International Student Movement

The following is a report submitted by students on the ground in Ljubljana in July 2013.

Free University Week
Slovenia - April 2013

Following a series of budget cuts and other forms of pressure placed by the Slovenian government on higher education institutions, a coalition between professors and students of the University of Ljubljana prepared the Free University Week, a series of events that took place between April 15th and 20th, 2013. The intention was to use various lectures, workshops, round table discussions and artistic events to draw public attention to the dangerous and uncertain situation that public higher education had found itself in due to negligence of its importance by the government’s – and, more generally, European – fiscal policies and austerity measures. The current study regime imposed on higher education systems across Europe – based on the Bologna Declaration of 1999 – was called into question, particularly due to its prioritizing the market value of systematic knowledge, rather than the actual quality and depth of the learning process. In a situation where the government was selectively recruiting executives who favored the development of private education over the survival of public universities and the constitutional right of public universities to institutional autonomy was being transgressed by the Ministry for Education under minister Žiga Turk, such an intervention into daily life became inevitable.

The student association Iskra played a large part in forming and developing the 121 events that took place during the Free University Week. As cooperation between various faculties was difficult to achieve at the management level (and in many cases impossible), the simultaneous presence of Iskra in many different and diverse parts of the university, along with its political homogeneity, put us in a good position to create a coherent program with a clear message. Thus Iskra itself directly organized events at six different faculties.

The political foundations of the Free University Week are summarized in the Memorandum for a Public University, a document created prior to the beginning of the events and launched as a petition addressed at the Slovenian government and National Assembly. The Memorandum demands from them, among other things:

• the guarantee of the resources required for carrying out of all Bologna undergraduate and postgraduate study programs offered by Slovenian public universities, including the 5th year;
• the guarantee of stable and systematic funding of public universities;
• that they prepare a law in cooperation with the universities which would guarantee their full autonomy and will prevent the lowering of quality standards;
• the establishment of a system of public scholarships that would enable all students to focus on their education, rather than survival; 
• the improvement of the positions of the public universities’ employees with the lowest wages and the least job security, particularly those employed on temporary projects;
• that they discontinue the recruitment of incompetent staff in executive organs that systematically causes corruption and the steady destruction of the public higher educational system.

The entire Memorandum is available online (www.ipetitions.com/petition/su/) in Slovene.

Apart from the aforementioned political dimensions of the Free University Week, we raised awareness of a deeper, more fundamental problem, one connected to the fate of public education as a concept in the wake of neoliberal capitalism: the problem of the relationship between students and their teachers (or, more precisely, academic workers). In the famous uprisings of 1968, this relationship was unquestionable; if one went on strike, the other followed.

Now we are facing a deadly situation in which the students are no longer aware of their inferior position on the social ladder, nor of their potential in forming a sovereign body, capable of political influence. The lack of unity among those employed in Slovenia’s higher education is equally apparent. Most importantly, the relationship between the two groups has become entirely ambivalent. There are signs suggesting that, if the question of tuition fees was to arise in public debates, many professors and academic workers would agree to allow the pressure of neoliberal policies advocated by the European Union and global financial institutions, such as the IMF, to sink onto the shoulders of students.

As approximately one third of students in Slovenia working part-time jobs are forced to do so to survive (thus losing precious time and energy that should be devoted to their education), even a small tuition fee would potentially create a massive wealth gap, cutting off a portion of the population from higher education. For Iskra, the most important aspect of the Free University Week was that it gave birth to a kind of cooperation between students and academic workers, that has been new to the Slovenian academic sphere for decades. With the coming of the new academic year, the students of Iskra hope to create a continuation of similar events, as the government (now headed by a new, “left” coalition) has shown no intention of reducing the pressure on our public university system.