„Předpokládal jsem, že se bavíme vážně a dobře víte, že jsem studoval v letech 1958 až 1963 a žádné školné tehdy samozřejmě neexistovalo. Takže myšlenka, že bych šel zaplatit panu školníkovi nebo panu vrátnému na VŠE, je nejen dětinská, ale i hloupá. Musím to takhle výstředně říci, nezlobte se,“ ohradil se zamračený Klaus.
Prezident na ČZÚ přednášel o tématu své knihy „Evropská integrace bez iluzí“. Přednášku si přišly poslechnout stovky studentů.

V diskuzi pak prezident rozváděl své názory týkající se EU, ale také vyložil svůj postoj ke školnému. Podle něj je vysokoškolské vzdělání soukromým statkem, jehož využijí studenti jen sami pro sebe, a proto by si za něj měli platit.

http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/261344-student-rozladil-klause-dotazem-kolik-zaplatil-za-sva-studia.html?ref=boxF

Týden neklidu proběhl na královéhradecké univerzitě (UHK) poněkud klidněji než původně Hradecké studentské hnutí 2012 (HKSH 2012) plánovalo. Páteř protestů měla tvořit týdenní okupační stávka, což by v polistopadové době byla naprosto ojedinělá věc. HKSH 2012 se díky tomu dostalo do popředí zájmu české akademické obce, studentů i laické veřejnosti, neboť žádná jiná univerzita s takto radikálním programem nepřišla. Týdenní okupační stávka se stala lákadlem a chtěl ji osobně podpořit například sociolog Jan Keller.

Ve stanovách Hradeckého studentského hnutí 2012, jež vniklo letos v únoru, se můžeme dočíst, že tato studentská platforma vyjadřuje nesouhlas s navrhovanými změnami v oblasti vysokoškolského vzdělávání, že funguje na principech přímé demokracie, není hierarchická, nemá žádné vůdce, je otevřená každému a funguje prostřednictvím veřejného pléna. Tyto stanovy jsou de facto podobné těm, na kterých funguje hnutí Occupy Wall Street a nespočet jeho odnoží všude na světě. Vznik tohoto rovnostářského hnutí bylo tedy možné v českých zatuchlých a zamrzlých luzích a hájích považovat za slibnou alternativu zdola v rámci občanské společnosti. Avšak následující události opět poukázaly na nezralost politické angažovanosti v české společnosti a problémy, s nimž se obdobná seskupení budou nadále potýkat.

Program Týdne neklidu na UHK zahrnoval přednášky, workshopy, kulturní a další aktivity, jež měly seznámit veřejnost s požadavky hnutí – proč se studenti staví proti vysokoškolské reformě. Za úspěch HKSH 2012 lze považovat šestikilometrový pochod 1500 studentů městem, jinak „hradecký neklid“ proběhl celkem konformně. Na konci hradeckého Týdne neklidu 1. března se setkali zástupci studentů i vedení univerzity na veřejném jednání a průběh protestního týdne celkově vyhodnotili jako úspěšný s prohlášením, že je třeba protestní akce hlouběji strukturalizovat a získat pro ně novou krev, aby hnutí mohlo fungovat dále.

Avšak během plenárního jednání HKSH 2012 s předními představiteli UHK 22. února bylo upuštěno od plánu uspořádat okupační stávku. Podle mluvčí HKSH 2012 Zuzany Jedličkové došlo „k dohodě o změně původního záměru zorganizovat tzv. okupační stávku a jejímu nahrazení jinou formou protestu“. Na následné schůzce se zástupci hnutí s rektorem UHK Josefem Hynkem domluvili na „podobě jednotlivých akcí“. Nakonec mohli někteří ze studentů strávit jednu noc na univerzitě, ač pouze na pořadník.

Děkan Filozofické fakulty UHK Petr Grulich, který se v protestech proti Dobešově reformě angažoval, ke zrušení okupační stávky písemně uvedl, že názory na týdenní okupační stávku byly rozporuplné jak mezi studenty, tak zaměstnanci univerzity. Značná část akademické obce UHK ji částečně považovala za zaměřenou proti pedagogickému sboru. Grulich doslova poznamenal, že „okupace malé venkovské veřejné vysoké školy studenty by v podstatě byla jen zabarikádováním se ve vlastním obýváku“. Nakonec se podle něj studentské hnutí s vedením univerzity dohodlo, že okupační stávka „bude změněna do podoby obrany univerzity vlastním tělem, což lépe koresponduje s cílem celého protestního týdne v HK i v ČR“. Na otázku, co si myslí o rozkolu uvnitř studentského hnutí, děkan Filozofické fakulty UHK odpověděl, že „z jeho pohledu šlo o přirozený proces utváření názorů a orientací uvnitř hnutí“.

Nicméně týdenní okupační stávka měla u mnoha studentů a některých pedagogů obrovskou podporu. V emailu HKSH 2012 zaslaném předsednictvu Akademického senátu UHK se zástupci hnutí o okupační stávce vyjadřují jako o „standardní formě kolektivního protestu běžně užívaného v demokratické společnosti, jejíž oprávněnost je zakotvena v článku 27 odst. 4 Listiny základních práv a svobod.“ Okupační stávka je zcela v souladu s „Kodexem chování během studentské kontroly nad objektem společné výuky Univerzity Hradec Králové.“ Okupační stávky jsou navíc naprosto legitimním prostředkem, jak vyjádřit protest či odpor a mají v západních zemích silnou tradici. Je zjevné, že u řady pedagogů z UHK slovo „okupační“ stále vyvolává negativní konotace.

David Řezáč, student Lékařské fakulty Univerzity Karlovy v Hradci Králové a předák hnutí, k rozporu mezi studenty a vedením univerzity na plénu konaném 22. února uvedl: „Po vystoupení zástupců vedení bylo jasné, že jsou naprosto proti dosavadní formě protestu i proti funkčnímu uspořádání hnutí, jež bylo založeno na principech přímé demokracie, i když proti tomuto uspořádání vystoupili někteří studenti během tohoto pléna i dříve. Vedení předneslo ultimativní požadavky, jež podmiňovaly naši spolupráci s ním. Jeho požadavky zahrnovaly zvolení vedení hnutí, což byla změna oproti fungování platformy na principu přímé demokracie v demokracii nepřímou. Došlo i na zrušení okupační stávky.“ Řezáč se rozhodl, že pro hnutí bude i nadále pracovat, protože se domníval, že by roztržka mohla ohrozit samotné protesty na hradecké univerzitě, které měly v danou chvíli primární důležitost.

Někteří z účastníků středečního pléna mají na průběh komunikace s vedením školy ještě ostřejší názor. Jeden student pod podmínkou anonymity uvedl, že aktivity HKSH 2012 vedení zprvu ignorovalo a vyčkávalo, jak se situace dále vyvine: „Zástupci vedení školy si vzali některé naše návrhy, o kterých se teprve mělo hlasovat a které se měly ještě upravovat nebo úplně stáhnout, a zacházeli s nimi jako s hotovou věcí. Z jejich strany jsem na nás cítil velký tlak a zneužití postavení nadřízených. Ačkoliv děkan Grulich opakoval, že jsme na stejné lodi, nebyl schopen klidně diskutovat a útočil na nás, až se studenti báli něco říct.“

Vedle řady studentů se k jednání rektora Hynka a děkana Grulicha kriticky vyjádřilo i několik pedagogů z UHK. Dagmar Magincová z Katedry českého jazyka a literatury Pedagogické fakulty UHK otevřeně prohlásila: „Na naší škole spontánně vzniklo hnutí na principech přímé demokracie, kde měl každý hlas stejnou váhu a vliv na všechna rozhodnutí, jež plénum prezentovalo. Ve chvíli, kdy na naše shromáždění přišlo vedení fakult a senátů, přestali jejich zástupci respektovat všechny tyto principy. Začali se chovat autoritativně a hnutí v podstatě zdiskreditovali.“ Magincová se nedomnívá, že by na UHK byl vyvíjen tlak ze strany ministerstva školství, ačkoliv fakt, že rektor Hynek je členem ODS může leccos napovědět. Několik studentů i pedagogů, kteří stáli u zrodu hradeckého hnutí, na protest proti chování vedení fakult a senátů HKSH 2012 nakonec opustilo a protesty bojkotovalo. V rámci hnutí se vytvořila skupinka, která podle slov jednoho studenta, jenž si rovněž nepřál být jmenován, jednala za většinu jeho členů, a tudíž porušila základní demokratické zásady, na nichž studentská platforma vznikla.

Z emailu předsedy akademického senátu UHK Václava Víšky adresovaného senátorům vyplývá, že původní „demokratické principy hnutí“ byly skutečně opuštěny. Diskutovaná schůzka studentů a vedení UHK probíhala podle Víšky „bouřlivě“, ale nakonec prý celé plénum dospělo ke kompromisům. Tyto kompromisy zahrnovaly vytvoření „úzké skupiny jedinců,“ která bude protesty koordinovat. „Ti budou v přímé komunikaci s rektorem a budou s ním domlouvat jednotlivé kroky a aktivity protestů,“ napsal Víška. Celá protestní akce díky těmto a dalším krokům, o nichž se v emailu zmiňuje, bude „legitimizována a bude mít punc akce univerzity.“ Víška se také nabídl, že nad některými akcemi převezme „organizační žezlo,“ třeba při komunikaci s médii a organizaci noci studentů.

