From: New Liberation News Service <nlns@igc.apc.org>
Subject: NLNS: Trading Away Education
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 13:20:28 GMT

/* Written  9:57 pm  Dec 20, 1992 by nlns@igc.apc.org in igc:nlns.samples */
/* ---------- "NLNS PACKET 3.6 *** 12/11/92" ---------- */
Trading Away Educational Standards
Naomi Klein, Candian University Press
****The economic policies of globalization may be taking North 
American education out of the hands of the public and placing it firmly in 
the hands of corporations with growing political might.
	With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the 
road to becoming international law in the new year, students in Canada, the 
U.S. and Mexico say their schools stand to be turned into profit-generating, 
high-tech corporate playgrounds whose agendas will be subject to the fickle 
winds of "competition" in the ever-expanding global market-place.****

(CUP/NLNS)--Students, educators, and labour organizers fear the tri-lateral 
deal will decrease their countries' tax bases as large corporations move to 
Mexico where labour is cheaper and taxes lower. With federal transfer 
payments on a steady decline, they say publically-funded education will 
suffer.
	"If you are offering accessible university education, your tax base is 
very important because without a strong base, federal transfer payments 
decrease. What we are looking at is the further erosion of Ontario's 
industrial base, leading to an attack on the university of social services, 
including education," said Neil Walker, a researcher with the Ontario 
Secondary School Teachers' Federation.
	Amie Weinberg is a member of International Student Trade, 
environment and Development (INSTEAD), a coalition of U.S., Canadian, 
and Mexican students opposed to the deal.
	Weinberg points to the California state education system as a 
preview of what's to come if NAFTA passes. California, once famous for 
state schools boasting low tuition and high quality education, has cut 
education funding by 11 percent after tax-paying multinationals moved 
operations to Mexico. As a result, universities have raised tuition fees and, 
in some cases, have even refused to accept first-year students at all. Several 
public high schools have been shut down.
	"Losing the tax base is a big part of what is happening in 
California," said Weinberg.
	But Jeff White, a spokesperson for the Department of External 
Affairs in Ottawa, says because Mexico only accounts for two percent of 
Canada's total trade, the government does not expect Canadian corporations 
to move south.
	"We don't expect any relocation of industry," said White. "There are 
all sorts of companies relocate. Labour cost is only one of them. NAFTA is 
only going to have a fairly modest economic impact on Canada. We expect 
it to be positive."
	But critics say when the trade doors open, the demands of industry 
take precedence over social considerations, as governments attempt to keep 
corporations at home. The mere threat of leaving creates a climate hostile to 
corporate taxation.
	Weinberg said that in the US corporate access to and control of 
university resources and policy are being used as bribes for continued and 
future investment.
	Jock Finlayson, vice-president and chief economist of the Business 
Council on National Issues (BCNI)--a national lobby group--said more 
money can't be given to education.
	"We don't see much scope to ask government to pour more money 
into education. We are already overtaxed."
	But Weinberg disagreed. "Economic policy is being based 
completely on how corporations can have more money," she said.

Privatizing For Dollars
	Mary Ann O'Connor, coordinator of the Ontario Coalition for Social 
Justice, said the proposed International Space University (ISU) at Toronto's 
York University is the "spearhead" of the growing move towards US-style 
privatization in Canada.
	Universities across the world are bidding for the ISU. A board 
which contains representatives from multinational aerospace firms will 
decide which country is offering up the most of its resources to secure the 
"investment."
	So far, the Ontario government has pledged $11 million in start-up 
costs and $3.5 million annually towards operating costs of ISU if York is 
selected. The federal government has pledged $15 million in capital 
construction, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships for 
Canadian students. York is offering land and degree status--the University 
of Toronto is offering up the resources of its engineering department.
	Canadian aerospace corporations Spar and COM DEV Ltd. have 
pledged $3 million to the project.
	Critics say the endeavor amounts to a public subsidy of private 
enterprise because enrollment would be restricted to those able to pay tuition 
costs as high as $25,000, and ISU's potential military and corporate 
research will give little to the tax-paying public.
	"We see the ISU as part of the same agenda of allowing 
corporations to use public resources for private gains. It is a glimpse at the 
future if we don't stop free trade--the first private university in Canada," 
says O'Connor. "The way they are approaching research is by putting 
private enterprise wherever there is the most advantage to corporations 
without regard for the impact it has on the community."
	This direction in education policy is reflected in the federal 
government's recent Prosperity Initiative.
	The federal government spent $19 million on a steering committee--
the majority of whose members were representatives of major corporations-
-to come up with a plan for Canada's future prosperity in the "global market 
place."
	Eight of the report's ten areas in need of reform were education-
related. The initiative calls on schools to become primarily, if not 
exclusively, media for job training and profit-generating research aimed at 
making the corporate sector more "competitive."
	

