The European institutions of higher education are currently undergoing an extreme process of reformation through the Bologna Process. Education and the arts have more clearly that ever become a platform for the production of ideologies and surplus value for capital. While knowledge has supported autonomy, power and liberation, (neo-)liberal capitalism has found a position for art and education within the expanding knowledge-based economy. I, therefore, take the financial relationship between the arts and sciences in contemporary education and commerce as a point of departure, and aim to show how this dependency drives and is driven by reforms, mapping out the historical events which have lead to this point. If science has held a hegemonic position within universities, how has its hegemonic position been maintained for so long? Which political or economic value does it have, and until now, what has the role of the arts in higher education been, in parallel to that of science? Is the system adopting the arts under an umbrella of a larger system which wants to recognize them as a science – or a social science – for ulterior motives?

The present constructed genealogy will follow the parallel developments between the United States of America and European educational reforms over the last fifty years, in order to show tendencies and aims which have formed, and been formed by, a series of related implementations. Mapping half a century of historical reforms, one can observe certain tendencies towards a predisposition to research which gravitates in the direction of specific branches of the private sector, with subsequent profit accumulation for private investors. Let us begin by examining those issues within the different contexts of the old Germanic model of higher education (which most of the rest of the European continental systems were modeled after) on the one hand, and the forthcoming Anglo-American B.A. /M.A. system of higher education, which is expanding with slight modifications throughout Europe by means of the Bologna Process on the other. The continental model is the Diplomstudium, or the Magisterium/PhD model. This system typically takes at least 4 years (considerably more in reality) for the completion of the diploma studies, and the Magisterium roughly equates to the Anglo-American Master’s Degree. A doctorate can be pursued afterwards, which takes longer. With this system comes a history of the fetishization of academic titles and extreme hierarchical structures, as would be expected from a system which has existed for so long.

However, the B.A./M.A. system, which arrived with the Bologna Process, adopts the Anglo-American system with some slight modifications and adaptations. The Bologna Process introduces a 3-tiered system of higher education: undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate. The undergraduate, or Bachelor’s Degree (B.S. for the sciences or B.A. for the arts) generally consists of up to 3 or 4 years (3 years in the UK and 4 years in the USA); the graduate, or Master’s Degree, which adds another year in the UK or another two years in the USA; and the postgraduate, or doctorate, which generally adds another three years, but is the most flexible in length. Within this system, there is a strong emphasis on levels rather than years. The higher range of levels aim at making an individual more employable on the job market. The Master’s Degree also generally requires an additional entrance exam in the USA/UK model, and is currently bringing up heated debates. The system in the USA on the other hand, has had more lax entrance qualifications, but significantly higher tuition fees instead, utilizing a different method of filtration of students than the European system. The likely solution would then be for the European system to also implement higher tuition fees, as is the case with most Anglo-American institutions, to define who enters or moves on to the different levels. A consequent outcome of the decreased qualifications and increased funding in the USA, following the rise of tuition fees, has been an increasing class gap among the educated. An alleged solution, similar to the outcomes seen within the EU, has been the creation of a new 2-year bottom level in colleges, called the Associate’s Degree (in the Arts or Sciences, i.e. A.A./A.S.). The new tier has also been introduced in Canada and Hong Kong, and similar degrees exist in Britain and France. It was introduced and advertised the same way the Bachelor’s Degree has been, and currently is, in Europe. The newest levels are introduced as being the cheaper alternatives to their bigger older siblings, but are in effect only the result of the privatization of the higher levels and their subsequent tendencies to become more exclusive, resulting from their branding and elite categorization. Since the new tier accommodates to an increasingly flexible and immaterial job market, the focal programs of the A.A./A.S. have been design, web development, and various other related freelancing occupations. With the increased availability, due to a drop in price and increase in levels, there is now a larger group investing in the knowledge economy. Those same investors are, however, finding themselves pushed to the edges of employment and being exploited by consistently working overtime without any insurance benefits or other institutional protection – the classic consequences of a more liberated job market.

