Understanding the Corporatisation of Universities in the Netherlands and beyond 

Time : 24th May 2014, 13:00 – 18:00

Place : International institute for Research and Education – Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL, Amsterdam

Register for free at borderless@grenzeloos.org

As a condition for the Troika’s financial assistance, Greece has been forced to implement a set of drastic austerity measures, including the privatization of several state-owned companies. The public water utilities of Athens and Thessaloniki are among the targets. Both are profitable companies, which no one there wishes to see pass into private hands. But the Greek government and its creditors seem bent on imposing policy whose economic merits and democratic legitimacy seem rather dubious. A French company is especially active among the candidates for privatizing water in Athens and Thessaloniki: Suez Environnement.

Right2Water, the European Citizen Initiative (ECI) aiming to promote ‘right to water’ and resist privatization, announced last November that they had collected enough signatures (1.9 million in the whole EU) to force the European institutions to take up the case. It was the first time that this new participative process, first introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, was successfully carried out [1]. A public hearing was held in the European Parliament in February with stakeholders, and the Commission released its official response on March 19th. Although it has balked at taking any legislative action (as proposed in the ECI), it was forced to admit, grudgingly, that water is a “public good” and that local governments are ultimately responsible for providing this service. This response was judged much too weak by the organizations behind the ECI, [2] which slammed the Commission for its lack of democratic accountability.

Even as hundreds of thousands of European citizens openly rejected the privatization of water, it was nevertheless gaining momentum in many countries because of the sovereign debt crisis. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy, despite strong opposition from citizens and local politicians themselves, water privatization has come back on the agenda. [3] According to the unions and activists who oppose water privatization, even as European officials ostensibly claimed neutrality as to the issue of public vs. private water management, they took advantage of the financial crisis in order to promote privatization as a solution to the budget troubles that European states and municipalities were facing.

In Greece, the privatization of the water utilities of the two main Greek cities, Athens (EYDAP) and Thessaloniki (EYATH), was imposed as part of the ‘shock therapy’ deemed necessary to solve the country’s financial woes. The Troika, which is supposed to represent the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, operates without transparency or accountability. It has imposed a series of drastic conditions upon Greece. The international financial assistance, which is due to be paid in installments, is predicated upon these conditions, which include a reduction in the number of civil servants and the privatization of countless public assets and companies. Overall, these austerity measures have triggered a dramatic decrease in standard of living for Greeks as well as issues of access to basic services, especially healthcare. According to critics, represented in Thessaloniki by the SOSte to NERO coalition, water privatization will mean a further regression: commercial interests (Greek as well as foreign) will benefit at the expense of Greek citizens and, ultimately, of democracy.

The Euro-crisis, a boon for Suez Environnement?

As for Suez Environnement, its executives openly celebrated the “opportunities” created up by the sovereign debt crisis in Southern Europe. Through its Spanish subsidiary Agbar, the French group has looked to extend its water and sanitation contracts in Barcelona and Catalonia, running into legal troubles. These hegemonic ambitions have brought about a conflict (unresolved to this day) between Agbar and the Generalitat of Catalonia, which ruled in favor of another consortium. Suez Environnement has also strengthened its ties to Acea, an Italian company in charge of water and electricity in Rome and involved in water and sanitation services in several cities in Latium and Tuscany. [4] Its goal? To progressively build a “third pillar” for the group in Italy, along its traditional French and Spanish markets. And too bad if, when consulted through referendum, Italians and Spaniards are massively opposed to water privatization.

In Greece, Suez has expressed interest in taking over the water services of Athens and Thessaloniki. [5] Both acquisitions seem all the more advantageous to the French group given that the Greek stock market crashed during the crisis. EYDAP and EYATH can therefore be bought for a small price relative to their actual financial health. The privatization process seems to be further along in Thessaloniki, even though privatization faces numerous political and regulatory obstacles in both cities. Recently still, the Greek government was saying that the transfer of EYATH from public to private hands could be finalised by March 2014, which seems unlikely.

After the initial tendering process, early 2013, there are two consortia still in the running to buy the Thessaloniki water utility from the Greek government. One is led by Suez Environnement, the other by Mekorot, the Israeli water company. Suez is considered by many to be the favorite to win the contract, because it already owns 5% of EYATH shares and seems better connected. It is looking to buy 51% of shares in EYATH and take over the firm’s management, in association with the Greek construction firm EllAktor, controlled by George Bobolas (whose group also owns several Greek media outlets).

So far, negotiations over the terms of sale of EYDAP and EYATH have taken place outside of public scrutiny, between the Greek government (through TAIPED, its special agency in charge of privatization), the Troika, and potential investors. This lack of transparency is explained in part by the fact that TAIPED, to which the Greek governement has transferred all its shares and given full power to privatize, is no longer legally accountable to the Greek Parliament. At first, the privatization of the two water companies was supposed to be partial, but a vote in Parliament in late 2012 authorized the Greek state to sell all its stakes in EYDAP and EYATH. Crazy rumors have since flown around concerning the projected financial arrangements and the excessively favorable conditions that could be given to investors. Going by the current market valuation of EYATH, the amount of the transaction should hover around €110 million (for 51% of shares).