Týdenní okupační stávku hradeckých studentů se chystal osobně podpořit renomovaný sociolog Jan Keller. Nakonec ale do Hradce Králové nedorazil a navštívil jiná univerzitní hnutí. Na písemný dotaz, jaké okolnosti ho vedly k tomuto rozhodnutí, Keller odpověděl: „Chtěl jsem v Hradci podpořit týdenní okupační stávku. Když z ní zbylo jen symbolické přespání, neměl jsem důvod upřednostnit hradeckou univerzitu před dalšími pěti univerzitami, od kterých jsem obdržel pozvání.“ Keller napsal, že se ale hradečtí studenti nemají za co stydět: „Zpočátku do toho šli radikálněji než ostatní. Jsem přesvědčen o tom, že nekompetentnost vlády povede k radikalizaci protestů v celé republice. V takovém případě navštívím hradeckou univerzitu přednostně.“

Pokud chce být HKSH 2012 životaschopnou platformou, je třeba, aby překonalo vzájemné animozity a uskutečnila se konsolidace hnutí zevnitř. Je zapotřebí, aby došlo k analýze chyb a jejich adresnému řešení; nikoliv k atomizaci jednotlivých členů a stoupenců této platformy. Hradečtí studentští aktivisté by si ale hlavně měli uvědomit, že vedení jejich alma mater ve skutečnosti oportunisticky lavíruje, a podle toho by měli svou další činnost koordinovat.

Vyjde také v Kulturních novinách

http://blisty.cz/art/62560.html

Nemohl jsem se z pracovních důvodů účastnit debaty o reformě vysokých škol na Filozofické fakultě v Olomouci, která proběhla v úterý. Podíval jsem se však na záznam na stránkách Českého rozhlasu a nejvíce na mne zapůsobilo tvrzení představitele Akademického senátu hostující fakulty o tom, že „nemůže věřit v organizaci, která nevěří ve mně“. Dokonce mluvil o „partnerském vztahu“ k univerzitě.
Začal jsem přemýšlet nad tím, jestli mám věřit a cenit si studentů v závislosti na tom, jaké romantické city mají k univerzitě. A jak se vůbec projevuje to, že organizace „věří v někoho“? Spíše bych od studentů očekával kritický postoj k institucím, jejich fungování a jejich stereotypům. Sám jsem vystudoval na univerzitě v Olomouci a učím zde, ale vždy pro mne bylo prvořadé to, co dělám a proč to dělám, tedy můj výzkum, mé vzdělávání se, mé vztahování se k současnému stavu poznání a k obrovskému dobrodružství, jaké vzdělávání se představuje. Snažím se nikoli glorifikovat svou univerzitu, ale sám ve své působnosti pracovat tak, aby byla aspoň trochu podobná tomu nejlepšímu na Západě. Nikdy jsem nepřemýšlel ani chvíli nad tím, jestli nějaká organizace ve mne věří, neboť jsem vždy vycházel z toho, že nejpodstatnější je to, co dělám sám na sobě já, a to bez ohledu na organizace. A spíše jsem musel prožít mnoho deziluzí a konfliktů, mnoho pochopení toho, jak „organizace“ obecně fungují, abych se uplatnil a rozvinul nezávislým, svébytným směrem, než nějakých citových vzplanutí k organizacím a institucím. Na základě čeho budu věřit ve studenta já? Na základě jeho schopností a píle, jeho osobní motivace ke vzdělávání se a poznávání, které mají smysl a hodnotu univerzálně a globálně, nikoli ve vazbě na nějakou instituci. Nepřísluší mi hodnotit jeho city nebo míru jeho důvěry v nějakou organizaci (spíše bych míru této důvěry dal do nepřímé úměry s inteligencí studentovou). A pokud bych někdy chtěl, aby na mne studenti vděčně vzpomněli, tak zejména proto, že jsem se snažil zbavit je provinčnosti a představy, že lokální vazby jsou měřítkem všeho, včetně vzdělání. V zásadě ten student z akademického senátu Filozofické fakulty přesně vystihl to, co je mi na dnešních vysokých školách a na dnešním studentském hnutí nepříjemné: dělá se z toho systém osobních vazeb, kde pedagogové a vysoká škola samotná jsou něco jako rodičovská autorita, hodná, nezpochybnitelná máma, které je třeba se z citových důvodů zastat. Vzdělání má ale naopak budovat kritický odstup a vážnost vzdělance a pedagoga má spočívat v jeho osobnosti, vzdělanosti, nikoli v tom, že se zrovna náhodou stal mým učitelem. Dnes se děje úplně opačný trend, než jsme chtěli: chtěli jsme studenty jako dospělé, náročné osobnosti, které budou kritickým partnerem v diskuzi. Máme z nich však sentimentální děti. Přitom vysoké školy jsou placené z peněz daňových poplatníků, aby své studenty vzdělávaly, a ti studenti mají právo a vlastně i povinnost to nezávisle a kriticky požadovat. Smyslem studia není naučit se „věřit v organizaci“, spíše naopak nutit organizaci, aby plnila svou funkci a zlepšovala se, kriticky zkoumat tu organizaci a nenechat se opít rohlíkem povrchního vzhledu a citového opojení. Je ale pravda, že jsou zde velké rozdíly. Nejsebevědomější, nejpracovitější a nejméně naivní, i když zároveň nejvíc nadšené, studenty jsem potkal během svého působení na Lékařské fakultě. Náročnost medicínského studia a jeho přímá vazba na něco, co nejde okecat, tedy na zodpovědnost za lidský život a lidské zdraví, vychovává lidi zralé a samostatné, kteří mají velmi kritický vztah k organizacím a velmi dobré povědomí o tom, co od nich požadují do příštího života, kdy univerzitu opustí.

Viz záznam debaty na FF UP (vyjádření představitele akademického senátu FF UP, které kritizuji, je od 29:30, btw. třetí nalevo od studenta je doc. Štefanides, který mi dal kdysi jako jeden z mnoha poznat realitu vysokého školství.)

http://blisty.cz/art/62521.html

V Praze protestovalo přibližně sedm tisíc studentů a učitelů, v Hradci Králové, Ostravě, Plzni a Českých Budějovicích dohromady zhruba čtyři tisíce. Kritizovali „reformu“ vysokých škol, vládu, ministra Josefa Dobeše a prezidenta Václava Klause.

http://blisty.cz/art/62511.html

A report for libcom.org from Barcelona, as thousands of young people march in cities across Spain to protest austerity measures for the 29F: Vaga General d’Universitats

Today’s demonstration, or as it was labelled here in Catalunya, a student strike, was held for a combination of reasons around university staff pay and conditions, general concerns about the privatisation of education, and in solidarity with the Valencian students who had recently been brutally attacked by the boys in blue for the temerity to demand the heating to be turned on when it was freezing cold. Police violence had been a recurring theme in discussions and placards at the protest. There were various chants about the state of Spain no longer being a democracy, or that the current government was fascist. While it is easy to dismiss these claims, as Spain is clearly not fascist, it is nevertheless disconcerting for a people only 30 years away from a genuine fascist government to see an increasingly aggressive police and government presence on campuses and in neighbourhoods.

The demonstration started quietly, in contrast with many protests in Catalunya. There was an absence of the normally ubiquitous drumming groups and snappy chants about the politicians not representing us like they should. Instead, chants and placards focused around demands for quality public education, and in derision of the police and the banks. At any rate the march, maybe 30,000 strong at an uneducated guess, wended its way peacefully around the streets until reaching the Catalan stock exchange and a branch of Banco Popular.

The Police were sat in vans outside the stock exchange, but stayed passive only 10 feet away while a series of missiles and paving stones and finally a rush of masked comrades stormed the doors of the Banco Popular, forcing their way in. After this had happened, a surge of police vans came through two streets with riot cops fully kitted out. Although they didn’t try and kettle, they didn’t mind using their sticks. From then on, it was cat and mouse through the streets as the tail end of the demonstration scrapped with the Mossos D’Esquadra (Catalan boot boy police). The marchers would erect barricades, often setting them on fire, before retreating in the face of police charges and what seemed to me like some extremely reckless driving from police vans that could easily have landed some demonstrators in hospital.

This tit for tat pattern was repeated until the demonstration returned to Placa Universitat, where the Mossos continued to harass all demonstrators, whether or not they were at all implicated in any of the direct action at the banks. As mentioned previously they weren’t shy about swinging the truncheons, and this observer saw more than one peaceful protester clubbed by a frustrated copper, probably boiling in his daft riot gear after chasing kids around all day with his mates. After a time, a fire engine arrived and in an undoubted highlight of the day it was applauded as it made it way through the crowd to a fire. It was genuinely inspiring to see demonstrators who had been united in resistance to the police aggression changing mood so suddenly to one of co-operation with the fire brigade which, in contrast to the police, is a vital public service threatened by austerity measures.

At the time of writing, word on the street is that many more actions have taken place in various parts of the city, on the metros, at radio stations and at the ‘Mobile World Congress’, a ghastly business function that is closing down parts of the city while it is on. Many of these actions and protests will be ongoing as this is sent in, all I can say is keep checking the Spanish and Catalan news outlets for more news, there will surely be more as the Mossos and the demonstrators continue to scrap late into the night.