Higher funding generally accompanies higher levels, with the private sector funding system increasingly replacing state funding, allowing universities to gain »autonomy.« There is no more need to exhaust tax money on public education when it (still under the title »public«) becomes a luxury of those who can afford it and the private industries that can support it. Public support does still exist, however, but only on a basic level in order to prevent the institutions from being entirely at the whims of stockholders, and purely becoming shareholding ventures. Behind the scenes, many of the similar remaining public institutions yearn to become privatized and show signals of it, such as slowly and increasingly bringing in private-sector funding or strategically linking to other colleges and universities for joint research programs. This is not merely a devious tendency, but both a desirable and enforced consequence, due to the consistent cuts in public funding by national governments. Consequently, in a cycle where investment rises and returns sink to all-time lows, neoliberal structures have found a new method of adaptation and surplus value accumulation. Currently, the implementation of a so-called PhD in (Art) Practice is a point of debate within the European art education context, due to the inability to define artistic research and break away from the model of scientific research, which is, however, significant due to its existence as the focal point for private investment. The most obvious reforms within European higher education, however, have been the introduction and flexibility – with increasing deregulation – of tuition fees into public universities, which can be traced back to 1975 in the USA, 1996 in the UK,1 2001 in Austria and 2006 in Germany.

Europe Re-forms
To gain a more complete understanding of where these seemingly new developments are coming from, we need to go back to the year 1958, and view the international developments both in Europe and the USA to see why and how they soon thereafter implanted/implemented themselves into the penetrant position of education. Within the European context, 1958 was a significant year due to the signing of the Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community, which is regarded as the precursor to the Treaty of Maastricht and the establishment of the European Union (the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) was signed in 1992 in Maastricht and is known as the Treaty of Maastricht). The very same day, another treaty was signed establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), both of which immediately took effect. Increased privatization and deregulation were the preferred methods when negotiating the structure of the Community. Germany was on the forefront of supporting increased liberalism and the reduction of customs duties, since it was a similar liberal economic model that was the precursor for the New Deal in the USA.2 France, however, was not opposed to these propositions, but wanted a way to continue maintaining its colonial governance. These laid down the foundation for various pacts and processes throughout the EU and its scientific/educational initiatives which are still of great importance today within current strategies, and which will be expanded upon within this genealogy.

After a year of development, the Treaty of Maastricht took effect in 1993, officially establishing the European Union. To date, all treaties of the EU have amended the original Treaty of Rome. The European Commission advocating the free movement of knowledge as the fifth freedom of the European Union in 2007 may become one such amendment. The European Union supports four freedoms: the freedom of goods, the freedom of capital, the freedom of people (citizens), and the freedom of services.3 In effect these “freedoms” represent, first and foremost, what I will refer to as deregulated mobility. In 1999, the Amsterdam Treaty took effect, substantially repositioning education within the EU. One of the most significant points that it introduced was the commitment to and official use of the term “lifelong learning” for all citizens. The changes proposed in the treaty place the main responsibility concerning education in the hands of the Member States, but with EU institutions holding a significant supportive role; the development of quality education is encouraged through cooperation between the Member States, and should be developed through actions such as the promotion of citizen mobility, the design of joint study programs, the establishment of networks, and the exchange of information or teaching languages of the EU. These tasks are “DETERMINED to promote the development of the highest possible level of knowledge for their people through a wide access to education and through its continuous updating,” as well as “In order to promote the interests of consumers and to ensure a high level of consumer protection, the Community shall contribute in protecting the health, safety and economic interests of consumers, as well as to promoting their right to information, education and to organize themselves in order to safeguard their interests.”4 In order to pursue these tasks, the Member States are “encouraged” to individually instate them as laws for a greater European good, using what is called the Open Method of Coordination,5 or the OMC, which is a mode of intergovernmental governance based on the voluntary cooperation of Member States in response to pressure. The OMC is also applied as a pattern of EU policies on education, of which it could be stated that the Bologna Process is such an “encouraged” policy. The Process is in fact not a European legal initiative. It functions as the OMC, as an intergovernmental agreement between both EU and non-EU nations. Since participation is entirely “voluntary” and it is not EU legislation, there is no legal obligation among the states who signed the agreement, even though this signing is the argumentation Ministers distribute on behalf of the European Council.