Local and international resistance

The possibility of the privatization of water services in Thessaloniki, decided by the Greek government under pressure from Europe, has raised strong opposition in the city. The SOSte to NERO coalition, initiated by unions, has organized the local campaigns and has succeeded in attracting international support to its cause. Several local mayors have expressed the desire to buy the 51% share in the company intended for investors themselves. A group of citizens and unions has even tried to subvert the process by participating in the tender as ‘Initiative 136’. Initiative 136 calls for the transformation of EYATH into a cooperative owned by its ‘customers’: the citizens of Thessaloniki. Each citizen would have bought a non-transferrable share in the company for €136 per household. A call to international ‘ethical investors’ and social finance organizations was envisaged in order to help the citizens takeover the company. This ‘citizen buyout’ was also to trigger a more democratic and participatory management of the water service. Unfortunately, this original and heretical (by today’s neoliberal standards) proposition was not accepted by TAIPED, which did not deign justify Initiative 136’s exclusion form the process. [6]

Opponents to water privatization, united at national level under the banner of the Save Greek Water coalition, have denounced the support that French president Francois Hollande has voiced for Greek water privatization. This support is based on the fact that such deals could benefit French businesses, in particular Suez Environnement. In July 2013, dozens of organizations, unions, international social movements, and some fifty Members of the European Parliament called on the two consortia to withdraw their bids: ‘We hope that businesses today do not base their business model on opportunism, and that they do not try to venture into places where they are clearly not welcome. There is an alternative to your bids, which are condemned by the workers at EYATH, the inhabitants of Thessaloniki, the municipalities, and by us. That is to keep the water public and maintain the same high quality of service in distribution.’

In spite of this, neither Suez nor Mekorot withdrew their bid. In response to our questions, Suez says that it “seems essential to us that our intervention be desired,” but hides behind the Greek state: “We think that the decisions of the Greek state are not made without consulting local authorities.” On January 15, 2014, TAIPED presented its official commercial proposition for the takeover of EYATH. The employees went on strike for the day, and the mayors of the local communities attended the event to voice their opposition. But it seems that in Greece, unfortunately, the voices of elected officials and citizens are drowned out by those of international creditors and business interests.

Having seen that official political channels do not give them any leverage in the decision making process, opponents have decided to organize a popular referendum on water privatization in Thessaloniki. This was inspired by similar votes in Italy, Spain, and Germany. The referendum will take place on May 18, at the same time as local elections. Under pressure from their constituents, several local mayors (including Thessaloniki’s) have announced their intention to support the referendum, and unions have circulated a call for support at European level, soliciting financial contributions, as well as volunteers and observers to come help with the referendum. In Greece, as in most of Europe, people are overwhelmingly opposed to water privatization. A survey taken a few months ago in Thessaloniki reported that 76% of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of water privatization. Even if the referendum has no official weight, the organizers hope that a large turnout will be enough to dissuade Suez and Mekorot from following through with their plans. Suez Environnement has declined to answer our question whether it would withdraw its bid in case the referendum showed an overwhelming majority against privatization.

Opponents of privatization are also pinning their hopes on the Greek Council of State, which is expected to issue a decision on the legality of the EYATH and EYDAP privatization process. Greek unions have initiated this legal procedure, arguing that the creation of TAIPED, which is unaccountable to the Greek Parliament, is unconstitutional, as is the transfer to this body of public shares in companies in charge of basic services. The publication of its decision by the Council of State has been awaited for several weeks. [7]

Mekorot has declared that it is waiting for the Council of State’s decision before confirming its offer to buy EYATH. While several local sources had indicated to us that Suez, for its part, has not hesitated to place an official bid despite everything that was happening, the company denies this in its responses to our questions. In general, it seems that the Israeli firm has chosen to keep a low profile, in stark contrast to the activism of Suez. But despite the low profile in Thessaloniki and despite being a relative newcomer on the international water privatization scene, Mekorot has been harshly criticized by human rights activists for its policies in the Occupied Territories and its discriminatory treatment of Palestinians. [8]

Suez’s Charm Offensive

To make its offer more tempting, the French firm seems not to have skimped on promises. It announced in January, 2014, through Diane d’Arras, its Deputy director for Europe, no fewer than 250 million Euros investments over five years and the creation of between 2,000 and 4,000 jobs. [9] Intriguing numbers in light of the fact that EYATH’s net annual profits are ‘only’ about 18 million euros. Critics highlight the fact that in order to make good on even a small fraction of such promises, all while paying dividends to the parent company and its shareholders, a steep increase in the price of water would be required. At a press conference where attendees were hand-picked, Diane d’Arras asked herself aloud if the current water rates in Thessaloniki were sufficient to maintain the viability of water services. But, according to unions, the rates have already tripled since 2001.

Diane d’Arras also tried to allay local concerns by stressing the need for better environment management, in particular for treating wastewater before dumping it into Thermaikos Bay, and reducing water losses. The French company also tried to reassure people that water rates would still be set by an ‘independent authority’. Critics countered (at a distance) that numerous past examples of water privatization, notably in Argentina, have shown that such authorities, created in haste, rarely have the power and the skills to effectively control a more powerful private provider. [10] Anti-privatization activists have also pointed out the following irony: Suez Environnement is a heavily indebted business, which has had trouble turning a profit for years (because of the progressive loss of market shares and profitability of private water companies in France); and yet, it is seeking to acquire EYATH, which has been in good financial health for some time.

Privatization: does it even make economic sense?

First announced in 2009, the privatization of the water services of Thessaloniki and Athens has dragged on. This delay is an illustration of more general problems with the privatization program imposed on Greece. The logic behind the Troika’s conditions is indeed highly questionable. Under the guise of helping the Greek state ‘trim the fat’, the Troika is forcing the government to sell off its most economically viable companies; these are obviously the only ones that are attractive to investors. The Troika’s privatization program, despite leading to the sale of many assets already (ports, land, mines, etc.) and angering Greek public opinion, has run into hurdles when it comes to the bigger “prizes”.

The two largest state companies to be sold were the gas company DEPA and the national lottery, OPAP. The sale of the former was suspended following the withdrawal of the leading potential buyer, the Russian firm Gazprom, which was apparently not offered favorable enough terms. The second sale went through, but has left in its wake a series of scandals and court cases involving civil servants and representatives of TAIPED. [11] During the summer of 2013, the director of TAIPED, Stelios Stavrides, was forced to resign when it came out that he had used the private jet of the businessman to whom the OPAP was sold. Greece has also sold its gas network to the state-owned gas company of Azerbaidjan and seems to be getting ready to sell its electrical grid as well. Other assets or companies due to be privatised – airports, metallurgy or arm producers – are still in limbo.