Sergio

Photo from this gallery with brilliant images from the day

http://libcom.org/news/barcelona-student-strike-against-austerity-met-police-violence-29022012

Capital’s interest in the education system should be immediately evident to anyone who undertakes even a cursory inquiry into the the nature of state education. Schools are, after all, where children are taught the “skills” which the labour market demands of them. Sometimes schools are explicit about this, teaching IT for our “high-tech economy” or “interview skills” to sixth formers. Besides these stated goals, however, are what sociologists might call the “implicit” or “latent” functions—things like accustoming students to the regimentation needed for an assembly line or training children to internalise the deference to authority demanded by the workplace hierarchy.

There are times, however, when capital’s raw hegemonic intentions become crystal clear. My headteacher recently announced that, as part of a borough-wide initiative, our school would be partnering with what he called “a large estate agency” based in the city. (Upon closer inspection, it appears the company is actually a multinational of “chartered surveyors and property consultants” which happens to be headquartered near us.) The staff was informed—the fig leaf of consultation being duly ignored—that “no sponsorship” was involved. The “partnership” means that our students would be given “opportunities” on “business days” to visit the offices of our chosen partner to “see how the world of business works”. This was presented in our weekly staff meeting and without much fanfare. That in itself says a lot.

My school is not an academy. In fact, in a borough that has pushed academies hard, my school has remained one of the few holdouts. Yet, the business ethos is already well embedded. The school has a long-standing relationship with one of the world’s largest multinationals—a company with many fingers in a lot of pretty abhorrent pies: tax shelters, outsourcing, privatisation, and the sort of financial speculation that led to the most recent economic crisis, to name a few. One of the main ways students come to understand this company is by being invited to sing Christmas carols at their headquarters, with employees and passers-by making donations to whichever charity the children are singing for. This is not only great publicity for the company, it provides them with a captive audience for whatever corporate propaganda they want to spew. That captive audience, of course, is our students.

Inside the school, corporate posters can be found throughout the building. One extols the virtues of “stakeholder” capitalism. Anther details the “corporate identity” of a well-known fast food chain. My favourite, however, is still the one which outlines various corporate “leadership” styles, ranging from the “democratic” (which really means consultative) to the “strong” (which means authoritarian). This is to say nothing of the content of business courses themselves or the fact that children are constantly admonished with threats that they “won’t get a good job” or how they’d “get the sack if they did that at work.”

In the applied subjects, business is built into the very curriculum. Each DT course begins with the premise that the students are designing a product to sell. It must be marketable. And how best to learn what makes good marketing than by studying logos? Students are given a sheet of logos and asked to name the company each one represents. During the course itself students are designing Nike trainers, chocolate bar wrappers, or CD covers for top 40 musicians.

The most blatant example I found of this was a Y7 worksheet I found. On one side it listed “target markets” and on the other, a list of products. I noticed one of the products was “high interest loans”. The target consumers? “Unemployed people.”

I should note that the school does often try to reinforce some idea of ethical consumption—looking at things like Fair Trade and environmental issues and doing so across the curriculum. While this may seem preferable, it still fundamentally reinforces the idea of the market. Want to save the environment? Buy organic. Want to see workers treated well? Invest ethically. The discussion is never about the fact that consumer “choice” is a freedom that capital can afford to offer. The option to choose between different commodities doesn’t threaten the social relationship that is capitalism. In fact, it further reinforces the idea of the “free” market, “free” labour, “consumer power” and “free” choice.

So what can education workers take away from this? Firstly, have no illusions about the institutions we work for. We can—and should—try to subvert schooling, but we must understand that schools are fundamentally and irreconcilably part of the problem. What we can do is what the school system doesn’t: encourage critical thinking.

The recent strikes have provided us with the opportunity to begin talking to students not about profits, target markets, and entrepreneurship, but labour, solidarity, and struggle. Likewise, the debate around academies opens up an opportunity to discuss not only how destructive they are, but what purpose education should serve in society. Finally, we need to link up. There are some great examples of radical education workers coming together to create alternative lesson plans (NYCORE after Hurricane Katrina, for example) that challenge, not reproduce, capital’s stranglehold on the education of our class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded

http://libcom.org/blog/business-schooling-29022012

Spending cuts in education have now started to bit following the government’s austerity measures. A local student stated that, “The heating is turned off, there is no water, no gas, or electricity, and we have to make photocopies at home”.

Film footage and photographs has emerged that show numerous examples of police brutality. The local police chief, Antonio Moreno, claimed the force used on peaceful protesters to be “proportional,“ stating, “Greater aggression requires a proportionate response.” This has caused outrage among students and their parents.

The anti-police brutality event has been attended by an estimated 5,000 students, who marched through Valencia, past the police station, before occupying a square and holding a rally.

http://youtu.be/Rg1PBRwbpXE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGmlJg8ke7o&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1jC6KAEDkA&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8HMiQD5VHQ&feature=player_embedded

http://libcom.org/blog/spanish-police-batter-protesting-students-24022012

Studenti Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci na konci února plánují okupaci auly Filozofické fakulty. Chtějí tak podpořit celostátní iniciativu Za svobodné vysoké školy, která vznikla na protest proti chystané vysokoškolské reformě.
Olomoučtí studenti budou protestovat 28. února. První akci pod heslem Řekněme své ne školské reformě! zahájí už odpoledne na nádvoří fakulty.

„Půjde o shromáždění nespokojených studentů, kteří se pak přesunou přímo do auly fakulty, kde se v sedmnáct hodin uskuteční rozhlasový Speciál Martina Veselovského. Zúčastnit se bude moci kdokoliv z publika, dotazům bude čelit náměstek ministra pro výzkum a vysoké školy Ivan Wilhelm, děkan FF UP Jiří Lach a rektor Masarykovy univerzity Mikuláš Bek,“ uvedl mluvčí iniciativy Olomouc za svobodné VŠ Ondřej Čížek.

Univerzitu pak budou studenti symbolicky chránit noční okupací auly pod názvem Vám univerzity nedáme! „Budeme střežit univerzitu před politickými zloději. Ve středu ráno se vydáme do Prahy, kde se zapojíme do protestního pochodu,“ doplnil Čížek.

Olomoucká iniciativa vznikla 16. února. Hlavní organizační skupina je složena ze studentů a zaměstnanců UP. Studenti odmítají návrhy ministerstva, podle nichž by mělo být sníženo jejich zastoupení v akademických senátech. Univerzita by podle kritiků reformy ztratila nezávislost a stala by se podřízenou aktuální politické moci či jiným mocenským skupinám.

Školné uvrhne na studenty dluhy, kritizuje reformy iniciativa

„Nechceme se stát studenty-zákazníky, na které plánované zavedení školného uvrhne pouze dluhy,“ uvádí zástupci iniciativy. Vzdělání se podle nich nesmí stát nástrojem byznysu. Proti chystaným reformám se nedávno postavily například i akademické senáty filozofické či lékařské fakulty olomoucké univerzity.

Do protestního týdne se od pondělí zapojí 18 veřejných a státních škol z osmi měst. Smyslem protestů je přimět vládu, aby neschvalovala návrhy dvou reformních zákonů o vysokých školách a vrátila je ministrovi školství Josefu Dobešovi k přepracování.

Kabinet by měl materiál projednávat v březnu, reformy minulý týden podpořil premiér Petr Nečas. Studentům a většině akademické obce se nelíbí zavedení školného, změny v pravomocích akademických orgánů a bojí se i zásahů komerční sféry.

Reforma také počítá s takzvaným kontraktovým financováním, při němž by univerzity dostaly na několik let dopředu slíbený určitý objem peněz. Nově by se také školy měly orientovat buď na výzkum, vzdělávání nebo praktické uplatnění absolventů.

http://olomouc.idnes.cz/olomoucti-studenti-na-protest-proti-reforme-v-noci-obsadi-aulu-pv9-/olomouc-zpravy.aspx?c=A120221_132059_olomouc-zpravy_sot#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=zpravodaj&utm_content=main

During the 1990s, as the transition of the British economy to a giant services station continued apace, and as British manufacturing shriveled into a kind of nostalgic mantelpiece ornament, British politicians and ‘independent observers’ cast about in search of a new ‘driver’ for long term British economic growth.1

In their quixotic quest for a saviour, or at least for a convenient footstool for the financial services sector, the politicians turned to the universities. And the British universities seemed the perfect solution to Britain’s long term macro-economic discontents. Their mix of dreamy spires and robust benchmarking in international league tables offered the kind of synergy that management consultants are willing to die for. On the one hand, cutting edge global competitiveness; on the other, feudal nostalgia. The State had found what it needed. Quicker than a stock market flash crash, a thousand thousand page reports were commissioned on how best to exploit this invaluable national resource. The future seemed golden. A ‘high-skill economy’ would revolutionise domestic production. In the tiny but overheated imaginations of public policy planners, the ‘stream’ of British university graduates would meet a stream of capital credit from the booming financial services industry, and these together would make up a river which would fertilise the fields of national capital accumulation. Dynamic entrepreneurs would live together in harmony in this bucolic postindustrial paradise. And then the dotcom bubble burst. And then growth failed to accelerate during the upturn in the business cycle. And then the credit crisis happened.

