Speaking Out

Globalization and Higher Education

Education International (EI), the global trade union federation for education, represents over 26 million individual members in 310 unions in 159 countries. It is the voice of teachers to intergovernmental organizations, and it supports and coordinates campaigns on behalf of teachers and the education sector in the countries where its members work.

EI has long aspired to be a truly global organization, and in holding its fourth annual conference on higher education and research last November in Dakar, Senegal, EI realized a long-desired wish to give a voice to the unions from the southern hemisphere.

In doing so, we heard from our union brothers and sisters that development must be at the heart of EI’s higher education and research agenda.

Higher education in much of Africa is in crisis, with dwindling public funding for education, job insecurity, and political and social pressures, all exacerbated by the international financial institutions’ emphasis on primary education at the expense of higher education.

EI and its affiliates, we learned, must provide concrete support for the unions in Africa and other developing regions so that they can build their own solutions to complex problems faced by universities—structural adjustment policies, brain drain, the threats posed by offshore institutions, higher education via the Internet, and the cultural hegemony that these trends threaten to impose.

Dakar provided an excellent opportunity to be reminded of the other needs of developing regions, such as more resources for higher education and the importance of promoting models of academic freedom that aren’t simply lifted from western models. Faculty and staff in these regions also need working conditions that enable academics to develop their own research capacity and live and work in dignity.

We must recognize that problems and solutions will vary from country to country. In rejecting the World Bank’s “one size fits all” prescriptions, we must not fall into the same trap ourselves. The EI World Congress, to be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in July 2004, will discuss recommendations of the EI task force on the globalization of higher education.

Paul Bennett is a national official of NATFHE, the university and college lecturers union of the United Kingdom, a member of the EI task force on the globalization of higher education, and the rapporteur of the Dakar Conference.