In the same year, the goal of establishing a “European Higher Education Area” or the EHEA was developed and the Bologna Process was launched. The process aims to create comparable standards and compatible degrees across the EU, and is modeled closely after Anglo-American models. These developments took place simultaneous to the approval of the entry of the largest number of new Member States in the EU (the official enlargement took place on May 1st, 2004) and with the growth of the dot-com bubble in the USA.

The Lisbon Recognition Convention of March 2000 brought with it a sharpened and more detailed version of what the Amsterdam Treaty began. When the European Council presented a work draft for educational reforms, they were asked to report back later in the Spring European Council of 2002 to present “a detailed work program on the follow-up of the objectives of education and training systems, including an assessment of their achievement in the framework of the Open Method of Coordination and in a worldwide perspective; special attention must be given to ways and means of encouraging young people, especially women, in scientific and technical studies as well as ensuring the long-term recruitment of qualified teachers in these fields.”6 The work draft presented in September of 2001 was significantly revised and then adopted by the Council and Commission on February 14th, 2002. The new Work Program proposed in the draft underlines the way the OMC should operate within education and training, primarily focusing on and introducing the standards of tools “such as indicators and benchmarks as well as on comparing best practice, periodic monitoring, evaluation and peer review, organized as mutual learning processes.”7 The Work Program was welcomed by the European Council and the Ministers and Commission were asked to implement it, reporting on the results two years later. In the same vein as the proposals for and by the OMC, the Bologna Process is often accompanied by “riders,” or other additional reforms, which become attached to the official implementations. They extend the required reforms and are not necessarily legally founded, but arrive bundled as parts of other reforms, leaving it unclear which portions are founded in law and which not. Such riders include the introduction of tuition fees, and are changing the structure and organization of universities and departments. They have been highly criticized for being undemocratic and decreasing the quality of universities they claim to support. Many such riders, like the so-called “Guidelines for Determining Quality and Performance”8, exist within the Quality Assurance Systems, which was one of the initial stages in the implementation of the Bologna Process.

The long-term consequences of the Bologna Process are still being observed due to its gradual implementation, but it has brought about criticism concerning the creation of diploma factories, and an associated increase in precariousness and an increased social class gap. One such example is that an increasing amount of students are failing to meet the minimum credits required for financial aid, due to the decreased access to space and time which is being implemented to support maximized efficiency. The number of rejected students in Finland at the Helsinki University of Technology, for example, has risen by 40% since the implementation of the process. In addition, the number of students failing to achieve the required amount of credits within 2 years has risen to 85% since the implementation of the process.9 One of the goals set for 2010 by the European Council is that no less than 12.5% of 25-64 year-olds per year should be participating in lifelong learning.10 2010 is also the deadline for the establishment of the EHEA. At this rate, high speed implementations and high speed turnover needs to take place. It is notable to refer back to the fact that Austria has agreed to implement the Bologna Process nationwide by 2010 as well.

Ulterior motives of reforms and the relationship between the arts and sciences
Paralleling the installation of the goals of the EHEA, and the launch of the Bologna Process, the focus was directed on the ERA, European Research Area, and its RTD, or Research and Technological Development, within the EU. It aims to focus on coordination, the sharing of knowledge, ensuring the mobility of researchers around Europe, improving the conditions for researchers, and encouraging links with business and industry, as well as removing any legal and administrative barriers.11 The main focus of the ERA, as well as of six other participating countries, is the development of ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a nuclear fusion reactor in Cadarache, France. ITER would continue the project begun by the Joint European Torus, which is currently the largest nuclear fusion reactor in the world, and already has observer status within CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Just as the EEC was founded parallel to Euratom, thereby promoting the dominance of European nuclear technology 50 years ago, ITER is now being supported by the parallel development and expansion of the EU. The European Commission expects ITER to be generating energy for the EU by 2050.12 In addition to supporting nuclear technology, the EU, although not legally obligated in accordance with OMC guidelines, has made many agreements and parallel developments with the European Space Agency (ESA). Coincidentally, in 1958, when Euratom and the EEC were being founded, France was able to maintain few of its colonies, because of the proximity of the ESA’s primary launch site to the equator, hence making it the most accessible site for commercial satellite access. It is in Kourou, French Guiana, along with the European Southern Observatory, and the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.13 The upcoming 2009 Lisbon European Council plans to add a chapter about developing space research and travel technology within the EU.14