The slow death of this particular accumulation fantasy concluded on 12 October 2010 with the publication of a report on university ‘sustainability’. The Browne Report – named after the ex-BP Chief Executive who chaired the review leading to its publication – advised that the State withdraw almost its entire financial subsidy to university teaching. The report advocated a new system of financing in which the degree holder rather than the State would be liable for the costs of her education. English students, who since 1998 had been required to pay a ‘top-up’ fee to complement the State’s inadequate student subsidy per capita, were now to acknowledge that, as the ‘primary beneficiaries’ of their degree in view of projected future earnings, it was their responsibility to bear the majority of the costs.2

Exploiting the crisis rhetoric which had echoed and re-echoed in the bourgeois media since 2007, this moral argument was immediately desublimated into an argument about economic necessity. As Browne wrote in his Executive Summary, a degree is of benefit both to the holder, through higher levels of social contribution and higher lifetime earnings, and to the nation, through higher economic growth rates and the improved health of society. Getting the balance of funding appropriate to reflect these benefits is essential if funding is to be sustainable.3

The new ‘balance’ which Browne proposed would involve the removal of the cap on university fees, set in 2010 at £3,290. The cap would be raised to £9,000 on the understanding that state subsidies for teaching in English universities – still £4.4 billion in 2011-2012 – would be scaled down to near zero, with a continuing (though in absolute terms equally reduced) subsidy only for those students in disciplines where education is more capital intensive. These were the so called ‘STEM’ subjects: Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Because even the one time Chief Executive of BP is aware that most students cannot afford to pay £9,000 per annum plus monies for accommodation and maintenance, Browne’s proposal was that the new fees would be financed in the first instance by an expanded system of state loan provision. Education would be ‘free at point of access’ in the sense that students would be guaranteed access to credit both for their fees and for their living costs. These students once graduated and earning more than £21,000 per annum would repay their loans at either rates of interest fixed to inflation or at the rate of inflation plus 2.2 percent, depending on how far above the repayment threshold their wages fell. On the specifics, Browne’s report adopted a kind of studious evasiveness: it was not clear (nor is it now) what level of earnings would constitute a high earner, and readers of the report were expected to accept its myriad bullet points and graphs as a comforting proxy for detail as yet plainly undecided.

One month later, while several thousand students celebrated in the courtyard, the windows of the Conservative Party headquarters – now referred to, after the area in Westminster it was situated in, as ‘Millbank’ – were kicked in. While police looked more or less helplessly on, the building was trashed. It was the riotous opening ceremony for several months of unusually intense domestic education struggle. The following analysis, focusing on the period from late 2010 to mid-2011, will dwell at length on what one gentleman correspondent in the London Review of Books called, in reference to the Browne Review and the state policy which it partially inspired, ‘the tired debate on class’. It will do so because the possibility for effective linkage between a narrowly ‘education-based’ and a broader class struggle seems to me to derive from the failure of the process of domestic capital recomposition which growth in the university sector was intended to ‘drive’. This includes the signal failure of university expansion to produce an extensive ‘high-skill’ service sector, or, in other words, its failure to assure anything other than highly- policed jobless or at best ‘casualised’ misery for most of its graduates; and because I’m unconvinced that there is much of interest to be said about the function or structure of British Higher Education or about the Humanities without reference to class organisation and class values; and because with the benefit of a half-inch of hindsight it is easier to itemise the class foundations of many of the most widely canvassed arguments against increased fees and university ‘marketisation’.

And so the following will attempt an anatomy. Since I assume that the majority of its readers will not be working class teenagers but will instead be the ‘kind’ (the class) of person who might be apt to make a case for Higher Education as a ‘social good’ or for the value of academic ‘autonomy’, its objective (insofar as it has one) is to call for a materialist reevaluation of those categories.

The Timid (‘Anti-Market’) Battle Cry of the Professoriate

Much indecorous intellectual mud wrestling followed the publication of Browne’s Report. Disgruntled academics jostled in their in house organs (the Times Higher Education, the London Review of Books) to complain about the declension from social democratic principle. The official complaints of the liberal academics were several. Their arguments were initially provided with a great deal of airtime. They might be worth summarising at the outset. Firstly, Higher Education is a ‘social’ and not as Lord Browne’s report implies a ‘private’ good. Secondly, higher education is a noble practice, requiring time for ‘reflection’ and ‘contemplation’ and unable to thrive where a report on research productivity has to be mailed to the oiks in human resources every fifteen seconds on weekdays (or, if not to them, then to their bureaucratic imagos assigned to the assessment of research ‘impact’). Thirdly, students and lecturers ought to possess a collaborative relationship in which each party is entitled to challenge the other, and this relationship cannot survive after student-consumers have been raised onto a throne made of cheap beer and unfinished essays and declared sovereign. Fourthly, the State’s athletic genuflection before the golden calf of ‘market-discipline’ is asinine, because closer inspection reveals that it is forced to build into its new funding system checks and safeguards to prevent student choice from perverting the supply of labour-commodities to employers. In short, quoth the enlightened professors, human calculators like Lord Browne were welcome to perform their tricks in the private sector kennel assigned to them – and the Orphic journalists of the Financial Times were welcome to sing their praiseful rhapsodies – but the wholesale supervention of market logic on the sweet cloisters of English Higher Education was a gross imposition not to be tolerated. There are, the professors argued, values which cannot ‘flourish’ in the sprit vacuum of a market, and whether those markets are ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’, these high values must be preserved against the ‘consumer relativism’ to which idiotic political beefcakes like David ‘two brains’ Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, are likely to defer, as surely as Pavlov’s dog to its bell.

Some of these complaints were borne out by later developments (to be discussed below); but in any case these were popular arguments, aired in well circulated journals and often dressed up with close textual reference to the relevant state policy documents. The documents were routinely sneered at for their febrile adherence to basic standards in business speak, ripped off from superannuated management textbooks now patiently gathering dust in the Sale sections of university bookshops. The cool and careful periods of State paternalists of the distant past – i.e., of the mid-1960s, from an era before Thatcherism, the destruction of the coal mining industry and the wholesale degeneration of the educated English of the enlightened bourgeoisie – were reconstructed and elegised.

Nevertheless the arguments suffer from an obvious explanatory deficit. Accounting for the changes in Higher Education, Stefan Collini writes that
Quote:

British society has been subject to a deliberate campaign, initiated in free-market think tanks in the 1960s and 1970s and pushed strongly by business leaders and right-wing commentators ever since, to elevate the status of business and commerce and to make ‘contributing to economic growth’ the overriding goal of a whole swathe of social, cultural and intellectual activities which had previously been understood and valued in other terms. Such a campaign would not have been successful, of course, had it not been working with the grain of other changes in British society and the wider world. Very broadly speaking, the extension of democratic and egalitarian social attitudes has been accompanied by the growth of a kind of consumerist relativism.4

It is surely necessary to resist this account. On its terms, a business ideology, supported by a heterodox or confused alliance of free market think tanks and ‘democratic and egalitarian social attitudes’, has marched its rag-tag banner into the heart of the British State. The enemy and victim of this alliance is the University, which relies on a strict hierarchy of values and on the ‘educational judgment’ which (it is implied) is exclusively competent to arbitrate between them. It is the characteristic feature of this kind of argument that it demands the restitution of a paternalist social democratic system whose internal decline was what accelerated the ‘privatisation’ of formerly public institutions in the first place: the argument takes a prurient interest in the inability of markets to assure their own self-reproduction not, as it might at first appear, in order to demonstrate the deep relationship between UK Higher Education and the full market system in its crisis, but in order to convince markets that its contradictions are amenable to resolution if only academic counsel is heeded. The real relationship of English Higher Education to the wider British ‘business climate’ – in whose toxic environs new graduates are currently expected to suffocate – and the relationship of the wider British business climate to the total global capital – is therefore perfectly obfuscated. This is not surprising, since academics have not until now been the principal victims of large scale economic crisis.

Student Struggle: November 2010 – March 2011

The 2010-2011 cycle of UK student protest began with the smashed windows of the Conservative Party HQ in Millbank; accelerated into a long sequence of occupations alternately (and often simultaneously) serious and farcical; dwindled into the introspective political manoeuvrings of an activist core during the long sequence of marches and demonstrations which culminated in late February; and, at last, sublated itself in the black bloc which formed at the Trades Union Congress demonstration on 26 March.5

During that time its composition underwent a sharp expansion and contraction, as its initial – pre-eminently white and middle class – formation expanded to incorporate black and Asian inner and outer city youths, only then to dwindle again, to the agonised puzzlement of the students who were therefore denuded of their ‘movement’.

For those whose last recollection of a domestic popular protest was the anti-war march in 2003, the spontaneous redesign of conservative party HQ was, if nothing else, refreshing. All those chairs forever doomed to be used as seating, how tedious – why not hurl them through this window. The riot also put a swift end to the ideological hegemony of the National Union of Students – which, stocked as it was (and is and will forever be) with vapid centre-left aspirants with designs on a parliamentary career – proved unwilling to endorse any campaign demand which might get up the noses of the politicians whose endorsement could aid their prospects at future party political meet and greets. At the beginning of the academic year in October 2010 the NUS was conducting a gloriously lacklustre campaign to ‘freeze’ the fees, i.e., to maintain 2010 fee levels for all future students, beating its chest and demanding a reversion to Labour Party endorsed social misery. This was a compromise oddly inconsonant with the destruction of the Tory Party headquarters. The NUS’s (then) president Aaron Porter, who, whatever his failings, was just about cunning enough to know when he might be stepping on the toes of his future benefactors, instantly squirmed into the arms of the national media to denounce the actions of the 2000-4000 participants in the ‘splinter demo’ at Millbank. The splinter demo, Porter declared, was ‘despicable’. The NUS was committed to peaceful protest and orderliness and the rapid introduction into students of diversified repertoires of soft skills; interested viewers could read its policy documents online.

