“How we can get the state to become as concerned about the potential collapse of individual tertiary institutions and our entire public tertiary education system as they are about banks and car firms?”

That is the question former AUS president, Jane Kelsey, is asking in a paper she has just presented to the British University and College Union (UCU). In it, Professor Kelsey warns that privatisation of public universities is a looming threat in the current economic crisis.

Professor Kelsey argues that privatisation represents a paradigm shift that aims to transform public universities and colleges from quasi-constitutional entities that generate and transfer knowledge in ways that advance social progress and foster participatory democracy into producers of commodities that are given an economic value and then bought and sold on an internationalized market. She warned British education unionists that the commodification and commercialisation of university education inevitably results in academic censorship.

“Commercial imperatives trump academic freedom, including criticism that displeases donors, sponsors or sources of research funding.”

Dr Kelsey says tertiary education unions, together with their global representative, Education International, have been remarkably successful in generating awareness in many countries and caution among many governments over the commercialisation of education, especially in relation to the global trade agreement, GATS. This has helped to paralyse attempts to extend pro-market regulation in the education sector. However, unions need to be aware that the current recession is placing increased commercial pressures on private and semi-private education institutes to further commercialise tertiary education and generate greater profits from the sector.