In the last days the students of my faculty and other faculties from the university went into a strike in defnese of public tertiary education, which is seriously threatened by the new politics of financiation proposed by the ministry of education, in line withe the right-winged government spirit.
The situation is, more or less, this: actual direct financiation given to public universities by the government , wich reproduces the responsibility of financing education from the government to the people, is in this way to extintion because of a change from this direct fund to a “performance agreement” wich is a financing instrument in which all universities, public and private, compete for funds according to its performance (for example, infraestructure). So the gov disassociate of its responsability of securing public education, ina very simbolic and material way.
Students are demonstrating, with this strike, their will of mantain a public and state owned education, against the privatization that probably would occur in public universities in their struggle to accquire those “performance agreements” ( is well known that we are in disadvantage in terms of infrastructure compared to private universities). We, in the end, are defending the historic spirit of public education in this country instead of a market-regulated education.
I really agree with this strike, is the only way students can make an impact on public opinion in order to make people conscious of this conflict. Whilst more students are in this demonsttrations, more the people will know about this situation and take part on this. So, let’s the strike have its voice and let’s listen to the demands, because this is an issue of major importance for the future of the education of all of us.