All this had occurred by 12 or 13 November. The ideology of what might distastefully be called the organising core of the student movement was not as visibly reactionary as the NUS’s, though, as the above ought to suggest, it would be hard to be more prodigiously reactionary than Aaron Porter. The germane features of that ideology (and allowing of course for significant individual departures from it) can be worked out of a narrative of events running from the aftermath of the Millbank demonstration until the protest planned for the day of the Commons vote on 9 December.

The standard metaphorical vocabulary for the emerging student movement is now as fixed as the new fee regime: during the weeks of November, a ‘wave’ of university occupations ‘spread’ or ‘swept’ across the country. The spirit of ‘68 was reborn, before being farmed out for a photo shoot in Vogue and used to sell some T-shirts. Already this phraseology is very disgusting and boring. The occupations were of course in fact waves, big and small, long and short, depending to a large extent on the class profile and region of the institution in which an occupation took place; its physical infrastructure; and the (shall we say) quasi-autonomous ideological commitments of the most active participants. There were long occupations at UCL, Cambridge, SOAS, Bradford and the Slade, a short, strategic occupation at London Met, abortive occupations in Camberwell and Birmingham, a Deleuzian occupation at Edinburgh.6

The list could continue. There were, nonetheless, enough marked continuities in the statements issued by occupying students to attempt a brief sketch.

First, University occupations tended to demand that their managements resist cuts to state provision for British Higher Education.7 he argument was often framed in terms of imprescriptible rights, in this respect pace the endless avowals to the contrary in the commemorative headstones quickly erected by radical publishers – less 1968 than 1789.8

As one of the more imperiously insipid student slogans ran, Education is a right, is a right, is a right, education is a right, not a privilege. Most students in the English university system have of course always had most of the things which they have a right to (which isn’t to say that life is sweet) – but it is this which above all and unstoppably invests the word ‘rights’ with its magic aura. In their ‘Education is a Duty’ – which includes in its footnotes its own representative smattering of quotation from student occupation communiqués – The Wine and Cheese Society of Greater London suggested that the materialism of the student movement was ‘a strangely mediated and submissive materialism’, which is to say that it tended to accept that the principal function of ‘UK HE’ is to generate economic growth; and also to agree that finding yourself stuck between the contracting mandibles of the ‘labour market’ after the ‘free’ champagne at the graduation party has run dry was not, after all, so bad.9

In the months following the occupations, large numbers of student ‘activists’ generated whole data nests of thrilling online gossip about the availability of new ‘horizontal’ organisational media, at last superseding such inherently totalitarian technologies as the telephone and the human mouth. This particular circle of indulgent introspection was squared by enthusiastic nothings about ‘generational’ divides, including especially polemics against the elder ‘generations’, living it up with their totalitarian landlines and cars and their plunging private sector pensions, in a position invidiously contrasted to the impecunious underfunded British student of 2011, whose part time call centre job and 1/267 prospects of graduate employment were the result of insufficient abstemiousness by ‘baby boomers’ in – one assumes; the argument was always vague – the 1980s. Like most transiently appealing forms of social analysis, this one was obviously generalised from the social circumstances of whichever student chose to voice it. Few students with access to column inches – and this itself is often if not always a function of social privilege – said much about the closure of elderly people’s day centres and other state resourced institutions then being retrenched from under the feet of the proleterian retiree, but then the users of elderly people’s days centres cannot often be fruitfully accused of implicit totalitarianism (nor, for that matter, do they often appear to boom).10

All this first person plural posturing about ‘networked resistance’ would have been more laughable had it not had a social guarantor. This is to say that, unlike the liberal ‘anti-market’ professors, the students did pay attention to some basic facts of social exclusion. At about the same time as the Browne Report was thumping onto the desk of every education journalist in the country, the Schools Minister Michael Gove announced that the State would be cutting the so-called ‘Education Maintenance Allowance’. This was a derisory grant paid out to students over the age of sixteen conditional on attendance. The grant was means tested and set to between £10–30 per week. (A note: since the maximum pay out was set around £20 per week below the monies paid out to British unemployed benefits claimants of comparable age, EMA would be better known as Education Below Subsistence Allowance, but we’ll stick with the recognised designation in what follows.) Student activists regarded the cuts to EMA as a means of forging cross class solidarity with expropriated college students. In this respect they were not exactly incorrect.

If you type ‘We’re From The Slums Of London’ into the search bar on YouTube you can watch a video from 9 December. It’s very short. In it an Asian teenager, hat on and masked up, makes his case: ‘We’re from the slums of London, yeah? How do they expect us to pay £9,000 for uni fees? And EMA, the only thing that’s keeping us in college – what’s stopping us from doing drug deals on the street anymore? Nothing.’ He doesn’t look like one of the ‘youths’ that left parties like to use as props to invest their campaigns with some local colour. Nor does the transcription do justice to the statement, which is not muttered from a crib sheet but spat out in hot disgust. This might in part be because the speaker is addressing a camera held by a white bourgeois journalist. The footage is not untypical. When I arrived late for a demonstration at Westminster Bridge at the end of November, a kettle had been put in place. Those who had travelled South from the University of London Union building in Bloomsbury were safely ‘contained’. As I walked down the street the first group of people whom I noticed on my side of the police lines were a dozen black and Asian teenagers, male and female, all in school uniform. One of the kids, standing about five yards from the police line, leaned down to pick up a discarded Socialist Workers Party placard. The police watched him as he placed the sign under his foot and, nonchalantly enough, snapped off the stick. This was not the way that most students used placards.

At the demonstration on 9 December this kind of low level readiness for confrontation determined a much wider arc of collective action. Fighting between ‘protestors’ and police was ferocious: temporary fencing was ripped up and used as barricades or as shields as appropriate; groups of teenagers masked and hooded then used the bent and torn remnants of this fencing to smash out the windows of the Treasury; and in the square where the main kettle had been fixed in place, police lines were broken repeatedly. A friend providing legal observer functions in the kettle in Parliament Square spoke to a kid who had somehow acquired one of the larger police issue riot shields. He advised the kid that if he was going to carry the shield then he should for fuck’s sake cover his face. The kid replied that he’d rather go to prison than spend £9,000 a year going to uni.

This sort of anecdotalism is obviously pressingly limited as social analysis, but without the self-willed and emphatic arrival of working class teenagers in ‘the movement’, the student discourse would have degenerated into polite badinage about the emancipatory potential of open source and web 2.0, i.e., it would have become nothing more than the public witterings of the self-anointed representatives of moderately disgruntled middle class 20-somethings who, if anything, were likely to benefit from the new fee regime, since one of its effects would likely be a long-term reduction in the uptake of Higher Education degree-commodities and, therefore, a (statistical if not perceptible) easing of competitive pressures in the graduate labour market. Because working class teenagers did, fleetingly, ‘enter the movement’, i.e., burst out into the streets, the demonstrations from late November onwards were more defiantly and generally disruptive than the demonstration in early November, despite Millbank and despite much more enthusiastic brutality on the part of the Metropolitan police and its specialist public order units.11

Wanton press releases from the Met confirmed this fact, as the authoritarian PR service pumped out anxious declarations about how ‘extremely disappointed’ the service was ‘with the actions of many protestors’, who were evidently becoming more confrontational, quicker and more spirited, more prepared to abandon routes and disregard ‘advice’ issued by frantic ‘organisers’ wherever the balance of forced on the ground demanded it.

Rapid diversification in class composition also meant (for a moment at least) an expansion in the geography of confrontation. Out in the provinces, college students began to mobilise, and their actions were often taut with energy, in some respects more akin to the Bristol riots which flared up in April than the banner waving exercises which NUS Executive Officers like to fantasise as they vegetate with their desk toys. A report from the Brighton demonstration gives a good feel for the pulse of a mob intelligence acting without any prompt from a Guattari-citing Masters student:
Quote:

2000 people, 90 percent school and college students, marched: they ignored the designated end point for the demo and set off on a volatile and cheerful meander, with periodical attempts to block roads. When the police attempted a kettle it was broken: of those who broke the kettle and didn’t disperse, 200 went to take refuge in the new occupation at the other, less ‘political’ university [Brighton], where they were refused entry – then went into the bobo shopping streets and got kettled. 400 (school and college kids mainly, with a few, cheerful homeless guys) went off mob form to attack Vodafone, then looted Poundland (’I got three Toblerone’), before arriving cheerfully at the other, kettled group. The police crumpled under the strategic pressure – they were outnumbered and uncertain – and released the group they were holding. The 400 then set off expressly to block roads and cause maximum disruption, launching an attempted attack on the police station before heading to the roundabout at the pier to block it. There, the momentum failed and the police successfully kettled 100 of the slowest.

Students who urged ‘EMA kids’ to join their demonstrations and whose political organisations printed placards that said ‘defend EMA’ did understand that it was working class teenagers who would suffer in truth from the imposition of fees, much like the youngest of them would suffer in truth from the retraction of exiguous below subsistence bursaries for impoverished college students. But what the students in their descants on cross class solidarity didn’t much mention was that it was working class kids who were likely to suffer in truth from the whole exercise in the conversion of ‘stagnant’ state welfare into ‘dynamic’ private sector policing; and from the imperious drudgery of wage labour which it is no longer accurate to say is ‘on offer’, when increasingly it is compelled on threat of starvation; and from the long convulsive contraction of British capitalism in general. Drifting right through the discourse on ‘building the movement’ was the stench of class contempt. Its principal form was the assumption that ‘deprived’ working class College students wanted nothing more than to be like ‘us’. It assumed that they wanted to be like us in a particular sense. Working class students might be strung up on a different (lower) rung of the labour market, but we would delegate to them our own snuff of social aspiration. Did we not have a universal right to it?

