Along with other public services, education is being dragged into the private sector. Yet little is published on the matter. It's time someone started pulling in the other direction, says Laurence Kalaftidés.


In order to allay our concerns about globalisation and obtain our support for it, the WTO and its mouthpieces continually emphasise the benefits: peace through trade, prosperity through world economic co-operation, equality, transparent rules. However, the promised advantages never seem to materialise, and the multinationals who are the real beneficiaries of globalisation embroil us in trade wars and warn of the harsh consequences of international competition. These companies demand the right to operate wherever and however they like. On the pretext of regulating trade, the WTO is extending its powers into areas that have previously been considered as national prerogatives. Public services, and particularly education, are increasingly coming under fire, having been taken hostage by an obscure pact currently under negotiation: the General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS. The latest round of negotiations began in Geneva in February 2000. They were shrouded in secrecy, and ministers took care not to publicise them. Our leaders have sought to reassure us that education is not on the agenda at the GATS talks. But the Canadian government is less hypocritical, making no bones about the fact that 'education services have been recognised by many countries as a priority area in view of the forthcoming negotiations on trade in services'. And the US delegation has already made known its demands in relation to the privatisation of university education and adult training.

If we are to understand what is currently going on at the WTO, we need an overview of what is now regarded as the global market for education. Education: a 'world market' Total spending on education amounts to $2 trillion, or one 20th of world GDP.As Glenn R Jones sees it: 'Education is one of the fastest-growing of all markets. Private training and the adult education industry are expected to achieve double-digit growth throughout the next decade.' Jones, CEO of virtual university Jones International Inc, is head of the Global Alliance for Transnational Education, one of the principal lobbying groups offering consultation to the WTO in its efforts to eliminate barriers to trade. No wonder GATS is attracting so many covetous eyes, and no wonder funding for state education is being cut back. In the words of the OECD's Moyoto Kamiya: 'Massive reforms are taking place in the state education sector, oriented towards and guided by the market.' According to UNESCO: 'In a number of countries, the rules on the opening of new schools have been made more flexible, and the management of state schools is being transferred to private companies. The next stage is to turn schools into businesses in their own right.' Some governments are being totally complacent. In the US, the federal government is working on educational reforms in close collaboration with the National Alliance of Business, a powerful lobby group. And in New Zealand, parliamentary reforms have resulted in 'the boldest programme of educational liberalisation ever set up in a rich country.'8 In the UK, whole swathes of state school management are already in the hands of private companies such as Procter & Gamble and Shell. In the face of the continued decline in government funding, more and more public-sector universities, including Oxford9 and Canada's McGill University, are offering paying courses. Some, such as Monash in Australia, are becoming businesses in their own right. In Europe, the reforms required to privatise state education are gradually being put in place. But this is a highly sensitive subject, and a great deal of caution is required. Under pressure from the European Round Table of industrialists (ERT), the European Commission has decided to take things in hand, and new information and communication technology offers an ideal pretext for doing so. Under the aegis of European Commissioner Viviane Reding, education ministers have decided to 'mobilise to become fully involved in the new economy'. By the end of 2001, all European schools should be connected to the internet. As the number of teachers continues to fall, and salaries are frozen, an increasing proportion of national education budgets will be devoted to information technology in schools - much to the delight of companies making software and educational products; computer manufacturers such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard; microchip companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Sun; and of course the telecoms giants. This shift in public spending towards private companies meets the ERT's primary objective. The second is to provide the economy of the 21st century with a modern workforce which is mobile, flexible, and capable of lifelong learning - in its own time and at its own expense. Every six months, the ERT holds a meeting with the president of the European Union to discuss priorities. Since 1999, this pressure group has been chaired by Morris Tabaksblat, president of the Anglo-Dutch company Reed-Elsevier, which has declared its intention of becoming the world leader in the education and internet publishing sector. The ERT has also set up a working group on external economic relations to supervise the progress of the WTO talks. This is headed by none other than BP-Amoco chairman Peter Sutherland, who was director-general of GATT from 1993 to 1995. This lobby group is very clear about what it wants governments to do: 'Responsibility for training must be assumed by industry once and for all... education should be considered as a service to the economy.' National educational systems will not be completely eliminated. Under the logic of the liberal economy, in which profit-making entities are privatised and loss-making ones are subsidised by the taxpayer, governments will still have a role to play. In the words of the OECD: 'The only role of the public sector will be to ensure access to learning for those who will never be a profitable market, and whose exclusion from society in general will be accentuated as others continue to progress.' And of course, western countries are not the only ones to be affected by this wave of privatisation. World Bank in the service of the multinationals During the 1980s, under combined pressure from the IMF and the World Bank, Third World countries were forced to drastically cut state spending on education, as well as health, welfare and other areas. Teachers were sacked, schools closed, and universities deprived of funding. The situation rapidly became catastrophic. Just a few years later, the very same bank was expressing its dismay at 'the mediocre quality of education... in the low-income countries'.It said this was all the more damaging because 'the productive use of labour is the main resource of the poor... education, particularly at primary level, helps.. to increase the productivity of the poor'. The bank added: 'The current systems of educational finance and management are often unsuitable for the challenges involved,' and invited governments to invest in primary education as a priority! This apparent benevolence concealed a very specific strategy: the aim was to hand over the secondary and university sectors to the education industry. To do this, the bank encouraged recourse to the private sector. It goes without saying that if countries wanted access to World Bank loans, they had to toe the line. 'Those countries which are willing to adopt a legislative and regulatory framework for higher education... in which the private sector has a greater involvement in teaching and finance, will continue to receive priority.'15 These countries were therefore required to 'reform those educational systems which are directly run by central administrative bodies or the state... (and which) leave little room for manoeuvre'. The bank puts direct pressure on governments to ensure that they do what they are told, and helps them to 'create an environment which favours the development of the private sector: breaking down legal and regulatory obstacles, accelerating the reform of public enterprises, encouraging the provision of public services by the private sector'. In India, since the early 1990s, successive governments have resolved to implement the time schedule for privatisations dictated by the World Bank. In the state of Kerala, 75 per cent of universities are private, and English is increasingly becoming the language of teaching. In the Ivory Coast, 60 per cent of secondary schools are now private. The education industry is able to cast its net even more widely in Latin America, Africa and Asia, because it has access to market research from the Edinvest database, a service provided by the World Bank. If you want to invest in schools management, student exchange programmes, student loans, 'indigenous education', assessment tests, educational support or distance learning, all you need to do is select a country to find out about the 'wide range of business opportunities' on offer. In its desire to offer 'a unique market opportunity' to multinationals,the World Bank has set up a particularly successful resource, the Alliance for Global Learning, specialising in distance or e-learning. The Alliance 'finances IT rooms, trains teachers, and works with governments and the private sector to develop intervention programmes'. Among its sponsors - sorry, 'partners and generous donors' - are the usual corporate banks, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs; the consultancy firm Ernst & Young, and various multinational IT companies, such as 3Com and Sun Microsystems. The latter company is represented by John Gage, a senior manager who summarises the company's ethos as follows: 'At Sun, we recruit our employees by computer, they work on computers, and they're sacked by computer.' Students: poorer than ever If education is to be industrialised, it must be profitable. So the idea of free universal education has been dumped, despite being enshrined in article 13 of the UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. The increasing cost of study, both for pupils and their parents, is turning students into the new poor. In 1992, Bertrand Cluzel, the CEO of Educinvest, announced: 'A great future is opening up for commercial education... people will therefore have to learn to make their studies pay.' This opinion is shared by Sandy Godfrey, managing director of Deakin University in Australia: 'I know that a lot of university people believe education should be free and universal, but the reality is that it has a commercial value. Investing financially in your education guarantees your- income and assures your future.' But for millions of students the future is synonymous with debt, and student grants are increasingly made on the basis of performance rather than need. At Columbia University, for example, students graduate with debts of between $20,000 and $50,000 depending on the subject and the length of the course. In Africa, even for heavily subsidised programmes such as the African Virtual University, the cost of online degrees from foreign universities is prohibitive. Each course unit, which is made available from Canada, the United Kingdom or the US, costs $200 to $300. What is more, in many countries the deregulation of course fees allows higher fees to be charged to foreigners. In Canada, employers in the Montreal chamber of commerce are currently exerting pressure to liberalise university tuition fees. Western countries are already engaged in heated competition to attract foreign students who can finance their own studies. Worldwide, this market is worth an estimated £13 billion. This market is a priority for Edufrance, an agency set up in 1998 by the French education and foreign ministries and headed by Franèois Blamont, the former president of Thomson CSF subsidiary Sodeteg. But if this 'student market' is to be expanded, young people who cannot afford to pay for their education will need to be attracted. Student loan systems are therefore being set up in many countries; in the Third World, such projects are being operated by the World Bank in partnership with leading international financial institutions such as Citibank. The World Bank has expressed some concern about the risks involved, and says quite shamelessly: 'Of course, there will be problems in obtaining repayment in countries where even well qualified people find it hard to gain employment. But the question is worth examining, and a real or personal guarantee could even be obtained from borrowers or their families.' From crèches to adult training, the whole of the education system is being affected by this wave of privatisation. But industrialisation is most widespread in the university and adult training sectors, which is why these are the only two areas covered by the current WTO talks. Resistance Large numbers of organisations that were present at the Battle of Seattle have joined forces on a platform of either bending the WTO to their will, or abolishing it. This conclusion is inevitable because, in the words of Lionel Jospin, GATS is 'neither amendable nor negotiable'. We should ensure that the current negotiations are immediately halted, carry out a thorough evaluation of the consequences, and if necessary have it de-ratified ·

Laurence Kalafatidés is a self-taught freelance researcher. She is a member of the Observatoire de la Mondialisation and vice-president of the Institut pour la Relocalisation de l'Economie.



Laurence Kalaftidés, Guardian Unlimited Friday November 16, 2001