To whom it may concern… is a post from Free Education for Everyone

Galway, Ireland. 22

Students, led by the group Free Education for Everyone Galway, are set to march against the planned increase of Third-Level fees to €3000 by 2015 and the abolition of the Postgraduate grant.

The march will take place in Galway on Wednesday, 29 February at 1pm, with participants marching from NUIG’s campus to Eyre Square where they will be met by speakers. It will be part of a National Day of Action held by students across the island, north and south, and will also be focused against cutbacks on primary and secondary level education. Mayo has a strong presence in the city’s student body. 

Equality Officer at NUIG Student’s Union, William O’Brien, said that ‘The government’s abolition of the student grant for all incoming postgraduate students is yet another sickening attack by this odious, IMF dominated government on the living standards of young people. Now is the time for students to stand up for their rights and make their voices heard against this insane austerity agenda that is directly attacking students and killing our country’.

‘Measures such as increased school transport charges, cuts to English language teachers for newcomer children and the planned closure of smaller primary schools are all direct attacks on those in primary and secondary education and their families.’ said 1st year Medicine student Evelyn Fennelly. ’I will be marching as I believe individuals from all levels of education need to unite if these vicious cuts are to be defeated’.

2nd year Arts student Sarah McCarthy said ‘This gombeen government and their IMF/ECB puppet masters has sacrificed the youth of the nation at the altar of neo-liberalism.  Each and every student must rise up and smash this hated bankers’ government into the ground.’

Free Education For Everyone is a nationwide grassroots campaign dedicated to fighting cutbacks to all levels of the education system as part of a wider campaign against austerity. Recent actions by the Galway branch include the occupation of Deputy Brian Walsh’s office in Bohermore last November, in which 9 activists were arrested, and a blockade of Fine Gael’s pre-budget think-in at the city’s Radisson Hotel last September.

Críoch/Ends
For further information, contact William O’Brien on  086 8683390 , or email feegalway@gmail.com

Angry Students Set to March Against Education Cuts is a post from Free Education for Everyone

Since the start of the school year in 2008 and the financial crisis which swept the globe, the government and the institutions mandated and constituted to administer and develop the education system have taken many radical steps to reform and reshape the education system. This is achieved within a framework derivative of the neo-liberal philosophy which was à la mode with governments and financial sectors during the genesis of the recession.

These decisions are made behind closed doors with little or no consultation with the public; which is almost always initiated from the outside. Since September 2011 and now; the IUA(Irish universities association), HEA(higher education authority), the NCCA(National council for curriculum and assessment) and the DoES( Department of education and science) have been engaging in discussions about how the education sector will adjust to the enormous cuts; both current and proposed. The “rationalisation” of first and second level education is also happening, with the future society having it’s development affected by decisions made under the “rationale” that class sizes should go up so as to pay unsecured (no legal or moral obligation) bondholders ( part of the financial elite who caused crisis in the first place).

In fact to date there have been a wide range of funding cuts to the education system. In primary education Deis schools; those in disadvantaged area where extra supports were provisioned have had severe staff cutbacks.Smaller schools will be forced to take on more pupils thus increasing the pupil-teacher ratio to the detriment of teachers’ ability to do their highly valuable work. School transport charges are also on the rise, which will have a crippling effect on rural communities or those with a school commute.Special needs is now less of a priority in trying to include those with learning, intellectual or physical issues in the greater society; the last government capping SNA (special needs assistants) at 10,400 and Official rhetoric suggesting further cuts as inevitable. Schools will have to learn to deal with less English language support teachers who work with immigrant children helping them cope with learning the language. Primary modern languages programmes are again, apparently disposable when cutting the €2.5 million being used to teach a range of modern foreign languages in more than 500 primary schools nationwide is on the government’s agenda while bringing not national, but international uproar as regressive. In secondary education professional guidance services are to be abolished coupled with the projected increases in student numbers across the board which means less funding per enrolled pupil/student; this will only have a debilitating effect on a population saddled with twenty years of austerity ahead of it.