Beyond the most publicized cases of Greek ‘treasures’ being sold to foreign interests, the Greek business world is often among the first to benefit from privatization. In the case of water, both bidding consortia are closely tied to politically well-connected Greek businesses. Mekorot presented its bid together with Terna, an energy, construction, and public works company and with businessman George Apostolopoulos. Suez’s partner, EllAktor, a media and construction group, is also involved in a controversial gold mining joint venture with a Canadian company, in the north of the country, with the blessing of the government.

In the case of EYATH and EYDAP, opponents are again denouncing the very favorable financial terms offered to potential bidders, just as in previous cases. TAIPED’s 61% stake in EYDAP could be sold for €350 million, which compares well to a net annual profit of €62 million out of a €353 million turnover in 2012, €43 million cash reserves, €881 million equity, and €1.2 billion owed to the company by the Greek government and various agencies and businesses. The ratio between the sale price of EYATH and its financial results are similar: about €110 million for a 51% stake, whereas the business posted a net income of €18 million in 2013, a turnover of €77 million, with €33 million cash reserves, and €135 million equity. [12]

But that may not be the worst of it. In January 2014, the Greek daily Eleftherotpia/Enet revealed that a project worth more than €100 million to renovate the water and sewage network of Thessaloniki was in the works. This is to take place before the system is handed over to the private buyer, which is really a gift to the latter. 75% of this project would be financed by the EU Cohesion Fund, and 25% by the Greek state. All in all, this works out to almost the price of the company itself! The Thessaloniki prosecutor ordered an investigation and demanded access to the draft of the contract prepared by TAIPED. This was denied him, as it was earlier denied to parliament members concerned about the terms of privatization. [13]

Commercial model

EYATH and EYDAP were transformed into commercial, public-listed companies in 2001, with the Greek state as the majority shareholder. [14] According to critics, this change brought with it the imposition of a commercial logic and of methods straight from the book of private sector management: on the one hand, staff and investments saw dramatic cuts; on the other hand, the shareholders – the Greek government and municipalities – were receiving substantial cash dividends. Suez Environnement took advantage of the situation and got its foot in the door by acquiring 5% of the shares in EYATH. The French group is also currently operating a biological water treatment unit in Thessaloniki, also as a joint venture with EllAktor.

According to unions, following its corporatisation, the staff of EYATH was cut from 700 to 235 people. This was effectuated by not replacing those workers who retired. The company now apparently has only eleven plumbers for a 2,300 kilometers network. Most of the work is done by sub-contractors, often for a higher price. The quality of service and the condition of the system have progressively gotten worse, despite the hike in water rates. This is no doubt what explains the profits posted by EYATH over the years; this also explains the interest of companies such as Suez.

Olivier Petitjean

This article was originally published in French. Translation: Egor Lazebnik

Source: http://www.tni.org/article/forced-privatizations-greece

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Photo : Ghirigori Baumann CC

On hiring faculty off the tenure track

That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Wal-Mart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a  corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities. The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors [4] on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence.

This idea is sometimes made quite overt. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress [5] in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called “greater worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, that’s very “healthy” for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed. Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure “greater worker insecurity”? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they’d better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more. That’s the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we’ll see more and more of it.

That’s one aspect, but there are other aspects which are also quite familiar from private industry, namely a large increase in layers of administration and bureaucracy. If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in US industry even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management—a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities. In the past 30 or 40 years, there’s been a very sharp increase in the proportion of administrators to faculty and students; faculty and students levels have stayed fairly level relative to one another, but the proportion of administrators have gone way up. There’s a very good book on it by a well-known sociologist, Benjamin Ginsberg, called The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters [6] (Oxford University Press, 2011), which describes in detail the business style of massive administration and levels of administration—and of course, very highly-paid administrators. This includes professional administrators like deans, for example, who used to be faculty members who took off for a couple of years to serve in an administrative capacity and then go back to the faculty; now they’re mostly professionals, who then have to hire sub-deans, and secretaries, and so on and so forth, a whole proliferation of structure that goes along with administrators. All of that is another aspect of the business model.

But using cheap labor—and vulnerable labor—is a business practice that goes as far back as you can trace private enterprise, and unions emerged in response. In the universities, cheap, vulnerable labor means adjuncts and graduate students. Graduate students are even more vulnerable, for obvious reasons. The idea is to transfer instruction to precarious workers, which improves discipline and control but also enables the transfer of funds to other purposes apart from education. The costs, of course, are borne by the students and by the people who are being drawn into these vulnerable occupations. But it’s a standard feature of a business-run society to transfer costs to the people. In fact, economists tacitly cooperate in this. So, for example, suppose you find a mistake in your checking account and you call the bank to try to fix it. Well, you know what happens. You call them up, and you get a recorded message saying “We love you, here’s a menu.” Maybe the menu has what you’re looking for, maybe it doesn’t. If you happen to find the right option, you listen to some music, and every once and a while a voice comes in and says “Please stand by, we really appreciate your business,” and so on. Finally, after some period of time, you may get a human being, who you can ask a short question to. That’s what economists call “efficiency.” By economic measures, that system reduces labor costs to the bank; of course it imposes costs on you, and those costs are multiplied by the number of users, which can be enormous—but that’s not counted as a cost in economic calculation. And if you look over the way the society works, you find this everywhere. So the university imposes costs on students and on faculty who are not only untenured but are maintained on a path that guarantees that they will have no security. All of this is perfectly natural within corporate business models. It’s harmful to education, but education is not their goal.