Such a view of social aspiration is inherently appealing to bourgeois students, because the contradiction in its ideal of universal bourgeoisification is always resolved in their favour. The formal right of access to degrees – in this respect like the formal right of access to citizenship or to legal representation – makes no specification of what the content of a degree is or ought to be: but training can be dire and suffocating whether it goes on in a call centre or the University of Sussex or an asylum. And yet the bourgeois conception of educational justice is not only ineffectual in resolving the contradictions of class, soothingly renamed ‘relations of exclusion’ as per the official lexicon of top down social management. The conception generates another limitation. By imputing to working class teenagers the desire to ‘protest’ up to the point where they resemble us in the cracked mirror of our own (bourgeois) sociological concepts (i.e., up to the point when they possess the minimal resources required to compete with us – at a safe disadvantage – in education and labour markets), the conception tells us nothing about the real complexity of class based impulses or aversions or about how they might be put to work ‘on the ground’ in the production of a real movement against capital and its servant institutions. I’ll come back to this point, as they say, in conclusion.

Decomposing Higher Education: Stage Two

While the student movement stumbled into exam season and expired, the State attempted to problem shoot its malfunctioning reforms. Its first error was almost amusing. The Browne report had assumed that, once ‘freed’ to set their own fee level, smaller and less prestigious institutions would scale down their prices in order to remain competitive. Instead, desperate not to besmirch or otherwise tar their pristine brand equity, almost all of the universities set their fees at near to the £9,000 p/a maximum. This act of herd insubordination compelled the State to revise its forecasts for the cost of loan provision, with the result that it could no longer afford to remove the ‘supply side’ recruitment caps whose removal had been one of the principal justifications for fee ‘flexibility’ in the first place. If this doesn’t get you going, just imagine David Willets falling over a banana skin.

As the academic year drew to a close, the government published its White Paper on Higher Education, which, among other exercises in sidetracking and obfuscation, proposed a convoluted quick fix to the above ‘supply side’ problem. The quick fix operates a ‘core/margin’ model which ‘allows’ (translated out of bureaucratese and into English, this means ‘forces’) universities to compete for students above the State imposed quota. These are drawn from ‘pools’ of students of a certain type – for example, high ranking school leavers. Evidently this model has little to do with the creation of a free market without supply side restrictions and much to do with stuffing yet more competitive pressure into the Higher Education turkey.

But the most important role of the White Paper was to open the UK HE field to ‘new providers’. Describing this process in detail would be exhausting, so the following will offer a stylised sketch. The State proposes to withdraw from the sullen and corporate universities their monopoly on degree issuing powers, distributing this faculty to dynamic, thrusting ‘independent’ institutions promising step changes in efficiency on the intensification/pile-em-high model. These changes in tandem with a steady decline in the resourcing of now existing institutions are likely to lead to the collapse of at least some traditional universities who, once stranded in administration, can be swept up into the steroidal bosom of private providers like the US Apollo Group, whose market leadership in IT solutions allows them to drive down costs by dispensing with previously ‘sticky’ overheads like (e.g.) wages for lecturers. As the CEOs mount their white horses and descend from the sky to bestow the blessings of market efficiency on ‘under performing’ working class institutions like London Metropolitan and Liverpool John Moores, research in the humanities will be increasingly concentrated in a handful of elite institutions, each with a handful of ‘elite’ (translated out of bureaucratese and into English, this means bourgeois) students. The ‘practical’ vocationalisation of all other institutions will work itself out on a model similar to the one currently ‘operating’ (i.e., churning profit) in the US, where capital intensive advertising campaigns lure working class students into programmes of study which issue in devalued degrees, sub-zero job prospects and an insupportable debt burden which bulges further with each passing year until, like a monstrous paunch, it fills the whole horizon. It is a fact well enough known that almost half of ‘propriety’ students at Apollo Group institutions ultimately default.

But these are not new processes. What Andrew McGettigan calls the ‘deliberate under-resourcing’ of UK University’s began perhaps as early as the late 1970s and has accelerated up until now. By a war of attrition, the senior managers of English Higher Education institutions have been reduced to pathological (if fabulously well remunerated) brand custodians, dreaming of founding new campuses in the growth sectors of the Middle East which, until now, have provided Britain with oil commodities and which today, in consequence of that export industry, offer up a new resource, i.e., untapped fields of under-educated bourgeois teenagers, ripe for harvesting. This global context is significant. The decline in per capita funding for English university students might be lamentable, and it might even be ideological in the contemporary sense of that word, i.e., voluntary and not fiscally exigent; but it isn’t clear that maintaining levels of student funding would mean better lives for students. As British capital has ferociously restructured itself there has been a precipitous decline in the number of ‘good’ jobs for which qualified students might apply. This may, in part, be due to ‘the destruction of manufacturing’ (and most readers will know intimately this caricature of the rise of ‘neoliberalism’), but it is also attributable to the increase in global competition in the upper echelons of the value chain, in the misty realms where university graduates with bulky flexible skill sets are expected to thrive most emphatically. This is to say that it isn’t clear that the production of ‘more skills’ by the maintenance of high levels of university resourcing is at all likely to lead to more or better jobs. Between 1995 and 2003 the global supply of university enrolments doubled to 63 million. As a report by the State financed Economic and Social Research Council put it in 2007 – note: in 2007, i.e., before the crisis had caused investors to become doubtful of their own omnipotence – ‘Many [...] companies were increasing the proportion of university graduates within the workforce. But it was difficult to assess whether this reflected an increase in the proportion of jobs involving technically difficult roles or „over-qualification“ [...] because „anyone half decent has now got a degree“.’ Though employers continue to yammer about a ‘skills gap’, the skills which are referred to are not ‘hard’ (i.e., technical) skills but ‘soft’ skills, which include competencies which could well be programmed into students at secondary school level – IT skills is the primary example – but which are defined above all by repressive pseudo-categories like ‘self-management’, ‘customer-facing skills’ and (best of all) ‘high-end empathy’. In other words, what British capitalism lacks is not educated students but obeisant employees. The employer’s tribal dance to the gods of skill acquisition is nothing more than a prayer that their human resources will acquiesce voluntarily to intensified degradation and, what is more offensive, recognise in that degradation the continued acquisition of ‘skills’. Skill acquisition along these lines is just virtualised accumulation for the exploited.

In 2008, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a speech on the skills race. Jetting as he then was around the globe to ‘co-ordinate’ and ‘problem solve’ the global credit crisis, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brown was nurturing some high fantasies. ‘A generation ago,’ Brown rambled, ‘a British prime minister had to worry about the global arms race.’ But no longer, because today, instead, ‘a British prime minister has to worry about the global skills race’. Brown’s comparison was both accurate and inaccurate. It was accurate because, like commodities produced during the arms race, the commodities which a British skills race is likely to produce are non-productive, by which I mean in economic terms a waste; but the comparison was inaccurate also, because unlike (say) the commodity called a Thales lightweight multirole missile, a highly skilled student is likely to become infuriated if he or she isn’t ‘used’. ‘Used’ in this instance of course means ‘paid’. This was not, perhaps, Gordon Brown’s point, as anyone attending one of his after dinner speeches is of course welcome to ask him.

The Future: What Not to Do and How Not to Not Do It

The point of this sketch is to carry us back to what I called above the liberal ‘anti-market’ ideology. I have argued that that ideology appears by virtue of its enlightened sneering to oppose ‘markets’ and to resist their undesirable ‘social outcomes’; but that in fact the ideology does not oppose markets but instead contents itself with a polite request that the university be cordoned off from their operations. This doesn’t work. The ideology does not deserve to be repudiated because it is ‘reformist’ but because it has a class basis. That is to say, it assumes that the ‘values’ which it wishes to protect ought to be protected only within the university and therefore (if implicitly) only on behalf of those who have access to it. And there is a second problem. Conducting a reified tirade against the stupefactions of interested exchange and the idiot grunting of its public policy slaves is surely all well and good, and it might well be a noble thing to prevent the market from encroaching too far into Higher Education, where, who knows, it might wreak all sorts of havoc on the life of the mind. But the limitation of this safeguard is that however much money might in principle be canalised into the swag bags and current account of the UK University Research Councils – students will continue to graduate. (Professors, of course, do not.) And while it might seem somewhat impertinent to conclude an analysis of UK student struggle in 2010-11 with a discussion of life outside of the university, or to slough off to the footnotes and margins all discussion of the good things that do go on in UK Higher Education institutions, the exercise of analytic tact is misguided. The market decrees that students will be thrown out of the university (with or without their certification) even if ‘analysis’ of student struggle remains fixed there, in ascetic restraint, paring its fingernails and hoping vainly for a research grant. What is the future of Humanities Education in the UK? There isn’t any point in asking this question in this forum: if humanities education is worth anything then it will not die after ‘students’ and other members of the proletariat new and old fight for the life resources which provide the precondition for that education. And yet the riposte swells up: doesn’t ‘higher’ education (as in education finer and more spiritual) require independence from the ‘social’? Doesn’t it require autonomy? But this doesn’t mean very much. There must be better forms of autonomy than the type required for the production of ‘basic’ research which – we learn from a University lobby group – contributes vastly more to the haemorrhaging value of HE licensing and spin-outs (the sector specific jargon for commercial enterprise) than so-called ‘applied’ research. These forms would be better worked out spontaneously in the process of collective action than ‘in principle’ at the end of an article. While it might be true that contemplative reflection can in certain respects contribute to the cultivation of social antagonisms, the moment that the struggle for ‘autonomy’ lapses into demands for ‘blue sky thinking’ it becomes the inalienable possession of the official management theory which invented that category and which is stabilised by its propagation.