Should the perspective third level student manage to run the gauntlet of a devastated primary and secondary education system, he or she will find an eviscerated system mangled by Bologna Accords, corporate administration and a lack of knowledge for knowledge’s sake and research funding centred around profitability/commercial value. Proposed funding cuts of 6% in third level by 2014 means a cap on student numbers or the complete reintroduction of tuition fees the most prohibitive funding mechanism when related to access equality. This is on the back of student contribution rises from €850 per student in 2008/09 to €2,250 with an intended rise to €3,000 by 2015 can hardly bode well for a system which has already seen a 6% cut in staff and a virtual freeze on capital spending.The abolition of post-graduate maintenance grants is a maneuver which flies in the face of establishment propaganda about “smart economies” as does the fact that Irish universities are only afforded 60% of the funding of their EU counterparts and since 1996 the proportion of exchequer income spent on education has drop from 19% to 16%; given these statistics it is not hard to see why Ireland is a lowly 27th out of 31 OECD countries when relating education spending to  wealth(GDP).

Student nurses are expected to work without pay due to a precarious medical system underfunded and warped with bureaucracy and private/public provisions where the state pays private companies/corporations to provide services for profit which the public service could do if given adequate resources; all a gift of the neo-liberalism of the Mary Harney/PD brand.

So the outlook for all stakeholders in our education system is quite bleak, however the vast majority of Irish people would agree on the importance of education both individually and socially and this is reflective in the numbers at protests and demonstration around the country corresponding to some of the cuts mentioned above.

Free Education for Everyone (FEE) is a national campaign based around third level access issues including; the fee increases, grant cuts/abolition and commercialisation of the campus. The campaign has arrived at the conclusion that a united front across the education sector is required to effectively fight and overturn those cuts already administered and those proposed for the future. Wednesday, the 29th of this month (February), has been set as a FEE National Day of Action Against All Education Cuts- in Galway the local campaign in conjunction with NUI Galway Students Union is organising a march. The March is proposed to commence at 1.00pm at the University road entrance to the campus, passing the Cathedral and moving finally on to Eyre Square where we will have speakers. All are welcome to join the demonstration and any organisations or individuals wishing to contribute or enquiring about more information can get in contact at feegalway@gmail.com.

National Day of Action Against All Education Cuts is a post from Free Education for Everyone

The march will take place in Galway on Wednesday, 29 February at 1pm, with participants marching from NUIG’s campus to Eyre Square where they will be met by speakers. It will be part of a National Day of Action held by students across the island, north and south, and will also be focused against cutbacks on primary and secondary level education. Mayo has a strong presence in the city’s student body. 

Equality Officer at NUIG Student’s Union, William O’Brien, said that ‘The government’s abolition of the student grant for all incoming postgraduate students is yet another sickening attack by this odious, IMF dominated government on the living standards of young people. Now is the time for students to stand up for their rights and make their voices heard against this insane austerity agenda that is directly attacking students and killing our country’.

‘Measures such as increased school transport charges, cuts to English language teachers for newcomer children and the planned closure of smaller primary schools are all direct attacks on those in primary and secondary education and their families.’ said 1st year Medicine student Evelyn Fennelly. ’I will be marching as I believe individuals from all levels of education need to unite if these vicious cuts are to be defeated’.

2nd year Arts student Sarah McCarthy said ‘This gombeen government and their IMF/ECB puppet masters has sacrificed the youth of the nation at the altar of neo-liberalism.  Each and every student must rise up and smash this hated bankers’ government into the ground.’

Free Education For Everyone is a nationwide grassroots campaign dedicated to fighting cutbacks to all levels of the education system as part of a wider campaign against austerity. Recent actions by the Galway branch include the occupation of Deputy Brian Walsh’s office in Bohermore last November, in which 9 activists were arrested, and a blockade of Fine Gael’s pre-budget think-in at the city’s Radisson Hotel last September.