In fact, if you look back farther, it goes even deeper than that. If you go back to the early 1970s when a lot of this began, there was a lot of concern pretty much across the political spectrum over the activism of the 1960s; it’s commonly called “the time of troubles.” It was a “time of troubles” because the country was getting civilized, and that’s dangerous. People were becoming politically engaged and were trying to gain rights for groups that are called “special interests,” like women, working people, farmers, the young, the old, and so on. That led to a serious backlash, which was pretty overt. At the liberal end of the spectrum, there’s a book called The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the  [7]Trilateral Commission, Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, Joji Watanuki (New York University Press, 1975), produced by the Trilateral Commission, an organization of liberal internationalists. The Carter administration was drawn almost entirely from their ranks. They were concerned with what they called “the crisis of democracy,” namely that there’s too much democracy. In the 1960s there were pressures from the population, these “special interests,” to try to gain rights within the political arena, and that put too much pressure on the state—you can’t do that. There was one special interest that they left out, namely the corporate sector, because its interests are the “national interest”; the corporate sector is supposed to control the state, so we don’t talk about them. But the “special interests” were causing problems and they said “we have to have more moderation in democracy,” the public has to go back to being passive and apathetic. And they were particularly concerned with schools and universities, which they said were not properly doing their job of “indoctrinating the young.” You can see from student activism (the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movements) that the young are just not being indoctrinated properly.

Well how do you indoctrinate the young? There are a number of ways. One way is to burden them with hopelessly heavy tuition debt. Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It’s a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can’t get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy. They can even garnish social security if you default. That’s a disciplinary technique. I don’t say that it was consciously introduced for the purpose, but it certainly has that effect. And it’s hard to argue that there’s any economic basis for it. Just take a look around the world: higher education is mostly free. In the countries with the highest education standards, let’s say Finland, which is at the top all the time, higher education is free. And in a rich, successful capitalist country like Germany, it’s free. In Mexico, a poor country, which has pretty decent education standards, considering the economic difficulties they face, it’s free. In fact, look at the United States: if you go back to the 1940s and 50s, higher education was pretty close to free. The GI Bill gave free education to vast numbers of people who would never have been able to go to college. It was very good for them and it was very good for the economy and the society; it was part of the reason for the high economic growth rate. Even in private colleges, education was pretty close to free. Take me: I went to college in 1945 at an Ivy League university, University of Pennsylvania, and tuition was $100. That would be maybe $800 in today’s dollars. And it was very easy to get a scholarship, so you could live at home, work, and go to school and it didn’t cost you anything. Now it’s outrageous. I have grandchildren in college, who have to pay for their tuition and work and it’s almost impossible. For the students that is a disciplinary technique.

And another technique of indoctrination is to cut back faculty-student contact: large classes, temporary teachers who are overburdened, who can barely survive on an adjunct salary. And since you don’t have any job security you can’t build up a career, you can’t move on and get more. These are all techniques of discipline, indoctrination, and control. And it’s very similar to what you’d expect in a factory, where factory workers have to be disciplined, to be obedient; they’re not supposed to play a role in, say, organizing production or determining how the workplace functions—that’s the job of management. This is now carried over to the universities. And I think it shouldn’t surprise anyone who has any experience in private enterprise, in industry; that’s the way they work.

On how higher education ought to be

First of all, we should put aside any idea that there was once a “golden age.” Things were different and in some ways better in the past, but far from perfect. The traditional universities were, for example, extremely hierarchical, with very little democratic participation in decision-making. One part of the activism of the 1960s was to try to democratize the universities, to bring in, say, student representatives to faculty committees, to bring in staff to participate. These efforts were carried forward under student initiatives, with some degree of success. Most universities now have some degree of student participation in faculty decisions. And I think those are the kinds of things we should be moving towards: a democratic institution, in which the people involved in the institution, whoever they may be (faculty, students, staff), participate in determining the nature of the institution and how it runs; and the same should go for a factory.

These are not radical ideas, I should say. They come straight out of classical liberalism. So if you read, for example, John Stuart Mill, a major figure in the classical liberal tradition, he took it for granted that workplaces ought to be managed and controlled by the people who work in them—that’s freedom and democracy (see, e.g., John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, book 4, ch. 7 [8]). We see the same ideas in the United States. Let’s say you go back to the Knights of Labor; one of their stated aims was “To establish co-operative institutions such as will tend to supersede the wage-system, by the introduction of a co-operative industrial system” (“Founding Ceremony” [9] for newly-organized Local Associations). Or take someone like, John Dewey, a mainstream 20th-century social philosopher, who called not only for education directed at creative independence in schools, but also worker control in industry, what he called “industrial democracy.” He says that as long as the crucial institutions of the society (like production, commerce, transportation, media) are not under democratic control, then “politics [will be] the shadow cast on society by big business” (John Dewey, “The Need for a New Party” [10][1931]). This idea is almost elementary, it has deep roots in American history and in classical liberalism, it should be second nature to working people, and it should apply the same way to universities. There are some decisions in a university where you don’t want to have [democratic transparency because] you have to preserve student privacy, say, and there are various kinds of sensitive issues, but on much of the normal activity of the university, there is no reason why direct participation can’t be not only legitimate but helpful. In my department, for example, for 40 years we’ve had student representatives helpfully participating in department meetings.

On “shared governance” and worker control

The university is probably the social institution in our society that comes closest to democratic worker control. Within a department, for example, it’s pretty normal for at least the tenured faculty to be able to determine a substantial amount of what their work is like: what they’re going to teach, when they’re going to teach, what the curriculum will be. And most of the decisions about the actual work that the faculty is doing are pretty much under tenured faculty control. Now of course there is a higher level of administrators that you can’t overrule or control. The faculty can recommend somebody for tenure, let’s say, and be turned down by the deans, or the president, or even the trustees or legislators. It doesn’t happen all that often, but it can happen and it does. And that’s always a part of the background structure, which, although it always existed, was much less of a problem in the days when the administration was drawn from the faculty and in principle recallable. Under representative systems, you have to have someone doing administrative work but they should be recallable at some point under the authority of the people they administer. That’s less and less true. There are more and more professional administrators, layer after layer of them, with more and more positions being taken remote from the faculty controls. I mentioned before The Fall of the Faculty by Benjamin Ginsberg, which goes into a lot of detail as to how this works in the several universities he looks at closely: Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and a couple of others.

