific section, but mostly the kind of a professional training that may be received during business life and determined by enterprises.
It is obvious that there will be a wide variety of graduate studies and that the reproduction of social elite will be growing through certain graduate departments, through the doctorate cycle and mainly through those universities excluded from the measures, maintaining the unified kind of studies.
B.3 Credit points system and educational mobility
The purpose of the flexible adaptation to the market needs is enforced through the foreseen legislative adjustment for generalized practice of the system of credit points. With this system, a course may be surveyed and categorised with the pretence of measurement and transfer of the value of teaching-hours that someone attended successfully, even in different departments, institutions and schools, in or out of the typical educational system and in whichever country of the EU.
Input of the credit system is going to serve the promotion of personalised, articulated, study schedules (so-called “by-sectional”) that are scattered and created through the integration of the courses of different departments and interests, without a scientific coherence and with the satisfaction of the market as an exclusive purpose. Inside the limits of a generalised practice of credit system, the way is open for the connection even of the completely degrading IEK with uppermost education. Increased mobility of their owners for modulating an appropriate structural framework is based on it too. “Diploma supplement” is becoming a necessary tool for the decryption of complicated specialities and obscure titles that will come up.
Aside from scientific debasement, this system has got an ideological purpose as well, the cultivation of a social conformism, an assenting apprehension in student youth. That is that the ability of everyman to work (“employability”), is connected to their ability to appreciate the correct demands of their employers and recall appropriate training, while unemployment is a result of their lack of adaptability.
Another important aim of increasing mobility (of students, tutors, researchers) and generalising the credit system is the ability of “flexible” and immediate removal of talented scientists and experts to the powerful universities of the countries of E.U., where researching activities of crucial meaning for capital are held.
On the whole, the importance that has been given in that kind of educational mobility aims at a parallel familiarity with the labour mobility (that, contrary to USA, is at a lower level in countries of E.U.), which will allow capital to ensure the cheapest scientific labour wherever, whenever and however it is needed.
B.4. Acceleration of privatization
Lastly, subsumption of the whole function of Public Universities to market’s needs has been promoted and can be summarised to the following:
- Function of Universities based on business measures
In a few words, Universities are pushed to act more and more as capitalistic enterprises, with lawful and unlawful means, imposing on popular needs, science and study levels, deflect all of their interests to how to ensure bigger incomings. For this purpose companies have been founded to administer their fortunes and interlink Universities with enterprises that promote the subjection of university activity to the demands of market. In this framework, control of the elected collective university organs at university activity is minimised and the centre of making decisions is moved to an impermeable structure, immediately linked to power centres (government, imperialistic organisations, monopolistic enterprises). Participation in the management of Universities by representatives of companies leads to the transmission of control and management to fewer members, or even to single people like technocrat managers.
Reaction to this policy on the quality of science and Universities is of great importance catalytic.
Better academic is not any longer the one with the most prestigious scientific and teaching work but the one that attracts more funding. The current law that modifies the status quo of Research Centres (which come under the control of the greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology), anticipates the connection between the promotion of researchers and the amount of funding they bring to the centre. This strategy, obviously, will be expanded soon at Universities, too.
Enterprises will be able to decide the structure and content of studies based on their advantages (the legislative framework of T.E.I. already anticipates the participation of the media of enterprises). A significant effect is exerted for this purpose by communal programmes, like comet, for the contact between Universities and companies, and Esprit, and modern programmes such as Socrates and Leonardo.
Simultaneously, interest of university tutors on the educational work is reduced, many of them consider teaching as part-time job, and turns to hunting of financiers and to superficial, non substantial works that bring up profits sooner, like researchers of studying content.
These progresses associate with the expansion of “flexible” business relations of researching and didactic staff, by conventions of private right, conventions of work, hiring of seasonal or time workers. In the most of the new departments that have been founded by a EU grant, the majority of tutors are under temporary contract. Generally, through the communal financing, a new, scientific, managing and technical labour is shaped in Universities, that works under difficult conditions and is used to suppress the working rights of permanent staff. This new reality which continuously expands negatively affects the level of studies and mostly comes in total opposition to academic freedom, creating a numerous category of workers, immediately reliant, under the threat of being fired, from ascendant powers.
