European students and the social dimension of higher education

A thorough analysis of the discursive dynamics within the organisation of students that participated in the Bologna Process reveals a strikingly similar tendency. In this section I will briefly present the student involvement in the Bologna Process and its close tie with the discursive development of the concept of the social dimension. The section is also dedicated to the student representative organisation as the case of a transnational civil society driven by the Europeanisation of higher education policies and the transnational nature of the reconfiguration of social forces.

The student representatives have promoted the social dimension as their priority ever since they were accepted as official partners of the Bologna Process (Interviews 1 and 5). The association of ESIB – the National Unions of Students in Europe, later renamed the European Students’

Union²⁴, has been the official representative of students at the Bologna table since the Prague meeting in 2001. Today’s European Students' Union (ESU) is an umbrella organization of 47 national unions of students from 39 countries (December 2012). The organisation’s official website states that the member unions are open to all students in their respective countries and are student-run, autonomous, representative and operate according to democratic principles.

The aim of the ESU is to “represent and promote the educational, social, economic and cultural interests of students at the European level towards all relevant bodies and in particular the

24 http://www.esu-online.org/about/aboutus/ (16.6.2014)

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European Union, Bologna Follow Up Group, Council of Europe and UNESCO. Through its members, the ESU represents over 11 million students in Europe”.²⁵

The arguments and flag words that ESIB/ESU consistently used were all converging on the ideation of higher education as an emancipating mechanism for the disadvantaged groups. As opposed to the mechanism of the reproduction of elites, the ESU imagines higher education as the mechanism for social emancipation:

Today, purely self-sustaining and replicating higher education can no longer function, due in part to a greatly increased student population as well as a change in the needs of society. This can be seen as part of the long-term transformation of higher education away from a tool for the elite to enable future generations of the elite to retain power (ESU 2013).

In this section it is possible to trace the discursive acknowledgment of the expanded (mass) higher education as a substantial shift in the nature of higher education and the attribution of the social mobility rationale behind this transformation. The argument is anchored in the appropriateness logic; hence it is possible to argue that the ESU embarked on a normative interpretation of the expansion and/or massification of higher education. Or if seen from another angle, it is possible to also talk about the democratisation of higher education (see Chapter 10) The ideation of higher education as the mechanism for emancipation was closely linked to the normative discourse rooted in the concepts of solidarity and equality and invoking the European values. In the 2004 policy paper dedicated to the students’ view on higher education in the context of the EU Lisbon strategy it was stated that the:

[…] ESIB calls for a prioritization of the social and sustainable aspects of the envisaged economic growth. It only respecting the above mentioned humanistic values that can provide a secure basis to foster successful economic growth. In this context, the legacy of the welfare state, which is rooted in European tradition, should be preserved and developed further to the benefit of all (ESIB 2004).

In the above section it is also possible to discern the intertextuality, or the attempt to reconcile the economic discourse with the normative ideas of post-World War II Europe. Similarly to what was observed in Bologna (above) and to what Serrano-Velarde (2011) found in the EU

25 From here on I will refer to this organization with both acronyms (ESIB/ESU)

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strategic use of the public benefits and equity discourse in combination with the competitiveness and economic paradigm (Serrano-Velarde 2011, 9), the hybridisation of discourse seems to be a common discursive technology when there is a need for reconciling ideational streams or when the cognitive ideas need to soften the clash with the established institutional context (especially in terms of norms and values).

In the same document the students set up the argument based on calculus whereby the inclusive higher education would ultimately benefit society and the economic growth:

In view of the role and goals of higher education, it should be possible for all social groups to contribute to social and economic development strategies. Therefore, measures to guarantee equality in the access to, progress and success in higher education should be undertaken. An increase in educational attainment levels is of vital importance as a factor of growth. Society benefits from the essential and valuable returns of higher education, both in social and economic terms (ESIB 2004).

Their argumentative regularity revolved around the necessity to assure the equal access, progression and completion of studies in order to squeeze the full potential from higher education. The public funding of higher education was repeatedly portrayed as a strategic investment - a rational choice that the governments should follow in order to boost the prosperity of society. Therein it is possible to interpret the economistic language and calculus-based discursive inclination:

Higher education is, in the simplest terms, a strategic investment for any state, while primarily it is a human right. As such, it must be seen as a long-term investment of society and for the good of all society, whose benefits repay society many times over if it is sustained and stable (ESU 2012).

However, in this section from 2012 it is possible to observe the shift of discursive strategy.

While in the early 2000s, the ESIB/ESU’s strategy formed itself as a response and a counterbalance to the Lisbon strategy of the EU, in the late 2000s, the discourse seemed to turn more neutral. In all cases however, the imaginary of a Knowledge economy/society was accepted and re-contextualised with the complement of the normative ideas stemming from the humanist tradition and solidarity.

Despite the tendency to accept the hegemonic programmatic idea (imaginary) of a knowledge economy and the pertaining competitiveness discourse, the ESIB/ESU policy documents more

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or less consistently reject the tuition fees and the commodification of higher education. In the following section of their policy paper dedicated to the commodification of higher education they meticulously presented the nature of the large scale transformation of higher education with a clear normative discursive style:

In this context, Higher Education (HE) is perceived as a knowledge industry and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as service providers. Students are looked upon primarily as consumers of education and human capital for the labour market. They tend to focus less on the active participation in higher education institutions. Many are choosing to focus only on the preparation for the labour market and the possibilities for maximising personal financial returns upon graduation, which is a negative and one-sided approach.

This has also led to a decrease in cooperation and solidarity between individual students and an increase in unhealthy competition for the purpose of the fulfilment of personal aims (ESIB 2005).

What is particularly interesting for this dissertation in the above section is the intertwining of two dominant ideational streams that I heuristically described in Chapter 4 as happening on two separate discursive planes: the economic instrumentalisation and the commodification of higher education. Namely the output of human capital can be classified into the ideational stream viewing higher education as an instrument for economic success, while treating the higher education institutions as service providers can be viewed as part of higher education as a tradable service paradigm.