Meanwhile, the faculty are increasingly reduced to a category of temporary workers who are assured a precarious existence with no path to the tenure track. I have personal acquaintances who are effectively permanent lecturers; they’re not given real faculty status; they have to apply every year so that they can get appointed again. These things shouldn’t be allowed to happen. And in the case of adjuncts, it’s been institutionalized: they’re not permitted to be a part of the decision-making apparatus, and they’re excluded from job security, which merely amplifies the problem. I think staff ought to also be integrated into decision-making, since they’re also a part of the university. So there’s plenty to do, but I think we can easily understand why these tendencies are developing. They are all part of imposing a business model on just about every aspect of life. That’s the neoliberal ideology that most of the world has been living under for 40 years. It’s very harmful to people, and there has been resistance to it. And it’s worth noticing that two parts of the world, at least, have pretty much escaped from it, namely East Asia, where they never really accepted it, and South America in the past 15 years.

On the alleged need for “flexibility”

“Flexibility” is a term that’s very familiar to workers in industry. Part of what’s called “labor reform” is to make labor more “flexible,” make it easier to hire and fire people. That’s, again, a way to ensure maximization of profit and control. “Flexibility” is supposed to be a good thing, like “greater worker insecurity.” Putting aside industry where the same is true, in universities there’s no justification. So take a case where there’s under-enrollment somewhere. That’s not a big problem. One of my daughters teaches at a university; she just called me the other night and told me that her teaching load is being shifted because one of the courses that was being offered was under-enrolled. Okay, the world didn’t to an end, they just shifted around the teaching arrangements—you teach a different course, or an extra section, or something like that. People don’t have to be thrown out or be insecure because of the variation in the number of students enrolling in courses. There are all sorts of ways of adjusting for that variation. The idea that labor should meet the conditions of “flexibility” is just another standard technique of control and domination. Why not say that administrators should be thrown out if there’s nothing for them to do that semester, or trustees—what do they have to be there for? The situation is the same with top management in industry: if labor has to be flexible, how about management? Most of them are pretty useless or even harmful anyway, so let’s get rid of them. And you can go on like this. Just to take the news from the last couple of days, take, say, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank: he just got a prettysubstantial raise [11], almost double his salary, out of gratitude because he had saved the bank from criminal charges that would have sent the management to jail; he got away with only $20 billion in fines for criminal activities. Well I can imagine that getting rid of somebody like that might be helpful to the economy. But that’s not what people are talking about when they talk about “labor reform.” It’s the working people who have to suffer, and they have to suffer by insecurity, by not knowing where tomorrow’s piece of bread is going to come from, and therefore be disciplined and obedient and not raise questions or ask for their rights. That’s the way that tyrannical systems operate. And the business world is a tyrannical system. When it’s imposed on the universities, you find it reflects the same ideas. This shouldn’t be any secret.

On the purpose of education

These are debates that go back to the Enlightenment, when issues of higher education and mass education were really being raised, not just education for the clergy and aristocracy. And there were basically two models discussed in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were discussed with pretty evocative imagery. One image of education was that it should be like a vessel that is filled with, say, water. That’s what we call these days “teaching to test”: you pour water into the vessel and then the vessel returns the water. But it’s a pretty leaky vessel, as all of us who went through school experienced, since you could memorize something for an exam that you had no interest in to pass an exam and a week later you forgot what the course was about. The vessel model these days is called “no child left behind,” “teaching to test,” “race to top,” whatever the name may be, and similar things in universities. Enlightenment thinkers opposed that model.

The other model was described as laying out a string along which the student progresses in his or her own way under his or her own initiative, maybe moving the string, maybe deciding to go somewhere else, maybe raising questions. Laying out the string means imposing some degree of structure. So an educational program, whatever it may be, a course on physics or something, isn’t going to be just anything goes; it has a certain structure. But the goal of it is for the student to acquire the capacity to inquire, to create, to innovate, to challenge—that’s education. One world-famous physicist, in his freshman courses if he was asked “what are we going to cover this semester?”, his answer was “it doesn’t matter what we cover, it matters what you discover.” You have gain the capacity and the self-confidence for that matter to challenge and create and innovate, and that way you learn; that way you’ve internalized the material and you can go on. It’s not a matter of accumulating some fixed array of facts which then you can write down on a test and forget about tomorrow.

These are two quite distinct models of education. The Enlightenment ideal was the second one, and I think that’s the one that we ought to be striving towards. That’s what real education is, from kindergarten to graduate school. In fact there are programs of that kind for kindergarten, pretty good ones.

On the love of teaching

We certainly want people, both faculty and students, to be engaged in activity that’s satisfying, enjoyable, challenging, exciting—and I don’t really think that’s hard. Even young children are creative, inquisitive, they want to know things, they want to understand things, and unless that’s beaten out of your head it stays with you the rest of your life. If you have opportunities to pursue those commitments and concerns, it’s one of the most satisfying things in life. That’s true if you’re a research physicist, it’s true if you’re a carpenter; you’re trying to create something of value and deal with a difficult problem and solve it. I think that’s what makes work the kind of thing you want to do; you do it even if you don’t have to do it. In a reasonably functioning university, you find people working all the time because they love it; that’s what they want to do; they’re given the opportunity, they have the resources, they’re encouraged to be free and independent and creative—what’s better? That’s what they love to do. And that, again, can be done at any level.

It’s worth thinking about some of the imaginative and creative educational programs that are being developed at different levels. So, for example, somebody just described to me the other day a program they’re using in high schools, a science program where the students are asked an interesting question: “How can a mosquito fly in the rain?” That’s a hard question when you think about it. If something hit a human being with the force of a raindrop hitting a mosquito it would absolutely flatten them immediately. So how come the mosquito isn’t crushed instantly? And how can the mosquito keep flying? If you pursue that question—and it’s a pretty hard question—you get into questions of mathematics, physics, and biology, questions that are challenging enough that you want to find an answer to them.