Trading Our Way To Prosperity
	Free trade is the answer being touted worldwide as the solution to 
the current financial crisis. There is an emerging consensus between 
industry and government on the role Canadian schools will play in this 
changing economy.
	"The direction of education policy is not going to be directly effected 
by NAFTA, but we do have to make sure our education institutions are able 
to compete in today's global marketplace," says White. "In examining the 
priorities for the future, we need to strengthen our research in the hard 
sciences if we are to enhance our competitiveness."
	The new shared vision offers economic benefits to both government 
and industry. If the corporate sector takes on the burden of funding 
education, the government will have less cause to tax corporations. Taxation 
gives industry little control over how its revenue is spent by schools and 
government. But when they give institutions money directly, corporations 
are free to make the schools and graduates suit their profit-making needs.
	BCNI's Finlayson confirms that businesses will be investing more 
in post-secondary education in the next 10 years, and that the money won't 
be going towards universities' operating budgets.
	"We are encouraging businessess to make strategic investments in 
post-secondary education to areas like Ph.D students doing research in 
particular disciplines directly related to their (the investor's) fields or beefing 
an apprenticeship-type system," said Finlayson. "Business and students are 
going to have to become more agressive in funding education, like in the 
US."
	Jim Turk, director of education for the Ontario Federation of Labour 
(OFL), said that's exactly the problem. Industry sees under-funded schools 
as an opportunity for subsidized job training--something they would 
otherwise have to do for themselves, he said.
	"There is a strong sentiment in the business community that the role 
of education is to be job-ready. This lessens their own obligations as 
employers. There is a ridiculously low level of training provided for their 
own workers--one in three businesses provide it," said Turk.
	Catherine Remus, a researcher for the Canadian Federation of 
Students (CFS), said the increased corporate involvement in post-secondary 
education--both its funding and policy making--suits the current federal 
government, which has cut more than $3.2 billion from post-secondary 
education since 1986.
	"The government can use NAFTA to make its own vision come 
true--a smaller government role in social services and smaller transfer 
payments," she said.
	"The Tory vision is a privately-funded system of assembly-line 
education, moving students through degree and certificate-granting 
programs, providing them with the labour and market skills that will make 
them, and their country, competitive," says Remus.
	Remus added that the new vision is a profound shift from the liberal 
view of universities as providing accessible training in critical thought, 
enabling citizens to participate fully in a democratic society.
	"International trade is governing our education. The type of 
researching being promoted (in NAFTA) is trade-driven research, needed to 
carry out the economic agenda contained in NAFTA. Gone are the wider 
goals of economic and social development in each of our countries, or any 
provision for research aimed at improving quality of life in and among our 
three countries," she said.

The Last Days of Liberal Education
	Finlayson said that while the liberal model of accesible education is 
good in theory, it hasn't worked in practice. He advocates more 
specialization in post-secondary education.
	"Not everybody can and should be going off to post-secondary 
education. We have a very accessible system where the quality is eroded 
and we can't really afford to pour more money into it," he said. "We have to 
ask are we getting the maximum return on our investment?"
	Remus said that one of the most worrisome and far-reaching effects 
of the world-wide deregulation of trade is the "level playing field" effect 
which makes unionized labor compete with non-unionized labor and public 
schools, like those in Canada, compete with private ones in the US.
	A recent study in Maclean's [Canada's Time magazine clone in more 
ways than one--nlns ed.] magazine shows that US universities enjoy 45 
percent more funding per student than Canadian schools. But current 
measures to increase our per student funding conspicuosly exclude an 
increase in government subsidies. Instead, Canadian schools are facing cuts 
in enrollment, tuition fee increases and increased "strategic" corporate 
sponsorship.
	"When it comes to creating a level playing field in education, what is 
going to stop the growth of American-style privatization of educational 
services, increasing use of lower-priced American textbooks, or worsening 
conditions for Canadian faculty--all of which are unacceptable from a 
Canadian perspective," said Remus.
	In Mexico, where there are no tuition fees for public universities, the 
situation is even more drastic. Since rumblings of a free trade agreement 
with the U.S. began, the Mexican government has been threatening to 
impliment tuition fees, limit the number of students who go to university 
and the time they are able to spend there.
	Massive student strikes in Mexico last year successfully postponed 
the reforms.
	"The Mexican government is trying to mimic what is happening in 
the states," said Weinberg.
	The unquestioned assumption in the government's current economic 
policy, intimately tied to free trade, is the idea that government must 
organize the public sector to suit the needs of "investors." With government 
powers weakened in the name of "harmonization" in the proposed 
agreement, Remus worried that the face of Canada's social programs will be 
altered irrevocably."
	"NAFTA will perpetuate an economic climate and limit government 
powers to the extent that it will be very difficult to reverse these trends," 
says Remus. "While such a system will cost the government less money, 
the real price that Canadians will pay is loss of public control."

Canadian University Press can be reached at 126 York Street, Suite 408 
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 5T5 Canada; (613) 562-1799. 

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