It is now 31 August. Two or three minutes ago I received an email which states that 87 departments in Greek universities are now under occupation. The Greek students are acting in protest against a recent education bill, part of the imposing edifice of ‘austerity’ (the word is in this case infinitely euphemistic) now being hammered through the country’s fine and democratic parliament. In the last week, two Chilean students have been murdered by state police; both were participants in a much older and more mature student struggle than the one currently in remission in the UK. In other words, the UK student struggle from 2010-2011, with all of its smashed glass and all of its waves and networks, is already very much old news, as indeed are all of the associated acronyms – NCAFC, NUS, EMA, EAN. Even in the national context the domestic spokespersons of capital are much more hotly concerned with the riots which took place between 6 and 10 August. On the ‘left’ those riots are still treated with a stunned confusion: who among the hordes of those who looted during those five days can be selected as a spokesperson? And how can we communicate our ideas to a political subject who has about as much interest in being the ‘new’ 1968 as Guy Debord had in being the new Burger King? In response to this quandary, and in conclusion, one lesson of late 2010 stands out. As was argued above, students repudiated the suggestion that their ‘rebellion’ was no more than a paroxysm of middle class discontent by pointing to the working class teenagers who attended the street demonstrations which they organised. These teenagers were the ‘EMA kids’. The label did more than stick: it implied an analysis. The analysis in turn implied that what the ‘kids’ had to protest against was the withdrawal of their below-subsistence grant. This was of course in part a claim of convenience, necessary for a practical politics structured around ‘inclusive’ demands. It was, in other words, the sort of thing that could be crammed into a press release and floated out into the media ether to fuel the enmity of proto-fascist newspaper columnists. But it was also an honest assumption. What the ‘middle class’ students had to offer the ‘working class’ college kids was an organisational framework in which those college kids could protest against a particular act of state-led resource withdrawal. And in fact when the college kids acted ‘disruptively’ or violently the middle class students often became perturbed and spoke in wounded tones of their beautiful pacifism and their high ideals, and tugged dolorously at their keffiyehs. That the EMA scheme was a pathetic crust tossed by the State to ‘lower income’ teenagers in compensation for a lifetime spent being churned through an under-resourced and overcrowded state education sector (and for a thousand other iniquities better known to EMA recipients than to their bourgeois comrades) was not on the collective bargaining cards.

But what student demonstrations offered to the working class teenagers in fact was not an ‘organisational framework’. What the demonstrations offered was a material setting in which working class students could partake in aggressive and confrontational collective action in conditions of relative security. It is difficult to make this point without sounding as if one is speaking through a mouthful of Habermasian ideal speech situation. The students did not offer to the working class college kids an ideal speech situation (more than this: all the execrable sign waving and sloganeering at the demos ensured that the students didn’t offer even a passable one): but in spite of the assumption that working class kids just wanted to keep their EMA, it is nevertheless true that the student demonstrations and the middle class demonstrators did offer to working class college kids something for which they had a use. This was not the rhetorical straitjacket of a sensible demand politics, and nor was it 30 quid a week and the promise, sometimes in the future, of a certificate qualifying you to trim the ornamental hedges in the gardens of some of the idealist students you went on the march with, or in any case it was not just these, because the ‘student’ demonstrations also offered to the college protestors the material suspension of the balance of forces whose permanent imparity is active in determining the results of working class struggle. What that material suspension provided for a lot of ‘kids’, in other words, was the opportunity for an intense collective expression of social agency whose object was not peremptorily confined to an inadequate programme of state provision but which could outstrip the limits defined by everyday (isolated) struggle against repressive authority, and which moreover could know each time that it clattered against a riot shield exactly who was on its side. And as the left toils to imagine what ideas it could ‘offer’ to the inscrutable young men and women who went rioting in early August, and as the job market continues to stagnate, and the profits of McDonalds and Tesco to rise, and as the academics continue to bid for a role on the market steering committee and to dream, not of 1968, but of 1965, and as the EMA scheme ends and the housing benefits plunge, and as new students begin to arrive on bright Autumn mornings at the campuses of their chosen training camps – this is something which might yet be worth learning.

For so long as the material conditions in the universities have not been equalised, ‘access’ to university, whether or not it is universal, and whether it costs £9,000 per year or nothing, will continue to mean access to educational commodities of wildly discrepant value, distributed across institutions whose ‘diversity of missions’ at last promotes nothing besides a diversity of class positions. Shall we ask then, access to what? And access to what with what exit onto what? These are questions, in good Beckettian prosody, which will have to be asked in Beckettian fashion, which is to say, again and again. Middle class students might piously hope that working class teenagers will be allowed to ‘access’ universities and become more like them; but in fact the similarity is more likely to become visible not at the ‘point of access’ to universities but, instead, at their exits. And it’s the view from the exit, from which can be seen the greatest expanse of nothing at all, which will perhaps give the clearest indication of how UK education struggle ought to proceed.

Republished from Mute magazine

Danny Hayward lives and writes in London

1. Thanks are owed to JBR for György Kurtág and other critical inputs.
2. It’s important to note that the reforms did not apply to Scottish students, where Higher Education continues to be ‘free’ in the limited sense that the State covers student fees.
3. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#3
4. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#4
5. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#5
6. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#6
7. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#7
8. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#8
9. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#9
10. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#10
11. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93-july-2011#11

http://libcom.org/library/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview-uk-university-struggles-novermber-2010-%E2%80%93-jul

Vysokým školám průvan prospěje. I koňka se přežila.

Dle poloviny vrcholných manažerů oslovených ČESKOU POZICÍ není obava, že reforma terciárního vzdělávání omezí akademické svobody, oprávněná.

Ministerstvo školství v čele s Josefem Dobešem chystá vysokoškolskou reformu, jejíž součástí jsou dva věcné záměry zákonů – o vysokých školách a o finanční pomoci studentům. Navrhovaná reforma se však setkala s tvrdou kritikou části akademické obce a vyvolala i studentské protesty. Obavy akademiků se především týkají jejich nezávislosti. Podle nich navrhovaný zákon o vysokých školách zlikviduje samosprávný charakter akademické obce a radikálně omezí vliv studentů na rozhodování. Obávají se i možných politicko-mocenských zásahů do samosprávy veřejných vysokých škol.

ČESKÁ POZICE položila všem veřejným (a dvěma státním) vysokým školám v Česku osm otázek, jež se týkaly plánované reformy. A většina z nich vyjádřila větší či menší míru obav o akademické svobody. Ministr školství Dobeš však považuje ohánění se strachem o akademické svobody za pouhou zástěrku. Dle něho „už dnešní praxe je taková, že ve správních radách vysokých škol jsou vlivní politici. Reálnější je tedy obava, že v případě toho, že na místa rektorů budou probíhat výběrová řízení s mezinárodní účastí, by v tomto konkurenčním prostředí nemuseli obstát, což platí i v případě funkčních míst docentů a profesorů.“

Ani 50 procent vrcholných manažerů oslovených v anketě ČESKÉ POZICE nepovažuje za oprávněnou obavu vysokých škol, že plánovaná reforma terciárního vzdělávání omezí akademické svobody.

Patří mezi ně i tito tři respondenti:

„Odkazy na omezení akademické svobody jsou pouze zástupné, chybí-li věcné argumenty k jednotlivým částem plánované reformy. Většina představitelů veřejných vysokých škol (VŠ) je spíše levicového smýšlení, a proto je hlavním předmětem sporu zavedení školného. Ostatní sporné otázky slouží pouze k argumentaci odmítající reformu jako celek. Nikoho nepřekvapuje, že naše vysoké školství je v podobném rozkladu jako celá společnost, a proto VŠ potřebují reformu ,jako prase drbání‘.

Soukromému vysokému školství by nejvíc prospělo náročné přezkoumání akreditací (,nelicencování‘), jehož výsledkem by bylo faktické zrušení většiny soukromých VŠ. Ty se staly symbolem korupce a devalvace vysokoškolského vzdělání. Uspěly jedině v ziskovosti pro jejich majitele. Pokud by to doprovázela ,produkce‘ špičkových absolventů, nikdo by s tím asi neměl problém. Součástí reformy vysokého školství by měl být přezkum, prověření a přezkoušení držitelů diplomů z českých a slovenských soukromých VŠ, kteří pracují ve státní sféře.“

„Nemůžou přijít o něco, co nemají.“

„Zmíněná ,obava‘ je jen snahou o udržení historicky zakonzervovaných a současnému vývoji již neodpovídajících pozic akademické sféry. Vysoké školy se musejí stát dodavatelem kvalitních absolventů pro podnikatelskou sféru.A odběratel musí mít alespoň dílčí právo kontroly a možnost stanovit základní požadavky. Stejně jako například výrobci vozidel a dodavatelé dílů a příslušenství. Plánovanou reformu terciárního vzdělávání proto plně podporuji.“

Následující čtyři vrcholní manažeři se nedokázali rozhodnout ani pro kladnou, ani pro zápornou odpověď:

„Obě strany sporu mlží a předkládají veřejnosti zástupné problémy. Co se doopravdy ve školství děje, si netroufám odhadnout.“

„Rozum, řád a disciplína musejí být i ve vzdělávacím systému. Jinak nám budou růst kauzy VŠ jako zaopatřovacích prodejen rychlo-lehko-diplomů k nezbytnému kádrovému vybavení vybraných soudruhů. To už jednou bylo. Dnes máme kauzy Právnické fakulty v Plzeni, Vysoké školy finanční a správní a obou brněnských ekonomických ,Sorbon‘ s jejich tiskařskými lisy na diplomy pro prominenty.