That’s what education should be like at every level, all the way down to kindergarten, literally. There are kindergarten programs in which, say, each child is given a collection of little items: pebbles, shells, seeds, and things like that. Then the class is given the task of finding out which ones are the seeds. It begins with what they call a “scientific conference”: the kids talk to each other and they try to figure out which ones are seeds. And of course there’s some teacher guidance, but the idea is to have the children think it through. After a while, they try various experiments and they figure out which ones are the seeds. At that point, each child is given a magnifying glass and, with the teacher’s help, cracks a seed and looks inside and finds the embryo that makes the seed grow. These children learn something—really, not only something about seeds and what makes things grow; but also about how to discover. They’re learning the joy of discovery and creation, and that’s what carries you on independently, outside the classroom, outside the course.

The same goes for all education up through graduate school. In a reasonable graduate seminar, you don’t expect students to copy it down and repeat whatever you say; you expect them to tell you when you’re wrong or to come up with new ideas, to challenge, to pursue some direction that hadn’t been thought of before. That’s what real education is at every level, and that’s what ought to be encouraged. That ought to be the purpose of education. It’s not to pour information into somebody’s head which will then leak out but to enable them to become creative, independent people who can find excitement in discovery and creation and creativity at whatever level or in whatever domain their interests carry them.

On using corporate rhetoric against corporatization

This is kind of like asking how you should justify to the slave owner that people shouldn’t be slaves. You’re at a level of moral inquiry where it’s probably pretty hard to find answers. We are human beings with human rights. It’s good for the individual, it’s good for the society, it’s even good for the economy, in the narrow sense, if people are creative and independent and free. Everyone benefits if people are able to participate, to control their fate, to work with each other—that may not maximize profit and domination, but why should we take those to be values to be concerned about?

Advice for adjunct faculty organizing unions

You know better than I do what has to be done, the kind of problems you face. Just got ahead and do what has to be done. Don’t be intimidated, don’t be frightened, and recognize that the future can be in our hands if we’re willing to grasp it.

Prof. Chomsky’s remarks in this transcript were elicited by questions from Robin Clarke, Adam Davis, David Hoinski, Maria Somma, Robin J. Sowards, Matthew Ussia, and Joshua Zelesnick. Noam Chomsky’s OCCUPY: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity [12] is published by Zuccotti Park Press. [13]

lan Collinge, author of “The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back,” recently spoke to students at the University of Illinois Urbana campus. His argument is detailed, persuasive, and heartbreaking; it is also a call to action for students and progressives. I was privileged to speak briefly at this event about the economic and political context of student debt, and I would like to elaborate on these remarks.

The inability of students to afford college without going into debt is the product of 40 years of policies advocated by ruling elites in this country which have resulted in astronomical increases in both student and credit card debt. These policies result from calculated choices, not from inevitable processes of globalization and technological progress.

Our country is twice as rich on a per capita basis as it was in 1970, when post-secondary students aged 18-25 constituted 4% (8.5 million) of the entire population of 200 million. Thus we should certainly be able to fund at the same level the current 21 million aged 18-25 that are now enrolled, who constitute less than 7% of the total U.S. population of over 300 million.

But while public higher education was virtually free or at least affordable in 1970, it is now prohibitively expensive for many. What I paid on a yearly basis to attend the University of California in 1970 would, if inflation were the only factor, now cost $4,000. Yet it costs over $13,000.

So why has our country gotten richer while our citizens and public institutions have gotten poorer?

First, labor’s (workers’) share of GDP has declined by at least 6% of total GDP, or at least $1 trillion per year in current dollars. This is reflected in stagnant wages over decades for most of the population, obviously including college students and their parents. Workers have not benefitted from gains in productivity—CEOs and shareholders have. In 1970, a year-round halftime (1000 hours per year) job at the common wage of $2 an hour could pay for all student tuition and living expenses. In 2013 such a job at $8 an hour would at best pay for one-third. Moreover, many parents are less able to help, see above.

Second, an inefficient and exorbitantly expensive for-profit healthcare system, spending $1 trillion more of our GDP than would “Medicare for All,” consumes increasing portions of federal and state budgets. This is not due to Medicare or Medicaid per se, but to health insurance, pharmaceutical, and medical supply corporations’ profits. In 1980, state governments spent 13% of their budgets on health and 39% on education; in 2010 those figures were 22% and 33%.

It is of course higher education funding that has decreased at a more rapid pace than K-12, because tuitions can be raised to compensate, and predatory student lenders like that just fine. Wasteful and needless military spending can be added to this increasingly constricted federal-to-state budgetary calculus.

Finally, federal tax rates over the past decades have remained low in relation to other developed nations and have become more regressive (unfair to low income workers) for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, state taxation systems which are more regressive by nature because of their dependence on sales taxes are increasingly burdened with mandatory healthcare expenses—see above—in terms of states being required to match federal Medicaid expenses.

It needs to be emphasized that as an economy develops, a smaller percentage of its GDP is spent on the basics of food, clothing, shelter, and normal consumption. A higher percentage of the GDP should be available for governmental social and human services of all kinds, including education. This would result from a higher but easily affordable level of taxation in a country that—again—is twice as rich per capita in real terms.

But due to dramatically lower tax rates for the richest among us, the overall level of federal income taxes as a percentage of GDP decreased from 8.9% in 1970 to 7.6% in 2013; the corresponding figures for federal corporate taxes actually collected are 3.2% and 1.8%. This trend is exactly backwards, and has done enormous damage to funding for services at all levels of government, from federal to state to local.

Federal spending is not properly and beneficially used to ease pressure on state and local budgets and provide more funding room for public higher education, traditionally a function of state governments. Meanwhile, corporations play state governments off against each other in a race to the bottom regarding lower taxation and decreased public services—all while congratulating themselves for their self-serving donations to higher education.

