Still suffering from its continuously worsening state, the Philippine education is up for another battle with its inclusion to General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS). In the guise of a corporatized, world-class education, the crisis-ridden education sector has now opened all its way to a free enterprise directly controlled by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
GLOBALIZING EDUCATION
"Free trade" in education services has been flourishing since the formal promulgation of GATS in 1994. Education service, a springboard for a more potent free trade, was one of the explicit topics in the international trade meetings that led to the creation of the WTO in 1995.
Since trade talks spiraled among trading powers prior to WTO's ministerial conference in Seattle, education and other social services were among the extensions of the term of GATS. This round of table talks, however, collapsed due to protests inside and outside the conference.
In January 2000, new negotiations on GATS were successfully stirred under the "built in" agenda of WTO, which secretly dealt with GATS expansion even without a comprehensive round. As conceived, GATS is designed to "cover not just cross-border trade but every possible means of supplying a service, including the right to set up a commercial presence in the export market."
Major proponent of the GATS term expansion is the United States, which clearly stated its goal in purely economic terms: trade barriers bound by internal trade policies encompassing different public services hurt US-led corporations and were therefore barriers to American exports and job creation.
It spearheaded a draft to "create conditions favorable to suppliers of higher education, adult education and training services" by "removing and reducing obstacles" - subsidies for higher educational adult education and training, and tax treatment that discriminates foreign suppliers - to transmission of such services across national borders through electronic and physical means, or to the establishment and operation of facilities (i.e. classrooms, schools or offices.)
Member nations under WTO that adhere to the GATS program abide by two principles: the national treatment principle, which states that members should not discriminate in favor of national providers, and the most-favored nations principle, which states that members should not discriminate between different member nations.
GATS encompasses a wide array of commitment in education - from preschool to tertiary and vocational educational services. With barriers now scrapped, cross-border supply of a service of a member country to another is now feasible. Students can easily study in another country through the exchage-student system, while education service providers from a country can now set up establishments in another member-nation tax-free. "Home study system," "virtual unversities" and "correspondence schools" are also made possible through GATS.
Utilizing GATS for greater privatization of the public sector, particularly the education and health, US companies are now smoothly penetrating and monopolizing these services in support of a galvanized foreign education and easy workforce. Reportedly, US generated $6.6 B trade surplus in its educational and training services export sector in 1996.
UNEDUCATING AND MISEDUCATING EDUCATION Constantly in need of a sufficient budget, Philippine education is vulnerable to the promises of GATS. With past and present administrations always doling out meaget budgets, the education sector is being pushed for a greater funding from private resources.
Since 1998, 154 state-funded schools have already closed down due to insufficient budget. Facing extinction, many public schools have either merged with other institutions or have engaged in tie-ups with private corporations.
These circumstances are along the line of GATS. Adhering to this neoliberal prescription, the government has ensured that education policies are working within the bounds of privatization, liberalization and deregulation, which are the focal points of GATS. In Long-Term Higher Education Development Plan, for instance, the government forces 70 percent of State Universities and Colleges to privatize by 2010.
While GATS assures a globally-attuned education, it does not ensure a better education and a bright future for the Filipino youth. In fact, since the implementation of GATS, the education has become more elusive to many Filipino youth.
Liberalization and deregulation under GATS give pretext for schools to raise tuition and other miscellaneous fees almost three-folds annually. Privatization of many public schools drive students to leave their classrooms.
Already, 74 percent have dropped out this year because education has become out of reach to them.Under the "borderless education, knowledge economy and level playing field competition," foreign and local corporations are freely entering and filling in the meager budget of schools, as in the case of the University of the Philippines-Ayala Corporations tie-up.Yet, this only makes the schools susceptible to the control and dictate of the private corporations, if not fully corporatized.
The intensification of the commercialization of education shows that the government is taking its hands off in providing a decent and accessible education for the people. Within the framework of GATS, education has already ceased to become a right; it has turned into a commodity only the affluent few can afford. This is in blatant contrast with Article 26 of the United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights which states that "access to higher education is a right."
As in the Revised Basic Education Curriculum, GATS has also impelled a bold change in the curricula and courses -- now designed according to the standards and demands of the global market. This results in the strengthening of the colonial character of the Philippine education, primarily serving the interests of other countries instead of ours. Caregiving, vocational and technical curricula and courses are also encouraged with the labor export in demand to the global arena. These institutions train the youth not to become leaders or managers but to be docile, semi-skilled workers who are submissive and passive to exploitation in foreign lands.
The implementation of GATS in recent years proves that it does not work in the concrete condition of our society. It has failed to uplift the dismal state of education, but has rather worsened the vicious cycle of crisis of education.
Unambiguously, GATS is not responsive to the needs of the people and the country. It has produced 'modern-day slaves' by uneducating and miseducating the Filipino youth.
By intensifying privatization, liberalization and deregulation in education, GATS has only benefited and has strengthened the power of the capitalist-educators and private corporations who are hell-bent in making more money out of education.
Clearly, globalization of education is not about the exchange of learning between countries but of capital, of making profit by commodifying education.
Unless GATS is discarded, the colonial and commerialized state of education will still abound. And in the upcoming WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong this December, the Filipino youth can expect no less but a bleaker future.*
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