Současný ministr školství Dobeš sice vystupuje jako křupan, ale je třeba říct, že deset let ,okecávané‘ téma jednotných a srovnávatelných státních maturit vyřešil za svůj první rok. Požadavek na státní srovnávací školní testy v 5. a 8. třídě nesměřuje proti sociálně slabým, ale proti zneužívání liberalismu různých takzvaných ,exkluzívních a nejlepších‘ škol, například proti jejich průběžnému verbálnímu, často počítačem jen předtištěnému hodnocení pro všechny stejně a klasifikování nesrovnatelných až bizarních oborů.“

„Ministr školství Dobeš je mi sice nesympatický, ale těžko mohu mít sympatie k systému, v němž jsou VŠ placené ze státního rozpočtu, přičemž bojují za akademické svobody.Prospělo by jim, kdyby si minimálně část peněz sháněly samy. Jinak to jen připomíná boj za získaná koryta a zatuchlý klídek.“

„Za vzdělání by se mělo platit, protože studenti si vzdělání neváží. Zajímá je pouze titul jako vstupenka k vyšším platům u firem. Mnozí přitom zběhnou od své vědecké specializace, kterou jim stát zaplatil. Školné by však mělo být nastavené tak, aby neznamenalo jen byznys pro banky.“

Podobná nerozhodnost se neobjevuje v dalších třech záporných odpovědích:

„Pokud tato změna posílí pozice majitelů, zřizovatelů a zakladatelů škol při řízení vysokých škol, pak souhlasím. Akademické svobody znamenají právo říct názor a nebýt za něj potrestán, nikoli právo řídit a nenést odpovědnost. Takže jde o bouři ve sklenici vody a křik skupinky osob, která pravděpodobně přijde o část svých prebend a výhod.“

„Privatizace vysokých škol je u nás nemyslitelná. Díky ní by mnoho svobod, volnosti a pomalosti našich vysokých škol – a jejich zaměstnanců – asi vzalo za své. Privatizace však nehrozí. Skutečně hrozí a děsí, že by studenti za své peníze mohli něco chtít. To by byl tvrdý zásah mnoha vysokým školám. Svobody by jim určitě zůstaly – na papíře. Ale svobodu, kterou mají nyní, by určitě ztratily.“

„Tvrzení, že jde o akademické svobody, je lživé. Je směšné, jak si akademická obec myslí, že ji stát bude platit veškerý provoz, ale běda, pokud by chtěl zasahovat do něčeho, co se jí týká. Ať si akademici otevřou soukromé vysoké školy a seženou financování ze soukromých zdrojů, a pak si o všem mohou rozhodovat sami. Jejich uvažování je naprosto vyděračské a nehorázné. Občané vše budou platit ze svých daní, ale zvolená vláda bude jen mlčet a přihlížet, jak akademici rozhodují bez kontroly o penězích nás všech.“

Následující čtyři odpovědi jsou sice kladné, ale i v nich zaznívá kritika současného vysokého školství:

„Není to však černobílé. Na jednu stranu tato reforma omezí nadužívání nebo zneužívání akademické svobody, což je evidentně na vysokých školách rozšířené. Na druhou mohou začít působit rozhodovací mechanismy, které i na dobře fungujících školách umožní vznik věcí, jichž jsme byli svědky na plzeňských právech.

Rizikem je, že se naruší existující, i když nepříliš dobře fungující kontrolní prvky a místo nich nevzniknou adekvátní jiné. Každopádně platí, že pokud si někdo myslí, že nový zákon a předpisy promění neradostnou praxi českých vysokých škol v radostnou praxi amerických univerzit, pak se značně mýlí. To se nedá jen tak zúřadovat.“

„I vysoké školy se však musejí změnit. Máme 74 soukromých vysokých škol. Jaké asi mohou poskytovat vzdělání venkovské univerzity z nějakého okresního městečka? Na to bych rád od slovutných profesorů slyšel odpověď.“

„Moje mnohem větší obava než z deklarované vůle k reformě školství pramení z toho, že ji vede nekoncepční a v oboru mimořádně neschopný ministr Josef Dobeš. To, že je někdo schopný udělat cokoli, jen aby ukázal bezbřehou iniciativu a přihrál peníze spřáteleným firmám a kamarádíčkům, není a nadále nesmí být tou jedinou kvalifikací.

Reforma se prakticky netýká soukromých vysokých škol, jestli si však některé školy zaslouží Dobešovu kritiku za snadno získané tituly a nízkou úroveň vzdělání, pak jsou to právě a pouze ony. Tím netvrdím, že všechny. Ani si však nedovedu představit, že by kdokoli ze současného vedení ministerstva školství svými reformami dokázal pozvednout Lékařskou nebo Matematicko-fyzikální fakultu Univerzity Karlovy či jen o pověstný fous prestiž a úroveň výuky na ČVUT. Slyšíte-li pana ministra hovořit, o některých jeho náměstcích ani nemluvě, nelze si nevzpomenout na Werichův výrok o iniciativním blbovi. Leckomu zase vytane na mysli postavička Hujera z legendárního filmu Marečku, podejte mi pero.

Navzdory všem výhradám vůči současné vládě musím uznat, že některé reformy jsou nutné a že se snad některým ministrům začíná pomalu dařit otáčet kormidlo svého úřadu proti zkorumpovaným zvyklostem. Nebylo by férové to neuznat. To ovšem neplatí o ministerstvu školství ani o ministerstvu financí. První vede slaboduch, druhé prolhaný gauner, oba hochštapleři v pravém smyslu toho slova.

Reforma terciárního vzdělávání by v první řadě měla být diskutovaná a připravovaná s akademickou obcí. A její představitelé by neměli být potupně popoháněni před o třídu méně erudovaného, a obávám se i o řád hloupějšího ministra a jeho slabomyslné náměstky, aby bez komentářů museli přijímat naprosto nekoncepční ministerské befely, jejichž v podstatě jediným cílem je odstavit schopné i inteligentní od možnosti rozhodovat.“

„Josef Dobeš je podle prezidenta Václava Klause nejlepším ministrem školství. Jeho dosavadní bilance je však poněkud tristní, prozatím na co sáhl, to ,pohnojil‘. Časté a nelogické personální změny jsou na ministerstvu školství (MŠMT) na denním pořádku. Odborníky nahradili méně kvalitní lidé, nyní již ani o kvalitě, ani o odbornosti hovořit nelze. V návrzích zákonů MŠMT se často lze dočíst úplné nesmysly, které následně koriguje Poslanecká sněmovna a Senát.
Za pravdu akademické obci dává i aktuální situace na úřadech práce, kde reforma podobného packala, ministra práce Jaromíra Drábka, před níž odborníci z řad akademiků také varovali a kterou vetoval Senát i prezident Klaus, již má pravděpodobně na svědomí život zaměstnance úřadu práce. Rádoby reformy ministrů Dobeše i Drábka mají tu společnou vadu, že v krátké době zdevastují dlouhodobou kvalitní práci jejich předchůdců a jsou absolutně nevratné.
Za této situace obava vysokých škol z jakékoli reformy ministra školství Dobeše je zcela logická a nanejvýš oprávněná.“

Záporné odpovědi těchto tří respondentů jsou k představitelům vysokých škol značně kritičtí:

„Představitelé VŠ by se měli víc věnovat získání respektu k vysokým školám a jejich autority. Nízká úroveň výuky na řadě českých VŠ i společenských vztahů mezi pedagogy snižuje autoritu vysokých škol a ohrožuje jejich samostatnost.“

„Jde pouze o hysterickou obranu nesmyslného systému, který byl ve vysokém školství zaveden po roce 1990 a jenž odsunul kvalitu terciárního vzdělávání až na pár výjimek na úroveň rozvojových zemí třetího světa. Bohužel jsme dali VŠ po roce 1990 nejdřív akademickou svobodu, čímž jsme zakonzervovali socialismus, neefektivitu a stále klesající kvalitu. A následné pokusy o restrukturalizaci systému vysokých škol skončily vždy hysterickým ječením jejich zástupců, že jsou narušované akademické svobody. Existují výjimky – vysoké školy nebo jednotlivé fakulty mezi neefektivními školami –, na nichž je vidět, že v našem vysokém školství to jde dělat jinak.“

„Reforma terciárního vzdělávání je nutná. Možná se někomu svoboda čehosi omezí, ale určitě nikoli akademická. Bude to však jen ku prospěchu. Samozřejmě, že se dá zneužít cokoli, ale nelze ustrnout. I koňka se přežila.

Toho, co je zadarmo, si lidé neváží. Náklady na studium za akademický rok ve výši 20 tisíc korun nejsou závratné. Jsou nižší než kuřáka, který vykouří jednu krabičku denně za rok.

Z vlastní zkušenosti vím, že člověk z podnikatelského prostředí může do vysoké školy vnést svěží vítr – znalosti z podnikání, způsob myšlení, práci a realitu, což je víc než žádoucí. Našim vysokým školám nějaký průvan jen prospěje.“

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