All of these factors have conspired to put the current generation of college students at risk of indebtedness, inadequate employment, and “delayed futures” in terms of marriage and children. Specific reforms are urgently needed, especially in regard to interest rates and bankruptcy law. But we must address the overall economic and political context of student debt; by doing so many other systemic problems that have been manufactured by the 1% to the detriment of the 99% would fall by the wayside.

David Green lives in Champaign, IL and is a social policy analyst at the University of Illinois. He can be reached at davidgreen50@gmail.com.

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/04/the-economic-and-political-context-of-student-debt/

This scheme calls for mandatory transfers that in fact disguise the truth – that the largest number of these people will eventually be fired. Of the two major universities, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UoA) and the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), which are being worst hit, the former will lose 40% of its staff and the latter 45%: in short these institutions will be unable to function.

The “mobility” scheme for the universities which are, by law, self-governed institutions, was not discussed with their administration prior to the government’s attempt to enforce its decision. Therefore, it is a plan which is in direct conflict with the institutions’ internal evaluations carried out according to government guidelines. According to the institutions themselves they are in fact, understaffed. For example, in the UoA there are 1,316 employees for 65,682 students and 1,974 academic staff whereas the University claims that a minimum of administrative and technical staff required is 1,917. It is understaffed by 601 employees, the administrative-technical staff and student ratio being 1.66 to 100, when, for example, in British universities the average is 7.9 to 100 and in American universities an average of 9.5 to 100.

The Resistance Movement

For the past 6 weeks both the employees and the academic staff of UoA and NTUA have been on strike while at the same time the function of the two universities has been suspended. In Greece there has been a long history of a powerful university resistance movement against destructive governmental policies such as, for example, the implementation of the Bologna Process and the attempted “coup” to abolish the Article 16 of the Constitution that declares the free and public character of tertiary education. However this is the first time that the usual barriers between administrative staff and academics have been abolished within and by the same struggle on the basis of the common awareness that if the “mobility” measures of the neoliberal government pass this will be the end of the two universities. The mergers of whole schools and departments will ensue, something that will threaten the academic staff itself. It is obvious that the employees to be fired is the first link in the chain of academic redundancies, already and silently implemented by the firing of academic staff under contract. The struggle of the whole academic community is grounded on the development of solidarity and support first of the academic staff who will suffer a severe financial loss for being on strike but also of the administrative and technical staff of other universities, who are not presently hit, towards their colleagues.

This massive movement has been multifaceted and has taken original forms. I’ll focus on a specifically hegemonic appropriation of formal university ceremonies as well as the premises where they take place. The unions of the teaching staff of the UoA and of the NTUA in cooperation with the unions of the employees of the two universities organized the opening of the new academic year for their freshmen in two parallel events held on 9 October 2013. The idea was to offer an alternative welcome where the new students and their parents, misguided by the systematic propaganda of the powerful media against the mobilizations, would be informed by their own teachers on strike about the real reasons for the strike. These groundbreaking events turned out to be hugely successful since approx. 4,000 students and parents turned out in the UoA and approx. 1,500 in the NTUA. Speaking of the UoA, this unexpected massive attendance made the organizers open the meeting onto the area of Propylaia outside the large ceremony hall! During this exciting ceremony also attended by the Presidents of the School of Law and Theology the Rector congratulated the freshmen for their successful entry into an institution that is internationally ranked as belonging to the 1,26%  best universities of the world. He called for their understanding and support for the situation making emphatically clear that the personal cost for the loss of the Fall semester is less important than the condemnation of the new generations to downgraded and poor education and the sinking of Greece into ignorance. As he said, “the university has been open to social struggle for many decades. It is high time that it defended its own survival”, phrases that were applauded by the students. He closed his speech by challenging the Ministry that has demanded the official persecution of those Rectors who are unruly: “I have done no offence of any kind. Let them arrest me!”

The message from this highly original event whereby the academic community on strike summons the students for an alternative welcome was that the true university is here in its historical building and it cares and fights for the protection of its academic quality, its democratic function. Last but not least the academic community fights for the future of Greece within the chaos and catastrophe brought upon it by the Memorandum and the government that slavishly tries to enforce upon us all.

***

Petition

Protect Status and Staff of Greek Universities

Eight universities in Greece (University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki the Athens Polytechnic and University of Economics and Business as well as the University of Crete, Ioannina, Thessaly and Patras) have been forced to halt all activities as a result of Greek ministry of education proposals to suspend unilaterally 1349 university administrative workers.

The impact on teaching, research, clinical work and international collaboration is unparalleled and the threat to higher education in Greece as a result of stringently imposed EU austerity measures is a cause of great concern far beyond Greece’s shores.

As academics, university workers, students and others, we call on the EU and the Greek government to protect the status and staff of Greek universities, to ensure that they remain able to engage in education and research and to recognize that these institutions are more important now than ever.

They are and must remain beacons of critical thinking in a Europe whose social structures are being eroded by massive cutbacks and over which the shadow of far-right extremism looms.

Sign the petition here.

Source: http://leftunity.org/the-struggle-in-the-greek-universities/

The sale is part of restructuring efforts by National Bank (NBG) (NBGr.AT) aimed at boosting its capital base.

Greece’s top four banks are implementing restructuring plans agreed with the European Commission as part of conditions imposed for their bailouts. The plans involve job cuts, branch closures and asset sales.

“The agreement will close in the next 10 days. Invel will acquire about 66 percent of Pangaia for more than 600 million euros ($808 million),” one of the bankers said.

Invel will pay part of the purchase price for Pangaia in cash, contribute equity in the form of real estate and finance the rest with a loan from National Bank, the bankers said.

Dutch-based Invel was set up in March 2013 to take advantage of opportunities in the European real estate market by offering investors the ability to co-invest in deals.