- Reinforcement of class barriers of University Education
- Legalization of private “Universities”
Anticipation of the Declaration of apperception of sectional studies, even if those have been materialised out of the typical educational system, leads to their de facto legalisation, considering that maternal Universities which greed foreign countries, lavishly ascribe distinctions to graduates of their profitable branches.
Revision of constitution’s 28th article, by which the communal law will prevail of the national one, will delete any constitutional constraint.
Colleges, that are already more than public Universities and T.E.I., by their apperception will be enlarged and will function so as to adjust public foundations under the patterns of uncontrollable business dexterity. Besides, the formal communal promptness towards Public Universities - with reference to serve economic infiltration - is to found branches of the lowermost level, in countries with a low level development or in countries of one-time existing socialism. That is to convert to a kind of multinational of education, through collaborations.
In this framework, a new profitable outlet is open for the private sector. With the agreement of government, the first private “University” in Corfu has been already found which propagandise that theoretical knowledge does not have sense in a society of continuous renewal! At the same time, government allows the creation of private “Universities” from variant media, such as Local Self-administration, Church etc. Besides, townships (recently township of Maroussi), in the framework of “healthy competition”, advertise that Public Universities will be cheaper than those of any private individual.
B5. Certification-Evaluation
Evaluation and connection of this policy with financing are imperative for its imposition. The content of study schedule, the substructure and the whole scientific activity stops from being criteria of quality of Universities and university studies. In their position, there is, now, their response to market’s needs, in the basis of employer’s suggestions. This response is trying to become the same with the needs of students-clients, with the deceitful argument of providing them with a job immediately.
Towards this, Guy Haug has been revelatory by announcing in an interview of his that; “quality relates with the response that studies have on real world and with the percentage of students that get along with their education, so response may exist in job market. Finally, quality has to be estimated by what students need and want and not by an abstract notion of academic knowledge”. Klaus Landfried, from Germany and basic spokesman of the process, in a similar interview of his, adds that “criteria on the level of the studies will be appointed by scientists and employers in a continuous interlocution with reference to adjust the schedules”.
Consequently, what arises is that criterion of evaluation and financing is the level of conformation with monopolistic purposes and especially;
a)The amount of students who are attracted, a fact that leads to a dramatic debasement of studies for degrees that are cheap, easy and oriented to market’s immediate needs, with the debasement of the majority of British Universities, as a representative example.
b)The amount of schedules that scream into every University, that the smaller resistance and democratic sensibility will show, the most confident will be judged by their financiers.
In the basis of the findings of an “independent, from national governments, principle” which will consist of controlled scientists and employers and will take on the evaluation of E.U.’s foundations, instead of ensuring the conditions for an equivalent development of Universities, their categorisation will be promoted with a continuous increasing, among them, qualitative distance. In the first category, there will be those getting the highest gradation, named as “distinctions centres”, with a sharp choice of students, offsprings of the ruling class, where the best “brains” of the labour class will be gathered. Departments and schools not attracting market’s interest will be downgraded or closed, regardless of their social importance.
In the social schedules “Socrates” and “Leonardo”, there have already been predicted evaluation mechanisms of university activity with a respective distribution of communal financing. Simultaneously, states-members make their way to the composition of National Systems of Evaluation, by the continuously increasing participation of employers’ media. In these systems, there are certain conditions on which financing or borrowing of foundations depend. In our country, evaluation of Universities is set on a law which is going to be activated by the government, so as to bring into line its commitments in view of Prague’s process. In the framework of particularizing structures and organs to take on the evaluation of Universities and T.E.I., government has already invited on a pretending dialogue for the “enactment of a national system in terms of evaluating the quality of Higher Education”.
This draft law does not slip into the vexed question of criteria of evaluation, because their reactive goals might be given away. Nevertheless, even in that way, anybody can discover their direction, since the National Council of Evaluation of Quality, which will take on the promotion of procedures, is completely controlled by the government and supported by employers’ media.
In conclusion, the policy of the privatization of public Universities combined with the promoted procedures of evaluation cannot possibly compose a reinforcement of democratic self-administration of Universities, just as is attempted to be, behind the title of “managing and economic self-existence of foundations”. Reversely, they amplify the centralism and control of Universities by the state and imperialistic organisations that is the big capital. Simultaneously, the responsibility for financing and general ensuring of their function is transmitted to the foundations and their students.
B6. Relation between degrees and profession and perspective of graduates
- Is unemployment a fault of education?
