The Bologna Process: repression and police brutality

If you don´t know what the Bologna Process is check out this website: Bologna Process Official Page. This website gives quite a good, succinct summary of the project to create a European Higher Education Area. I´ve attached some links below to some videos of recent anti-Bologna protests in Spain and the police response, as well as my take on it all (I think it´s BAD).

Owen.

There has been considerable criticism of the Bologna Process in Spain, which many consider to be an attack on the traditional conception of the university as an independent space of free and disinterested learning. Bologna is presented as a plan to increase student and graduate mobility by harmonizing degrees across Europe, which will require restructuring of degrees in Spain along the lines of the N. American system. It´s difficult to argue with more mobility and access to jobs across Europe (nobody does), and this is entirely the point: the Anti-Bologna movement does not disagree in principle with these ideas, rather in the manner of their implementation and the deeper institutional changes that they mask.

In reality, Bologna is an attack on the university as we (well, Spaniards anyway) know it; a sneaky attempt at privatization. The result will be a larger, more malleable European workforce, pumped out by universities that will no longer be at the service of society´s needs but the narrow economic interests of big business and the multinationals that will soon control them. Rising tuition costs and the steady marginalization of the humanities will only be the first and most obvious of the changes to come. The result will be an ever more integrated and precarious wage slave-force incapable of criticizing its own enslavement. That´s the idea, anyway.

The students and other citizens who are clear-eyed and courageous enough to see this and demand that it stop have given us considerable hope as well as ample evidence of the lengths to which this democracy will go in order to stifle dissent.

The links to videos of recent demonstrations attached below show students being ejected from university campuses, beaten, and detained by police. There is a video of a demonstration in which numerous journalists and other innocent bystanders were injured by the police. Predictably, the Bologna process has received poor coverage in the media, with explanations being short and vague, emphasizing hostility between university administrators and students without really explaining what the process implies. The media´s superficial treatment of the Bologna Process and the police´s harsh treatment of protesters should prove instructive when asking yourself which side of the struggle you are on. What could be so scary as to justify beating students off the grounds of their own university?

This link to ANECA (National Agency of Quality Assessment and Accreditation) explains the Bologna process nicely from the perspective of those charged with supervising the conversion of the Spanish university into a private enterprise, of students into "clients"-- Bologna directly from the horse´s mouth, as it were. See also this link to the LOU http://www.aneca.es/ingles/docs/lou_eng.pdf: the 2002 Spanish law that officially initiated the Bologna process in Spain and created the ANECA. You´ll have to sift through a fair bit of neoliberal jargon to get the point. Just remember: flexibility is precarity, competitiveness is insecurity, knowledge is ignorance. http://www.aneca.es/

Videos & Images:

La Rambla, Barcelona. Journalist, mother and 10 year old child not involved in protest attacked by police:


Students being thrown off campus of U. of Barcelona 18 March:

Protest against police brutality (80 wounded, including reporters, ie. the guy with the black bloody eye, and police):


Students being ejected from Palau Robert campus:

Demonstration against the police violence directed at journalists and photos of University of Barcelona protestors being beaten off the campus: http://www.publico.es/espana/210743/13/desalojo/palos/anti/bolonia

Some questions to consider:

-Is it possible for universities in different European countries to satisfy the demands of a continental capitalist economy (i.e. made-to-order workers) by adopting a homogeneous educational model, without sacrificing their own unique character, and while at the same time fulfilling their own society´s specific needs? Is it even desirable?

-Mobility for whom? Roughly 1% (150,000) of European students take part in the Erasmus exchange program every year. This is a significant but very limited chunk of the population. You might ask yourself how many students can afford to go abroad for a year, which students tend to be selected (usually those with decent marks)? Which students get the best marks in Spain? Usually the ones who can afford to have gone to private schools. Now, imagine that tuition rises significantly, and you can see the pool of potential Erasmus participants rapidly shrinking. If we expand our circle a little bit and think of all the people living precariously (usually illegally) in Europe and those who are prevented from even entering, we begin to see that mobility quickly losses significance when the term is a little more generously applied. This is, of course, assuming that mobility is really intended for students and not the workers they will become, either forced into jobs abroad or among the privileged few who will be able to move across Europe according to the demands of business.

-Mobility for what purpose? Aside from second language acquisition, the Erasmus program has been touted as a culturally-enriching experience that opens new perspectives for students and exposes them to different educational systems. If we adopt a universal, increasingly centralized and privatized university model, one of the more convincing arguments for mobility will have been eliminated. Erasmus will further degenerate into an international frat party for the privileged few.

-Is Bologna really necessary to increase mobility? Does it even have anything to do with mobility, or is this just a cover? Would mobility not be more meaningful in the context of a rich variety of European education systems and in a society that does not deny mobility to some while granting it to the privileged few?

-What is a university? Where did it come from, where should it go? Should its main purpose and function be to produce workers? Should it be wedded to or protected from private interest?

D.M.R. Bentley´s discussion paper´s on the nature of the university and the function of the humanities: http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/discussion_papers.htm

And for those of you who can read Spanish:

http://www.noabolonia.org/

Dossier informativo sobre el proceso de Bolonia:
http://pdfmenot.com/store_local/eeff88ad73e58833091e09af5c11bfdb.pdf