IU

IU (Izquierda Unida, United Left) before the process of Bologna

 

The application of the so-called Bologna process in the Spanish state is causing profound alarm in the university community and a significant rejection on the part of many students, this situation has been largely the result of a lack of serious, participatory debate about the university reforms underway that will shape the university of the future with important social repercussions.

 

Without renouncing improvements in teaching and investigation or the elimination of class barriers to the admission of students to further and higher education and to the completion of their university studies, the situation has brought us to demand that the implementation of the new framework for higher education be suspended until there has been a chance for real public discussion, with broad participation of all members of the university community, so as to ascertain the general significance and exact content of the reforms within the framework of the European higher education area. For this to be possible it is necessary to put off the 2010 deadline for the obligatory expiration of the current curricular framework.

 

Within this context and in order to contribute to the debate IU presents its proposal of alternatives for the future of the university.

 

   1. We defend a public university at the service of socially, ecologically sustainable development, based on scientific research, technological development and innovation in the workplace (R&D+i). This requires the education and training of highly qualified professionals with critical capacity in research and innovation. To this end, it is necessary to undertake a profound pedagogical innovation with more active, student-centred methodologies together with closer relation between teachers and students, smaller groups and teaching tending towards the tutorial system.

 

   2. We reject that educational services be treated as a commodity and, against the concept of competition, we propose cooperation. Improving the quality of higher education cannot aim at the “competition” between universities in Spain, Europe or the rest of the world, but should seek to promote cooperation among them, something essential to the teaching and research activities of universities.   


    3. We are opposed to any curricular reform that involves the devaluation or elitization of  higher education studies. The application of the framework Bachelor’s degree-Master’s degree, whose implementation and duration depends on each State, and which replaces the traditional Spanish framework of Diplomatura (of three years), Licenciatura (four to six years) and Diploma de Estudios Avanzados prior to the doctoral thesis should carried out in a way that does not devaluate the majority of university studies or convert some studies into elitist. We therefore propose that the accreditation of the new curricula be carried out, with the abovementioned criteria, by a public body with a representative participation of the different members of the university community,. and that it should promote resources and means to cut down the drop-out rate and, at all events, it should resolutely avoid subordination to the marker .

 

   4. We demand sufficient public financing, both for pedagogical innovation and to implement the so-called “social dimension” of convergence in the European higher education area, effectively guaranteeing that all students can complete their studies without obstacles related to their social and economic background. This in turn requires an investment of 2% of the GDP for financing higher education (excluding tuition fees and private finance), a determination to carry out reforms centred on lowering the drop-out rate, measures that tend to make all higher education free and setting up a generalized system of salary grants. We propose giving priority to eliminating tuition fees for the Bachelor’s degree and oppose any rise in tuition fees or public prices for the Master’s degree and we likewise denounce the false student loans that mortgage away students’ futures.

 

    5. We denounce the different modes of privatization of the public university. We demand that public financing should assure the maintenance and development of university teaching and research, without subordinating them to contributions from private companies. We also reject the privatizing appropriation of public services both through subventions of the global costs of research projects commissioned by private companies and through the transfer of personnel from public centres to private companies and, particularly to private companies derived from public centres for the private exploitation of the results of publicly funded research, “spin-offs”. The public university must not be converted into the R&D+i office of private companies.

 

   6. We defend a higher education system that develops critical capacity. For this, it is essential to ensure a humanistic, together with a scientific and technological, education and training so that our future scientists and technologists are not limited to the acquisition of the conceptual contents of their disciplines, but can also know their methodology, just as future professionals in humanistic disciplines should be familiar with the results of scientific and technical research so as to develop an understanding of society and the world. All of this involves questioning the rift between humanistic and scientific-technical education and training. Higher education must guarantee a sound theoretical education, together with the practical knowledge that each speciality requires.

 

   7. We defend a university education that also prepares students for the exercise of a profession, but without this serving as an excuse for subordinating higher education to the market: rather, it should be oriented towards the preparation of highly qualified professionals with research and innovative capabilities, who can actively contribute to cultural creation and socially and ecologically sustainable development. To this end, we also need to promote the changes necessary in our economic structure that should include the development of a public sector both in production and in services. 

 

   8. We wish to fully democratize the university. The development of a public university and the changes necessary to improve it require, besides adequate public funding to makes these changes viable, the conscious and voluntary participation of students, teaching staff and administrative staff through their own organizations and their representatives on the governing bodies. Against the Government’s plans to replace student representation by custodied bodies and to substitute “professional managers” for democratically elected organs, we assert  the need to fully democratize the way universities work as a basis for university autonomy through dialogue and cooperation between the different components of the  university and from the due respect for the exercise of freedom and the representative bodies of our universities. We defend a public, democratic university committed to society and an engine for social change.

FEDERAL PRESIDENCY OF IZQUIERDA UNIDA, 4 April 2009