On the other hand, debasement of pre-graduate studies, leads devalues the labour power of graduates, and the conditions and possibility of their employers.
More characteristic is the fact that unemployment of graduates from TEI – foundations that are already oriented to the application and satisfaction of market’s certain needs is, to some extent bigger than that of graduates from Universities. A much bigger percentage certainly of TEI students in relation with Universities, do not complete their studies, by finding out Fachochsule of Düsseldorf, institutions that have been out of pocket since 1990, by a massive inrush of highly educated and a lot cheaper graduates of the former socialist countries in the German market, are the – corresponding to TEI – Fachoschule, in which the amount of students has been reduced because of their graduates’ high unemployment.
In the cathedral of capitalism, the USA, the percentage of the ones having graduate degrees and working positions corresponding to their skills is continuously reduced. There is an inclination dominating, for replacement of students of the pre-graduate cycle with graduate students and occupations correspondingly of the positions of graduates of High School and Middle Professional Education from pre-graduate cycle students. A great majority of graduates of lower educational level is condemned in contemporary jobs or stays in the margin. This fact contributes to a pathogenesis of American society, to speedy increase of foods, of its unnaturally expanded prudent system. This inclination is not, of course, an “objective” result of social development, as townsmen analysts declare, it is the result of policy that widens unemployment and generates relentless antagonism for a job position, that raises up standards that employers demands, and that lowers salaries and social reception. It is the result of a distracted antagonism of monopolies, which by using more and more highly specialised labour, advance their utilisation, and increase instead of reduce working time. Characteristic is that the majority of new graduates do not have working hours, insurance and generally no working rights, while their working hours are off the 8-hour limit.
Consequently, the chase to acquire more skills, the personal attempt of accession in the category of “best” and “select”, leads to a dead end, and the myth of our “meritocratic” society which supposedly awards the capable and hardworking ones, has already collapsed, since in our days, proletarianization of scientific potential is speedy expanded.
- Disconnection of degree with profession, and abolition of social rights to work
Besides, for most of the graduates categories, personal devaluing of professional ability, based on supposedly “substantial qualifications”, on which the market has the first word, is already reality. A characteristic example are graduates of “professional” schools, who, in order to teach, must acquire a certificate of pedagogical adequacy, except from the basic cycle of studies, and in addition they must be evaluated personally, by specific competitions or by other class criteria, such as obtainment of a graduate degree, personal interview etc.
In this context, even graduates of graduate cycle studies will not be secure in their jobs. That is a fact for the majority of today’s graduates of Higher Education, with whom they are going to be balanced. In fact, only doctors, mechanics and lawyers have a nomothetic consolidation of their professional rights. Concerning the doctors and lawyers, several measures have been adopted so as to cut short accession to professional rights (accessional exams after medical diploma, law practice school after graduating Law School, as a condition for exercising the profession, in which the insertion and graduation will be held with exams). It has been anticipated, that these standards are going to expand in mechanics, too. So, even graduates of six-year studies, graduates from Medicine School, will fail at the exams for the license of exercising the profession, are ordered to be unemployed or occupied as sanitary employees, as current developments prove.
Simultaneously, everything leads to the exposure of conditions so as to maintain any secured professional right (e.g. compulsory attendance, programs of “lifelong learning”, exams after the passing of certain years, depending on the supposedly quickness of devaluing knowledge in every science etc).
Therefore, conflict for professional rights between various categories of graduates (Universities-T.E.I., graduates of different departments with relative professional subject etc) has no point, since none will be professionally secured anymore. At the same time, though, conflict is dangerous because it splits workers and disorientates them from searching for the real guilty, that is monopolistic capital which wants no commitments and obstacles in the invasion towards employment.
B.7. Reinforcement of Universities’ role in reproduction of master ideology
The reactive structure of University education goes along with reinforcement of the master ideology of capital in Universities. Within this context, the role of Universities in reproducing this master ideology is amplified. Tens of conferences, meetings and symposia have been held every year by Universities with communal financing and for the purpose of propaganda and purification of the master political choices of big capital. The most reactive civic theories that in the past had been confronted resolutely by students’ reaction, return by wielding on consciousness, mainly of students’ youth, to subdue it under the logic of omnipotence of the market and false values of imperialism.
