Ciar McCormick | Staff Writer
On 8 November Provost Patrick Prendergast announced in a speech to alumni on the future of Trinity College that he would consider privatisation as an option for the university. This is not the first time Prendergast has raised what he called the “key issue” of privatisation. At a debate held by the Historical Society (Hist) and the Philosophical Society (Phil) this motion of privatising the Dublin University, which was keenly suggested by the Global Graduate Forum, was chaired by none other than Prendergast himself. The idea of privatising Trinity College is not an isolated matter but in fact part of a scheme spreading throughout Europe which has been built up over a number of years.
The Bologna Process is a series of ministerial meetings and agreements between European countries designed to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher education qualifications, in which a widespread reform of European higher education has been planned. The underlying idea of these spurious reforms is the urge to subordinate higher education to the needs of society, to make it useful for the solution of concrete problems we are facing, to produce expert opinions meant to answer problems posed by society.
Through the Bologna Accords, the process has created the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) who oversee these reforms. Ireland became a signatory and thus a member of the EHEA in 1999. In 2006 Ireland became the first country to verify the compatibility of its national framework with the overarching framework of qualifications for the EHEA in cooperation with the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA).
The Bologna Process has received much criticism from academics, one of whom is Professor Chris Lorenz of the VU University Amsterdam, who argues that: “the basic idea behind all educational EU-plans is economic: the basic idea is the enlargement of scale of the European systems of higher education, … in order to enhance its ‘competitiveness’ by cutting down costs. Therefore a Europe-wide standardization of the ‘values’ produced in each of the national higher educational systems is called for.” A key goal of the Bologna process is to create a greater convergence between the U.S. and Europe, therefore European higher education shall adopt aspects of the American system. A fundamental element of the American system is the method of public-private partnership. This illuminates the economic aspect of these plans, and the method of privatisation at the centre of this process.
In congruence with the dismantling of the welfare state all over Europe, in education, we are witnessing the gradual dismantling of the public university apparatus. The university system is becoming less and less the bearer of the enlightened values of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” at the behest of the new formula of “lower costs, higher efficiency” which the public-private partnership system provides. But, what of this change in system? Is this just a change mantra? Why does it matter?
The implication of this will be the disappearance of the true task of thinking, or thinking in any authentic manner at a university level. In the words of philosopher and director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in the University of London, Slavoj Zizek, the true task of thinking at an academic level is “not only to offer solutions to problems posed by “society” (which is defined by the conjunction of state and capital), but to reflect on the very form of these ‘problems’ in the first place, to re-formulate them, to discern the problem in the very way we perceive such problems.”
In one sense, a University is not a preverbal sausage factory producing homogenous students programed to function in society at whatever occupation they have chosen, but in contrast, to create free thinking intellectual human beings. This ability to speak your mind freely as a scholar, or what Immanuel Kant called the “public use of reason”, is why the national motto of France is the unofficial ethos of any authentic University. Thought in the public sphere is essential to the rights we should possess as humans; it is part of our liberty, equality and brotherhood. The current student body of the college appears to agree with this public ethos after the students’ outcry when the Provost came out in support of a student loan scheme in an RTÉ Radio 1 interview in August of last year.
Privatisation would be a negative step for higher level education. The scholarly thought that should take place in a university cannot be lost by Trinity College. This University, with its long illustrious history and tradition, should remain a place that enables the public use of reason. This University should remain a place where the arts and humanities are nurtured in an equal manner to the sciences and vocations such as medicine, nursing, architecture, etc., etc. This University should not abandon its values as an intellectual hub in favour of becoming ‘more competitive’.
This University should not be privatised.