BSG Real Estate, controlled by Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz, will be one of the co-investors in the transaction, the bankers said.

“NBG will retain management control at Pangaia for five years,” the other banker said. “The loan by NBG for part of the majority stake will be at a spread of 275 basis points, secured by real estate contributed by Invel.”

The bankers said the sale would strengthen National Bank’s Core Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio by 40 basis points to 9.6 percent. The Bank of Greece plans to conduct stress tests later this year.

Pangaia’s real estate portfolio includes office buildings, branches operated by NBG and other property recently acquired from the country’s privatization agency.

Pangaia may pursue a listing on the Athens stock exchange by 2015, one of the bankers said.

The agreement has been approved by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF), the bank rescue vehicle that recapitalized the country’s big four banks in the summer and is now their major shareholder, one of the bankers said.

Last month, Canadian firm Fairfax Financial Holdings (FFH.TO) announced its intention to raise its stake in Greek real estate firm Eurobank Properties.

(Editing by Jason Neely and Keiron Henderson)

Source: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9AG06Z20131117?irpc=932

In May, the University of London (UOL) announced its decision to shut down the University of London Union (ULU) from August 2014, and replace it with a management run services centre. In response, students at UOL have launched a campaign to reverse the decision, which was taken without student consent. The ‘Save Your Union‘ campaign is not only fighting to prevent the closure of ULU but is also demanding better working conditions for all campus workers and greater student oversight into the running the university itself. 

The initial organising meeting for the campaign took place at the beginning of October and representatives from numerous campuses, clubs and societies were in attendance and spent the evening in working groups developing a coordinated campaign strategy for the next six months. The first major date of the campaign will be a national mobilisation on campus (Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY), scheduled for this Wednesday (13 November) at 13.00pm. Additionally, a student referendum is expected to be carried out in the near future and a number of complimentary actions—including club-nights and promotional videos—are already being planned.

The loss of ULU—the only democratically ran representative body for students within UOL and a genuine focal point for student life in London—would be catastrophic.

For more information contact:

daniel.cooper@ulu.lon.ac.uk

michael.chessum@ulu.lon.ac.uk

womens@ulu.lon.ac.uk

Source: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/demonstration-to-save-the-university-of-london-union/

Police estimated the size of the crowd at 25,000, while organizers said some 80,000 people filled Santiago’s main thoroughfare to call for free, quality public education.

Seven people, five of them police, were injured in minor disturbances at the end of the march.

Similar protests took place in other Chilean cities as part of a nationwide mobilization convened by groups representing high school and college students and the educators’ professional association.

“Forty years ago, education became a product. And it continues to be that way to this day,” Andres Fielbaum, leader of the University of Chile Students Federation, told reporters.

Pinochet, who led the bloody Sept. 11, 1973, coup that removed elected President Salvador Allende, pursued free-market fundamentalism and privatization during his repressive 17-year rule.

He reshaped Chile’s education system in 1981, slashing government support for public schools and giving municipalities control over how to spend the reduced amounts coming from Santiago.

Private schools mushroomed under the military regime and the trend continued after democracy was restored in 1990.

In 2011, Chilean students took to the streets in large numbers more than 40 times to denounce a system that funnels state subsidies to private institutions even as public schools in poor areas struggle.

After a relatively subdued 2012, the Chilean student movement is hoping to exert influence on this year’s presidential and congressional elections.

Students want the elimination of school fees, an end to for-profit universities – technically illegal but able to operate thanks to loopholes – and a reduction in the high cost of college, which forces many to take on crushing debt.

“I’m going to end up paying 20 years for my degree. It’s a debt that enslaves us,” college student Carolina Araya told Efe at Thursday’s rally.

Polls show that roughly 85 percent of Chileans support their demands.

“We are making public opinion aware of a common platform of all the actors – the collegians, the high school students, the educators and the parents,” the president of the teachers guild, Jaime Gajardo, told Efe.

The candidate favored to win the November presidential election, former head of state Michelle Bachelet, says she would make college education free within six years.

But many students and their supporters are skeptical, given that Bachelet’s center-left 2006-2010 administration made no moves to overhaul the education system.

Source: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/agencia-efe/130905/chilean-students-demand-end-pinochet-education-model

bank

TT and Proton, victims of Greece’s economic crisis, were split into “good” and “bad” parts and are fully owned by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF), a capital backstop with 50 billion euros ($65 billion) of bailout money.

Greece agreed with its international lenders – the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank – to sell the two banks by mid-July in order to get more bailout funds.

“Goldman is the sell-side adviser on Hellenic Postbank, Rothschild on Proton,” said one of the officials. The two were most likely to be bought by bigger Greek banks – Alpha , National or Eurobank, he said.

A senior Alpha Bank executive told Reuters on Friday Alpha would look into buying TT. “Yes, we are interested in Postbank,” he said.

Piraeus Bank has said it will not make any more acquistions in the near future after taking over Societe Generale’s and Millenium BCP’s Greek units and the local operations of three Cypriot banks.

“Eurobank is one of the possible buyers, a lot will depend on what the other banks do. The advisers will approach all of them,” a second banker said.

Authorities wound down TT in January after efforts to sell it failed. They stripped out bad loans from its portfolio and transferred less risky assets and deposits to a new entity called New Hellenic Postbank. The bad loans are being sold.

The HFSF pumped 4 billion euros into the bank to cover its funding gap – the difference between assets and liabilities – and a further 500 million to recapitalise it.

Like other Greek lenders, TT was hit by writedowns on Greek bonds and loan impairments as the country endures its sixth year of deep recession.

Eurobank, Alpha and National had expressed interest in the old TT but withdrew in January, leading authorities to wind it down.

The healthy TT has assets of 13.7 billion euros, deposits of 10.7 billion and a network of about 200 branches. Proton is a much smaller bank with deposits of one billion euros and 1.3 billion in assets.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/28/greece-banks-idUSL5N0F428M20130628