Educational reforms in the USA – a historical context
1958 was not only the year of the conjoining of the European forces, but additionally the year in which space would be redefined and extraterrestrial exploration would begin, with education following an accompanying process of parallel development. Immediately following the USSR’s launch of Sputnik, the first satellite in space, and the ensuing crisis, the USA passed the National Defense and Education Act of 1958, the most significant educational reform to date. The Act allowed both public and private interests the right to invest in and provide what was considered “emergency aid” for education for the first time, marking the early days of private investment in education. Why would such a state of “emergency in education”15 be called for? After the Wright Brothers made the USA the “first in flight” in 1903, the USA stood as the world’s leader in technology. Shortly after that reign of leadership, World War I began and brought with it new testing grounds for research and technological developments, pushing Germany, which was previously a strong contender with their largely only somewhat successful attempts at bringing the Zeppelin into flight, to the forefront as the leaders in technology. After World War I, the competition between leading nations continued while the USA, suffering from the Great Depression, developed the Langley Aeronautical Lab, which would become the most advanced aeronautical center in the world. The Great Depression then ended with the onset of WWII, triggering the so-called war economy. More prepared technologically with the facilities, the USA grew even stronger by accepting the most successful World War II refugees and including them in their institutions, following remarkably and exceptionally brisk and smooth naturalization procedures. Following WWII and the downfall of their great competitor, Germany, the USA was shocked to see that the USSR had the power, finances, and technology for such advanced space research when Sputnik was launched. The USA needed to keep up by advancing their education on all levels – from childhood to postgraduate – and began by passing the Act, which allowed a boom of low-interest loans, private funding, decreased federal supervision, and general reforms all around. The interest in boosting education for international competition and the threat of falling behind in technology (which was needed for defense, among other things) would lead to legislators placing a greater emphasis on scientific and mathematical research.

1994: USA National Education – Goals 2000: Educate America Act
While private investment and deregulation had held a snug position in education for decades, the Clinton administration signed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act into law in 1994, a year after the EU was established. It was this act, referred to as the National Education Goals (set by Congress in 1994), which built a framework for outcome-based standards in education in the USA. The act provides institutions with funding “to reach their full potential.” It aimed to “identify world-class academic standards, measure student progress, and provide the support that students may need to meet the standards.”16 Many of the goals were not met by 2000, among them being that the USA should rank first in international mathematics and science achievement, and that every American adult would be literate and posses the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.17

2001: The USA No Child Left Behind Act
Since the goals had not been met, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed and took effect in 2001. It transformed outcome-based education into standards-based education in order to set high standards as goals for improving education. The Act requires the national enforcement of individual states to establish specific assessment criteria for specific grade levels in order to continue to receive federal funding, very similar to the OMC in relation to individual EU Member State Ministries. The difference between the USA and EU reforms is that the new USA reforms begin at the level of elementary schools, which is now the logical decision since the NCLB Act links elementary schools to local universities. Both, as a linked unit, are then directly funded by local corporations, such as in the case of the William H. Taft Elementary School in Cincinnati, Ohio where the entire staff including the principal were fired due to low ratings, and was referred to as an “academic emergency.” The staff has been replaced and it is currently being re-formed into a science, technology, engineering and mathematics research facility.18 As was the case with each significant reform in education and technological research, a growing economic crisis was taking place in the USA at the time, allowing Europe to strengthen and to rebuild their resources, both industrial and intellectual, through educational reforms.

