"International Student Movement"

It is a first draft, in point form so it is easier to discuss and probably with many mistakes in english grammar...

Expanded conception of public education

- The public sphere is not limited to the confines of the state but includes not-for-profit ventures carried out by civil society. Beyond state universities, self-managed education projects are also considered part of higher education.

The nature of the public university

The ultimate goal of the public university is work towards developing the intellectual, social and creative capacities of its students. The university is a space for critical and independent thought, creativity and free scientific, cultural and political debate. Its standards of academic excellence and its teaching and research methods and priorities, are to be defined independently form any economic conception of profitability or the needs of the capitalist labour market. Instead, they must be constructed via an inclusive and bottom-up participatory democratic process in which the education community (students, professors, staff and workers) and society at large (syndicates, unions, associations, social movements and individual citizens) have an active and meaningful role. This must carried out guaranteeing equality between actors, access to balanced information and transparency. The old-social democratic model of the university is to be democratised and transformed from the “bottom-up” guided by the principles of cooperative planning, autonomy, solidarity and self-management.

The equality between actors must be guaranteed by:

- Access to education as a right. As such, it must be accessible to all. This accessibility must be guaranteed by the abolition of student fees and the socialisation of all private universities. Under no circumstances must the access to knowledge be subject to one’s ability to pay.
- Transparency. The university’s funding and investments must be made public and open to scrutiny. Funding standards and investment decisions must be open to the democratic control of the education community.
- Direct democracy. Direct democratic procedures such as referendums and participatory budgeting processes will override any decisions made by the relevant representative bodies.

Finance

- All relations between the university and for-profit organisations, companies and corporations must be brought to an end. This includes private capital investments, joint ventures, sponsorships and donations.

- Public funding must be financed through progressive taxation, capital taxation and the reduction in military spending. Self-managed education projects can be financed through not-for-profit organisations and individual anonymous donations.

Mobility and communication

- Continue to support cooperation and communication between universities through the further development of exchange programs, academic partnerships and the mutual recognition of titles. This process should extend beyond the confines of the European Union and have an intercultural focus.

- Initiate a process of de-commodification of knowledge produced in public universities. Citizens have the right to access the results of publicly funded research and teaching materials. These must be incorporated into the public domain via copyleft licensing and free and easily accessible e-books, journals and audio-visual materials. The objective of this process is to create a veritable knowledge commons and develop its quality, variety and accessibility.