TITLE: An End to Public Education As We Know It? A Briefing on Current WTO Negotiations

AUTHOR: Jess Worth

PUB: People and Planet

DATE: December 31, 2000

This GATS briefing has been produced by People & Planet, the UK student campaign network. It can be found at: People and Planet Negotiations are underway that could dramatically transform the Higher Education sector, yet few people in the UK are aware of them. These crucial decisions are being made through the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which has an agenda of sweeping deregulation and privatisation of services. The implications for Higher Education are enormous. The GATS agreement, according to the European Commission, is "first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business". Trade in services is a huge growth area in today's economy. It is therefore understandable that the World Trade Organisation (WTO), heavily influenced by the business lobby, is keen to further open up the global market in services. `Services' covers everything from telecommunications to space travel, and includes sectors such as education and health, which are increasingly seen as highly profitable markets. European business lobbyists argue that opening up the education sector to private competition can only be beneficial: "Schools will respond better to paying customers, just like any other business." Negotiations are now underway, and look set to be completed by the end of 2002. The small print of the GATS agreement makes it clear that public education will not be exempt from this ambitious liberalisation agenda. This involves the removal of barriers to `free trade' for foreign competitors, guaranteeing them equal access to the UK educational market. Many would argue that public education should be protected from the rigours of WTO rules. However, only public services supplied by governments "neither on a commercial basis nor in competition with one or more service suppliers" are exempt. As the UK Higher Education sector comprises a mix of public and private institutions, with increasing amounts of funding coming from fees and other private sources, it is clear that HE in this country is not protected by this exemption. Education is one of the key areas that the European Commission (EC) has explicitly highlighted as being "ripe for liberalisation". The EC conducts WTO negotiations on behalf of the United Kingdom, and appears ready to use education as a bargaining tool in order to gain access to other countries' markets. As the majority of EU services are already liberalised it will need to offer up education in trade-offs in order to get a "big deal". The removal of "barriers" to trade in education services could severely restrict the current regulatory framework governing Higher Education. The GATS negotiations aim to remove barriers to free trade in order to give foreign competitors equal access to the UK education `market'. Barriers cited by the WTO include measures restricting the mobility of students, restrictions on the translation of foreign degrees and qualifications, nationality requirements and, most significantly for public education, "the existence of government monopolies and high subsidisation of local institutions". There is a real risk that GATS will result in an end to state financial assistance for UK Higher Education students. The new area of GATS rules and restrictions on state subsidies could identify government payment of student tuition fees as discriminatory. This could force the government to either subsidise students at private institutions equally, or end state financial support to students altogether. The GATS agreement could mark a dramatic step in the direction of a wholly privatised HE sector. Surely such significant decisions should not be made behind the closed doors of the controversial WTO, but should be placed in the public domain, subject to vigorous public debate? This paper therefore calls for extensive research into the implications of GATS, and awareness-raising within the government and the wider Higher Education sector. People & Planet (previously Third World First) Email: jess@peopleandplanet.org Address: 51 Union Street, Oxford OX4 1JP Telephone : UK 01865 245678 END top