Increasing European compet(ition)ence and private investment
The goals of the current European educational reforms support a structure which allows for easier mobility within the EHEA, which, according to the Seventh Framework Program for Research and Technological Development (FP7), appeals to non-EU citizens because of the increased expansion of research and employment and a greater convergence between the EU and the USA, including a more compatible degree transfer system and less dependability on imported fuels. The EU has been supporting these aims by increasing support for the ERASMUS program and bringing other programs, such as the Socrates or Leonardo da Vinci programs under its umbrella, also known as the Lifelong Learning Program 2007-2013. One of the goals of the program that the European Commission has set is reaching a total of 3 million student and professorial exchanges by 2012, as a result of mobility being one of the priorities of the reforms.19 The Lifelong Learning Program 2007-2013 financial perspective and budget were agreed on in 2007. The LLP will receive €6.970 billion during this period. The program’s first objective is to improve quality, which is, as previously mentioned, both the initial step in the integration of the Bologna Process and directly quotes Articles 149 and 150 from the Treaty of Rome.20

Policies and priorities concerning research and research-related programs and implementations are the legal and political obligations assigned from the Amsterdam Treaty. It includes an entire chapter on RTD, and places it as a fundamental element in the functioning of industrialized countries such as the EU Member States, stating that “The competitiveness of companies and the employment they can provide depend to a great extent on RTD. RTD is also an essential element for the support of other policies such as consumer protection or the protection of the environment within the EU. In short: the individual and collective well-being of citizens depends on the quality and relevance of RTD. Europe must also play an active role in RTD because of a number of developments inherent to the RTD sector itself.”21 The European Commission has stated that, “...an overall governance process is being set up and five new ERA (the European Research Area) initiatives are being launched in 2008. The new initiatives address researchers’ careers and mobility, research infrastructures, knowledge sharing, research programs and international science and technology cooperation. They aim at establishing durable partnerships with Member States and stakeholders – including business, universities and research organizations – to develop the ERA jointly in their specific areas of focus.”22

The programs under the umbrella of the Lifelong Learning Program fall under the umbrella program of the Framework Programs for Research and Technological Development, the seventh of which is now in effect. The Seventh Framework Program (FP7) is the EU’s key instrument for funding research, and its key objective is the advancement of the ERA. The FP7’s total budget for this period is 51 billion euro and its aim is on nuclear research. Rather than amending the Maastricht Treaty, all nuclear issues, including the plan outlined by the FP7, fall under the Euratom Treaty. Nuclear research will receive €2.7 billion from the program during the years 2007-2011, The Four Specific Programs of the FP7 are Cooperation, Ideas, People, and Capacities.23 Cooperation and Ideas are the categories relevant to the social sciences, with Ideas claiming that the social sciences and humanities are not among the linked thematic priorities, and that they will therefore not be managed by the European Commission, but rather by an autonomous entity, the European Research Council. Cooperation states that socio-economic sciences and humanities are allotted a less than impressive 2% (610 million euros) of non-nuclear funding, with its financial priorities lying instead in Information and Communication Technologies with 28% (€9.110 billion), and Security and Space advancement, which cash in at 1.35 and 1.43 billon a piece.24

While outputs are the driving force in implementing reforms within advanced scientific research on all levels, one of the main aims of the FP6 and FP7 has been establishing “Networks of Excellence,” in which funding is allotted according to the level of integration achieved and the volume of networked researchers, rather than on outputs. The FP7 funds initiatives of the Federal Ministry for Traffic, Innovation, and Technology and the Ministry for Research and Science, the ministries for research and education in Austria. Both are essentially run by the same initiatives as the FP7 itself, but run through parallel systems of filtration for various regulated and unregulated implementations, such as the policies of exclusion which allow entry into institutions of education, but may nevertheless forbid legal residence if the individual cannot present a large enough quantity of finances for sustenance, which must come from outside of the resident country, or in most cases, from the nation of citizenship.25 According to the FP7, a program of study must qualify as a social science or natural science in order to receive money from the EU, because science is a priority of research/RTD. The arts bring very little money back into technological innovations; therefore, we get the least amount of public funding and have to go back to appealing to private investors for sustenance. We, the artists, are nevertheless weakly sustained because of the necessity of design those corporations need and the potential technological advancements, such as media technology, that we may stumble upon.

What can be done in this situation?

In a position where privatization is the norm and the forms of resistance become appropriated, the situation looks quite grim for potentially resistant action. On the other hand, I do see great potential – particularly with the arts’ role as a wild card, primarily at this weak point during in the transition process – in the exposure and recognition of such situations, and in the creation of new extra-institutional venues and actions.

Lina Dokuzović, Croatian-American, studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her work deals with the cannibalistic tendencies of neoliberal capitalism and the privatization of art and education.

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