Críoch/Ends
For further information, contact William O’Brien on 086 8683390, or email feegalway@gmail.com. Visit www.free-education.info, and please read the attached letter.

Angry Students Set to March Against Education Cuts is a post from Free Education for Everyone

Education should be about teaching people how to think, not what to think. Third level education today however has become no more than state subsidised training. Universities are now just a huge assembly line churning out regimented workers for the benefit of corporations, banks and big business. Terms such as “market-based education”, “user charges”, “tuition fees” and “cost recovery” are now common.

This new approach to education funding stems from the influence of World Bank policy advice, and conditions for loans and debt relief, which consider free public services for all “financially unsustainable”. Rather than places of enlightenment, the primary role of universities today is to meet the labour requirements as stipulated by employers.

Students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions rather than have opinions forced upon them by conservative and rich professors. Most people never consciously choose to be capitalists; it is forced upon them from birth and consolidated in the state education system. While our education system must teach people skills so they can make a contribution to society and create wealth, we must not let it be hijacked by big business for their benefit. There is pressure on public universities by both legislators and state system governing boards to design accelerated degree completion programs, credit-for-work experience, distance education links to industry sites, and other options for the non-traditional “adult learner”. The Arts are under attack while employers want more students studying maths and science so that the labour market in these areas will become glutted and wages forced down.

Students must fight to keep third level institutions as places of learning and not places of training. Lecturers and students alike nowadays cynically describe university education as a ‘factory’. The notion of the University as a mechanised profit machine is where the term derives its critical force. When the philosophy department at Middlesex University was shut down, the ‘Save Middlesex Philosophy’ campaign’s occupation strung an enormous banner out of a first floor window reading: ‘The University is a Factory. Strike! Occupy!’ The slogan became the emblematic image of the campaign. Part of the neo-liberal agenda is the casualisation of labour and the normalisation of precarity.

The student struggle for free education, therefore, is intrinsically linked to the workplace struggles of university staff. There is a lack of political engagement of ‘radical’ academics—Marxist or otherwise—and there seems to be no translation from critical thinking in the scholastic debating chamber to actual support for struggles taking place even within their own workplaces, including for the cleaners who sweep their departmental corridors. It is the economy and its needs that determine the quantity and content of the education that students receive. In the Culliton Report 1992, education was examined in the context of the contribution it could make to improve the competitiveness of the Irish economy, and it was stressed that the fostering of usable and marketable skills should be a priority within the educational system. Free education respects the intrinsic value of knowledge and ideas irrespective of their subjective value on the labour market. It is about the pursuit of learning for its own sake. It is therefore the opposite of the neo-liberal agenda, which sees the university as a factory churning out graduates for the benefit of big business, and which seeks to restructure the university to fit the priorities of big business and the markets. Performance indicators based on productivity and efficiency have become the current definition of accountability, and success in satisfying these measures is often the basis for funding allocations. It is important to oppose the commercialisation and commodification of education, which will lead to the prioritisation of subjects and areas of research that are profitable for businesses, to the detriment of others, regardless of their value to society. Measures should be put in place against the dilution of teaching which leaves graduates being equipped only with the skills and knowledge most desirable of employers. All this leads to the detriment of students’ intellectual and personal development. There should be an end to the distortion of scientific and medical research for private profit. There is a tendency towards casualisation amongst University staff. This includes the increasing composition of temporary staff, workers on sessional teaching contracts, and the way the increasing burden of work is being shifted to PhD students who are remunerated at a rate that is wholly inadequate to draw a living from. In recent times, universities have undergone a massive shift towards short-term contracts for both teaching and non-teaching staff. This places a downward pressure on wages and conditions, and undercuts the ability of trade unions and professional associations to organise on university campuses. Graduate students as an exploited class in the University’s internal economy, are used to depress wages, limit full time job openings, and operate in sync with the tendency towards pay-per-hour lecturers across the University sector as a whole. The university can much more easily cut the wages of contracted workers, safe in the knowledge that there are plenty more to take their place once their contact expires, should they decide to kick up a fuss.