In the following, some points of ideological propaganda, which grows in Universities, are mentioned.
a)Promotion of the profit of monopolies and the “European idea’’ as a common profit. It is about a sequence of theories that aim at conformity and assimilation to the system. These theories are based on philosophic apprehensions of the American pragmatism. This is a theory that displays the most reactive and aggressive side of monopolistic capitalism, which is characterised by the demagoguery and deception of people, so as to shape their apprehension according to the imperialistic aspect. In relation with the theory of the American pragmatist philosopher O. James, the "value" of everything must be judged according to "payments" they bring and "our general commitment is to do what gives", by the same, supposedly, way to the needs of all classes and, finally, value is identified as what it gives to monopolistic capital. In this context, Universities rise to prominence as the basic medium of confirming the idea of European unification and class cooperation for competitiveness among European enterprises.
Offices connected with enterprises that function in Universities and T.E.I., have a particular contribution in the growth of similar ideas. Their purpose is to legalise the intervention of enterprises on study schedules, and input the idea of a supposedly "meritocratic", function of capitalistic market that is interested in absorbing and rewarding the "best". Not only do they not help in confronting unemployment, but they facilitate monopolies to “gather souls’’, remove students from the only definite way of winning their rights in employment, the class fight. Especially through "career" events, in which monopolistic enterprises show their "achievements" and "social" work, in lecture theatres full of students, they try to create awe and excitement towards the monopolistic direction of society. This excitement has grown systematically by the, party of tutors connected with monopolistic advantages, through every day’s tuition, more than in the past. Of course, the effect of civic ideology on student consciousness is a very complicated procedure, which is directly and indirectly detected in the character and subject of study schedules. These sort of study schedules, through knowledge that are unconnected, segmental and often wrong and unscientific, disguises the unity of knowledge, creating the feeling of inability of knowing the world, and removes the ability of judging
b)Confrontation of the effectiveness of education depending on its economic attributes. It is based on several theories, as the one of "human capital" in the limits of which, there are suggested vulgar methods of defining the economic effectiveness of education and sharing its financing by the type of "cost-result". It is a theory that degrades the role of the human factor in production to the level of its material ingredients, and education to a "cow that provides us milk", as Engels mentioned, and not as an area of human practice which demands a “serious and enviable devotion’’. This theory and other similar ones, which view science as an "enterprise", an "extremely specialized industry", face science from the viewpoint of a "practical" businessman. This point of view leads to the complete distortion of science. Capitalistic views of science have led to an one-sided development of technological sciences, a debasement of basic and applied research, for the benefit of “reliant’’ research for direct commercial utilisation.
On the basis of these theories, there is promoted a selective, personal (in the type of loans, financing of students) and evaluation of Universities in relation to their economic attribution. This evaluation neglects, on purpose, the most determinative social, material, organising and pedagogical factors, which designate the quality of education.
c)A theory that supports that knowledge changes rapidly and the old one is devalued and useless. This theory urges the legalisation of the procedure of "lifelong training". It is based on new positivistic philosophical ideas according to which there are no natural laws and natural purpose, but natural laws are “contracts’’, “declarations", “system of suggestions", “logic necessity’’ etc. New positivistic theories state that there is no subjective reference of science and that knowledge is not an evolutionary process to obtain truth. Every time that declarations and contracts change, we must start over again. These aspects are a part of a general theory of “post-capitalistic society of knowledge’’. A theory that is the succession and renaming of previous theories about post-industrial society, and aims at disorientating from the basic cause of amplifying class inequalities, that exist in social relationships of production and ownership. Therefore, this theory tries to dissuade from class fight, and create the illusion that through the many opportunities of training that capitalism offers, class inequalities can be overcome, if everybody by themselves have the ability to utilise them right.
A point that should be added are the many seemingly scientific analyses about the supposed subjectivity of “globalisation’’ that comes out from the development of knowledge. These analyses try to hide the capitalistic character of productive relations by avoiding socio-political definitions.
In general, we must underline that new media of ideological manipulation that have come out by communal schedules and lead to the phenomena of buying out and infiltrating conscience (chasing researching programs, mobility programs, linkage offices etc.) which will be amplified by the input of a system of credit points, evaluation and generalisation of graduate studies. Invasion of foreign universities in our country, but also, amplification of linkage and networks among institutions that go along with an intense mental and politic infiltration in the source of producing knowledge, stress the ideological alienation.
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr