Barselona'da Polis "Bologna İşgali"ne Müdahale Etti

19.03.2009 Radikal

Barselona’da bir üniversite binasını 4 aydır işgal eden öğrencilere polis müdahale etti. 20’den fazla kişi yaralandı.

MADRİD - İspanya’nın doğusundaki Barselona kentinde, bir üniversite binasını işgal eden öğrencilere polisin müdahalesi sırasında çıkan olaylarda 20’den fazla kişinin yaralandığı bildirildi.
"Bologna Süreci" olarak bilinen, AB ülkelerindeki üniversite eğitim sisteminde değişiklikleri öngören reformlara karşı olan 50 kadar üniversite öğrencisi, yaklaşık 4 ay önce işgal ettiği Barselona Üniversitesindeki rektörlük binasından polisin zoruyla çıkarıldı.
Polisin güç kullanarak öğrencileri rektörlük binasından çıkarmaya çalışması sırasında meydana gelen olaylarda polis, öğrenci ve gazetecilerin aralarında bulunduğu 20’den fazla kişinin yaralandığı bildirildi.
Öğrenciler, polisin tavrını eleştirirken, Barselona Emniyet Müdürü Rafael Olmos, "kurallara uygun ve ölçülü müdahale edildiğini" söyledi. (aa)

Bologna Process – a password for privatisation

Joe Boustead Socialist Appeal

Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Across Europe, notably in Spain, Greece, France, Germany but also in many other countries, there have recently been mass protests at the attempts of governments to implement the European Union’s so-called ‘Bologna Process’. This Process is an agreement which was signed in 1999 by Ministers of Education from 29 European countries. It aims to set a single recognisable standard of educational attainment across Europe so as to ensure that all students leave their education with comparable qualifications. This in itself does not seem like a reason for protest, although it will affect significant numbers of students already studying on courses that will entirely change their structure, increasing their workload and shortening the time it takes to do it, but inevitably there a far bigger attachments to such a programme of reform. No dose of mass reforms is complete without aspects of neo-liberal privatisation these days.

Coupled to the Bologna Process, though not explicitly included in it, has been the privatisation of education and all that this entails. So now not only are students faced with the fact that they will have to work harder and longer hours for a shorter period of time, that the costs of their education will also increase (so working on top of the hours required for studying becomes more of a strain) but also that their courses may end up being influenced by some company who’s only real interest in to create profit out of the process…

The keen eyes among you may have noticed that I have not yet mentioned the UK. In truth for those of us studying here this all seems a little too familiar. The government here long since opened the floodgates allowing waves of privatisation to wash through our education system. Not so many years ago, while I was in college, my duties as part of the Student Union meant I had the unenviable duty to inform many students that if they failed their A-level exams the first time around they would not be afforded re-sits that are usually given because the courses they were doing were uneconomical and being cut from the college programme. This came just after a new head had been appointed to oversee the financial reconstruction of the college, this newcomer was apparently not from an educational background but a business background instead - a process I expect is no longer a surprise.Another part of this process I have personally experience was far more recent as my university sold off a number of its halls of residence to a private company. It was reported in the independent university paper that the fees for these halls are likely to go up in the coming future. Being in central London meant they were already eating up the loan money students got. Of course we have also seen considerable change to our loans as well. In 2007 the interest rates on tuition fees were doubled and now, with the government desperate to cut any expenditure it can to pay back the money it will owe for it unparalleled borrowing in wake of the global crisis, it seems many grants will be severely scaled back.

As for the influence of companies on educational programmes the US has long been providing many examples of the abuse of education by private enterprise. Closer to home in Scotland in 2002 the government sent out biotechnology magazines to institutes that it latter turned out were funded by a number of major biotechnology corporations. This includes the saintly Monsanto, yes they who have illegally dumped toxic waste in Britain and caused a massive U.S. health scare with their milk production technique. These magazines promoted an outright lie as to the safety of its best selling herbicide.

In short the programmes put forward by the Bologna Process have been naturally coupled to privatisations that we have already seen a great deal of in this country. “Our schools are being privatised not for the benefit of our children, but for the benefit of our corporations.” This is how the Guardian put it in 2002. The results are less than satisfactory and now faced with these same processes all at once students, academics and workers alike have expressed their unwillingness to see the same thing happen across mainland Europe. It is time that we in Britain followed the lead of our European brothers and sisters and started to fight back against what has already been done. So far it would seem as though the education system and the students of this country have been the experiment that the rest of Europe now attempts to follow. Unfortunate the experiment has fundamentally failed in one key area - education. So long as businesses are allowed to interfere and put their profits first the education system under capitalism can only spiral downwards.
Photo:Demonstration against Bologna Process in Cartagena (Spain) in November 2008

Anti-Bologna movement spreads in Spain

LEIGH PHILLIPS

15.12.2008 euobserver.com
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Opposition to the Bologna Process, an EU-inspired series of university and college reforms, has expanded substantially across Spain in recent weeks, as students protest, occupy school buildings and even block rail lines.

In the last week, demonstrations and occupations have in particular stepped up in Madrid with sit-ins taking over faculties or otherwise protesting at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), the rectorate of the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and University of Alcalá de Henares northeast of the capital.

Actions have also taken place in Valencia, Seville and further afield. In Barcelona, students blocked railway lines. The Bologna Process has also provoked significant student opposition in Italy, Finland and Croatia.

Protests against the reform of European higher education have rolled across the continent in the past year, with students attacking the Bologna Process as a way to commercialise public universities and impose an Anglo-Saxon style tertiary education system on other countries.

But the protests in Spain have been more militant than in other EU member states and other countries participating in the reforms.

The Bologna Process bills itself as a series of changes to post-secondary education that are primarily intended to ease mobility for both students and academics.

A recent survey by the Erasmus Student Network revealed that only 58 percent of Erasmus students (the European post-secondary student exchange programme) are receiving recognition for all the courses they take abroad. The Bologna Process aims to fix this problem.

The process kicked off in 1999, when the EU's four largest member states, France, Germany, Italy and the UK, said they wanted to see a harmonised higher eduction system "which has been a bit of a jigsaw puzzle," according to John MacDonald, the European Commission's education, training and culture spokesman.

The heart of the process is twofold: the development of a system of credits for both academic learning, and the design of a common degree structure for university education. A similar mechanism is also under way for vocational training – the Copenhagen Process.

The common structure that was chosen is partially modelled on the Anglo-American three-cycle Bachelor's-Master's-Doctorate system.

The process has been so popular amongst governments not just in Europe, but well beyond, with 46 states signing up. Australia, Israel and Thailand have even expressed interest.

Intergovernmental agreements

The EU itself has no competence in the realm of education and the Bologna Process was not based on any EU initiative or legislation, but rather through a series of intergovernmental agreements. However, despite this, the European Commission plays an increasingly key role in the implementation of the process.

But students argue that while it may be popular amongst politicians, it is this very intergovernmental level bargaining that has produced the reform mechanisms that has left them out of the loop.

Students in Spain fear that the streamlining of education systems is being done more for the sake of employers' than their. They are strongly critical of allowing companies to fund certain degrees, saying this commercialises public universities.

They are also worried that in a country with few grants and no loans, changes increasing class hours and boosting the number of assessments, they will no longer be able to work to support themselves while they study.

Additionally, they are frustrated by the decision to introduce the Anglo-American system, in which they will now have to obtain a pricey master's degree to win the same recognised level of educational achievement as previously with just one degree.

John MacDonald told this news site that the Bologna Process is solely a curricular reform, "but some governments have chosen to use the impetus of the Bologna Process to institute other changes over funding and governance at the same time."

"It is more these aspects they are protesting over. Despite all you hear about the demonstrations and so on being anti-Bologna, the irony is that aspects that they are opposed to have nothing to do with the process," he said.

"They're not really anti-Bologna as such, it's about the governance changes," which, as the European Commission has no competence in education and the Bologna Process is entirely voluntary, he underscored that such changes were up to the governments themselves.

Greek riots

Some of the students have been emboldened in recent days by the ongoing youth revolt in Greece.

Mr MacDonald underscored that European institutions did attempt to take youth concerns into account into every policy area, but added that he is worried that there was something of a disconnect between political leaders and Europe's youth.

"Speaking to young people, through the European Youth Forum for example," he said, "we find that prominent amongst their concerns is fear of unemployment - it's double the rate of unemployment amongst older workers. Greece after Spain has the highest levels of youth unemployment in Europe."

"They've lost a sense of social belonging. There's a strong feeling of alienation from the society around them."

"If we have a reaction to what's happening in Greece, the French riots a few years ago and to a lesser extent in Spain - of course we don't endorse the violent actions, but that said, there's clearly a signal being sent that politicians need to be paying better attention to the concerns of young people."
Photo:Demonstration against Bologna Process in Valladolid (Spain) in November 2008

Spanish students protest against Bologna Declaration

27.11.2008 Euroresidentes

Spanish Vice Chancellors ask for help from government
Spanish Vice Chancellors have asked the government for help in solving the crisis that has arisen around the ‘anti-Bologna movement’ which is growing among Spanish university students. The issue surrounds the ‘Declaration of Bologna’ signed by 29 European countries in 1999 with the objective of facilitating the official recognition of university qualifications on a European wide basis and the free movement of lecturers and students around the European University system.

The Vice Chancellors warn that movement against the Bologna agreement will continue to grow and protests have spread to secondary education. They have asked for government intervention as they believe that it has taken on a state wide dimension and needs tackling with coordinated action from above.

The five universities most affected by the anti-Bologna protests are the University of Barcelona, Autónoma de Barcelona, Complutense, Sevilla and Valencia. These universities have 250,000 students which in total account for a fifth of all public university students in Spain.

The anti-Bologna movement is hard to quantify but in the universities most affected protests are taking place everyday. The protests take the form of blocking the entrance to buildings or to lecture halls or other institutional events. Students clashed with security in Barcelona University last week during one such protest.

In their letter to the government the Vice Chancellors also show their concern that the protests are spreading to other sectors of education – mostly in secondary schools and amongst teachers and families of secondary school students who will take university places in the near future.

In their letter vice chancellors have asked the government to face up to the situation with urgency and look for solutions that will allow for Spanish universities to move forward. This is why they have also asked for a meeting with government officials from the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

One of the main reasons why students are protesting against the declaration of Bologna is that they relieve that it will pave the way for the gradual privatisation of public universities and that study fees will inevitably go up. The university vice chancellors have attempted to deny this, protests continue to grow all over Spain hence this latest letter urging the Government to issue a statement stressing the positive aspects of the declaration of Bologna.

One gesture on the part of the government would be to simplify the process of accreditation for new qualifications.