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Remarks by ACE President David Ward at OECD/US Forum on Trade in
Educational Services
May 23–24, 2002
Washington, DC
I represent the American Council on Education (ACE), a membership
organization of both higher education institutions and higher education
associations in the United States.
I come to this position as a former college chancellor. I also am an
immigrant to the United States, now a citizen, who graduated with
degrees in geography. I was engaged in international education through
the International Geographic Union and later in the development of an
International Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Therefore, I have long been in the trenches of international education
and am now very much involved in a membership organization that,
frankly, has considerable anxieties about the implications of the
current GATS negotiations for public and not-for-profit higher education
institutions. Let me explain why this anxiety exists.
To begin with, I think there has been more change in the internal
structure, the management, and the service delivery of higher education
worldwide in the last 15 years than in the preceding several centuries.
These changes in revenues and outputs are often unrecognized and
undocumented and involve the inter-penetration of a public good with
market behavior and a new balance between bureaucratic allocation and
entrepreneurial activities.
When trade issues are connected to the delivery of higher education
at a time of extensive and often market-driven changes, there will
obviously be great suspicion and anxiety about a new set of changes that
are not fully understood. In particular, we are puzzled when government
entities would like to be less involved in our lives domestically, but
now want in a sense to re-enter our lives internationally. There is a
paradox there that we need to understand.
Earlier speakers have provided effective and illuminating arguments
about the transparency of GATS negotiations. These negotiations were
not, however, very well-known among ACE member representatives, many of
whom are endowed with degrees in economics and international studies. If
the average U.S. college president does not fully understand these
negotiations, it may be a failure of my organization to fully explain
it. Then again, ACE did not always fully understand the content and
process of negotiations. The transparency of what is going on has not
been as clear as it has been made out to be by earlier speakers. I think
this event is a great beginning in breaking down our anxieties and
making possible the transparency we desperately need. I am an
internationalist. I am committed to the freedom of trade and the freedom
of movement of people and ideas but negotiations on these issues must
include representative organizations of higher education. I hope that
this forum is a productive beginning in that direction.
There also is some confusion about the relationship of
internationalization of higher education to quality control in higher
education. The impact of the quality management movement on higher
education or on public entities in general has increased dramatically
over the last decade. If what we demand as one of our outcomes is high
quality, then I believe there are ways to achieve that goal apart from
trade negotiations. If it is increased quality for the consumer that
most concerns us, then there are many ways to achieve that end other
than through trade negotiations. If increased quality is the motive and
purpose of the negotiations, then we should sit down and address the
problem of quality, not just, in effect, to see high quality as an
attribute of trade.
As someone who has been on the ground of a university with 4,000
foreign students, well over 5,000 students studying abroad, and a
significant proportion of the faculty either foreign-born or
foreign-trained, I am unsure of the problems that are interrupting
internationalization. As I look at my member institutions, as I think
about study abroad, as I think about the presence of foreign students at
U.S. institutions (some of whom, like myself, remain but many of whom go
to other countries or return to their homeland), as I look at
collaboration in developing higher education institutions abroad through
partnerships between institutions in the United States, Europe,
Australia, and other countries, and as I look at the somewhat uneven
progress of distance education through e-learning, none of these seems
to have insurmountable obstacles that may require redress through trade
negotiations.
I do need to know exactly what the problem that we are attempting to
solve is. For example, career colleges, which do not give degrees but
may give diplomas or certificates in specific training areas, may well
have problems that can be addressed through trade discussions. I do
understand that problem. That is not, however, a problem for
not-for-profit higher education. Nondegree training is different from
the products of higher education. Therefore, if training, in a very
specific vocational and professional way, has problems in international
delivery, then that should be the problem addressed. If there are
problems of access and problems of quality in those areas, then it seems
to me that we can be very precise about that and deal with it
appropriately. The lack of specificity about the kinds of educational
services to be included in the GATS negotiations remains unclear.
I was impressed by Mr. Papovitch's sensitive discussion of the
anxieties of higher education. It is a positive reflection of a dialogue
that will continue. Together with others in ACE, I have met with Mr.
Papovitch and his ability to address our issues is a source of
gratification to me because it indicates a process of communication
which I think is going to be necessary to this discussion. This will be
true not only in the United States, but also, I suspect, in Canada, the
E.U. countries, and elsewhere in the world, where the constituent
elements of higher education are indeed in dialogue with their
governments.
I hope that the status of public higher education in the GATS
negotiations will be clarified, specifically that they recognize that
states in this country and in many other countries control higher
education. States have differential tuition rates and promote different
higher education policies. There are competitive issues between states
and this federal structure becomes clear as you look at the way
different states are investing in higher education to promote economic
growth. Higher education is the key to full participation in the
knowledge economy. There are, therefore, already internal competitive
state policies in U.S. higher education apart from external
international competition.
Accreditation is another issue that higher education could and will
address independently without GATS involvement. Accreditation involves
not only quality issues but, ultimately, capacity issues, too. A major
problem in higher education relates to the autonomy of institutions.
Accreditation protects this autonomy by providing quality control in the
transfer of credits but, clearly, credit transfer remains cumbersome and
often frustrating to students whose coursework is necessarily completed
at several institutions. The capacity problem and the transferability
issues need to be resolved by higher education organizations. Thus,
while accreditation and quality control are very important issues, they
have been developed in the United States by nongovernmental agencies,
whereas elsewhere they are state-mandated. The GATS negotiations will
need to recognize these differences and be sensitive to the
public-private structure of U.S. higher education, which is its special
strength. I am sure many of us would like a more fluid transferability
of qualifications throughout the European Union and within the OECD and
Third World countries, but is GATS the means to achieve that goal?
The final point I would like to make is that higher education is also
part of the cultural fabric of nation-states, as well as a vehicle for
the international exchange of ideas. Most national educational systems
were created for cultural as well as economic purposes. Therefore, as we
deal with the growing international marketplace of higher education,
sensitivity to different cultures is something that is extremely
important. Cultural and national sensibilities are often mistaken and
underestimated when we deal with globalization. There are going to be
nuances in curricular content that trade negotiations cannot
address.
Culture, as well as economy and technology, is involved in how the
world fits together. That is what higher education tries to reveal to
its students. We need to understand that what we are dealing with is not
only career structures based on technical courses, but also, frequently,
a degree package including general education requirements with some
nationally or culturally specific elements.
I am, however, delighted that this conference has opened a full
discussion of these issues. I think the misunderstandings that exist
between higher education institutions and their governments over the
inclusion of educational services in the GATS negotiations require
further deliberation. We do need better information and more
transparency about the international delivery of higher education. The
consumer needs clearer awareness of quality and transferability. I think
we need to build on the Lisbon Convention, which was a new initiative to
create a system for the recognition of accrediting agencies. In terms of
the broad, integrated, international schema of degree-granting higher
education, however, I am not at all convinced that I understand what the
problem is that GATS promises to fix. The joint declaration of European,
Canadian, and U.S. higher educational associations was an initial effort
to raise issues that may now be addressed. I must, however, end by
stressing that it is still not altogether clear to most ACE members
precisely what problem is to be solved by the GATS negotiations.
Thank you very much.
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| GATS ACE President David Ward Remarks May 2002 |
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