arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Reactions at King's College London

Toby Boon (22, from Cambridgeshire, studying English) fears a large increase in debt:

"I'm gutted. This is a disaster for students who are going to come to university after me. It's just encouraging a lot more debt and it's going to put people off. I don't think the highest fee is going to stop at £3,000."

Kate Tomlinson (21, from West Sussex, studying geography) questioned the need to expand higher education:

"I think the government is making a big mistake. This won't make more people go to university. This discriminates against the middle classes. When people come out of university, they will pay fees according to their background, whatever they are now earning. That doesn't seem fair. The government wants to push everyone towards having degrees. Perhaps it should look at things and realise not everyone wants to go to university or should do."

Polly Mackwood (22, from Somerset, studying English) called the vote 'frightening':

"As it stands, my debt when I leave will be around £12,000, because I've had to take out loans to cover my current tuition fees. Under the new system, people could graduate owing £21,000 minimum. It's quite a frightening thing. By the time you get to your early 20s, you want to think about your first mortgage. You don't want to have to delay that by 10 years."

Rajesh Joshi (20, from north-west London, studying molecular genetics) and Kirsty Hickey (21, from south-west-London, studying biological sciences) have campaigned against top-up fees

Rajesh Joshi:
"This is really disappointing. I'm not happy that my MP said he would vote against the proposals then changed his mind. This has been a massive U-turn by MPs. If the maximum £3,000 fee had been charged when I started, it would probably have put me off going to university."

Kirsty Hickey:
"Ever since I started university, I've been fighting tuition fees, then top-up fees. This will change the face of higher education. Even during the last few years, there have been more rich people coming here, because they can afford it better. This is going to make it even worse. The government has betrayed its promises. Who is to say fees won't rise above £3,000 a year?"

Support the students occupying Exam House at Oxford University

CALL TO THE EUROPEAN MOBILIZATION AGAINST THE MERCANTILISATION OF THE EDUCATION

Collecting the reflections at the European Social Forum in Paris, we understand that in the struggle against the mercantilisation of the education we have to enter in a new stage, where the local or national struggles do not have the capacity, for themselves, to give an efficacious reply to the actual neoliberal offensive against the world of the university, and the education in general.

Today, the attacks we suffer are not only statal, and our reply neither can be in this way; front the international and european offensive, we need to act in a co-ordinated way and to start walking together.
The General Acords of Trade and Services (GATS) of the WTO –that pretend to convert the education in a simple trade- and the Process of Bologna (of european integration in the universitarian subject) are the direct causes of the universitarian reforms that we are suffering in our countries.

For theses reasons, we make a call to the companions of the student movement of whole Europe to start a common sweep of discussion and struggle that culminates, in spring, in an european student mobilization against the Process of Bologna and the GATS, in the context of the european struggle against the European Constitution project that the social movements have decided to develop.

In order to discuss about this, to co-ordinate our struggles and to prepare this mobilization that has to represent the beginning of a common run, we invite you to an EUROPEAN STUDENTS MEETING, the March 13th and 14th of 2004 in BARCELONA.

To make it productive, we ask you for sending a representative delegation of your collective or student assembly; it is not an open assembly about the European Space of Upper Education but a meeting to mark a common calendar of mobilizations.

Disobey WTO, disobey Bologna, resist from universities!

Plataforma Mobilitzadora en Defensa de la Universitat Pública (Coordinadora d’Estudiants dels Països Catalans, Associació d’Estudiants Progressistes, Alternativa Estel, MUA, and many faculty assemblies)

P.S.: For further information, and for all the logistic aspects of the meeting in Barcelona, please contact us and confirm, the soonest as possible, if you are going to come to Barcelona, to these electronic adress:

Internacional@coordinadora.net or portaveu-principat@coordinadora.net