For what drives PhD student teachers is resume building; what drives casualised University workers is staying within the system. In both cases, consciously submitting to exploitation is premised on the belief that the future will hold out better things to come: that temporary pain will pave the way to long-term success.

The University isn’t a factory is a post from Free Education for Everyone

On November 2nd, 2011 the Fine Gael / Labour government paid out over 700 million euro to the unsecured bondholders of Anglo Irish Bank – a bank that no longer effectively exists or functions as such, a bank that so far has swallowed up billions of euro of Irish taxpayers money to pay for its gambling and speculation. On the 25th of January 2012, the government again paid out unsecured bonds of over 1 billion Euro to Anglo’s bondholders. These bonds were unsecured – this means that the government was in no way obligated by any law or agreement to pay it. It was paid only to appease the vultures of international capitalism that hold this country and others to ransom through their enforcers in the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On Monday the 24th of October 2011, Free Education for Everyone in NUIG confronted Fine Gael senator and Junior Minister for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon over several issues concerning the rising cost of third level education in Ireland; one of his responses was that it would cost an estimated 500,000,000 Euroto fund free education for a year in Ireland. This, he said, was impossible. And yet, in one single day, his government can pay a cabal of faceless financial gangsters over € 700,000,000? Makes sense alright..

The fight for free education and against the commercialisation of our campuses is inextricably linked to the fight against the austerity programme being implemented in this country at the behest of the IMF – a direct consequence of the financial criminality carried out by the likes of Anglo Irish Bank and their cronies in government. The increase in the registration fee, the cuts in grants, along with the far more widespread cuts in education, healthcare, and every other section of society, all lead back to the IMF, and back further to the criminal actions of the gangsters of Anglo Irish Bank. And yet, to this day, the Fine Gael / Labour government, like their Fianna Fáil / Green buddies before them, are determined to continue bailing out these failed institutions, these money pits, at our expense.

We say this is inexcusable.

 We say this is criminal.

 WE SAY ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Billions for Banks; nothing for us! is a post from Free Education for Everyone

How would you feel if you were bombarded with Sky News upon entering the university library? Considering there are a few TV screens around the library giving information about catalogue training etc. Would anyone object to this public space becoming private? I frequent the Kingfisher gym and there’s not one, not two, but seven plasma screens pumping out Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda. Exposure to Sky News and its imagery penetrates our consciousness and as a result, shapes our worldview by giving us a false sense of what is news. There are some recurring images namely; the flag of the USA, the Union Jack, war/fear, Arabic people portrayed as terrorists, and of course, advertisements. Is there any need for TV screens in a university gym, and do we collectively need exposure to the above themes?

The “news” is on a loop and it’s the same sensationalist doggerel replayed every few minutes. I have often raised this issue with members of gym staff, who are quick to reassure me that ‘it’s just news.’ Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is enormous: it is the largest media company in the world by market capitalisation ($38 billion). For most people, the conservative news channel Fox comes foremost to mind when asked what they think of Murdoch’s media empire – but the company’s holding is far larger: it includes Sky News, Asia’s Star TV Network, the National Geographic Channel and even the iconic TV Guide network. Widely respected academic, Noam Chomsky, calls these news stations “the myth maker” whose role is to make emotional potent oversimplifications in an effort to keep the ordinary person on course. These myths, as Chomsky puts it, are ‘necessary illusions.’ Or what might be called in more honest days as, propaganda. If we want to understand how our society really works, the first place to look is who is in a position to make the decisions that determine the way the society functions. The major decisions over investment, production and distribution are in the hands of a relatively small group of major corporations, conglomerates and multinationals. They are the ones who staff the key executive positions in government, own the media and have a huge role in controlling our lives. Their need to satisfy their interests inflicts very severe constraints on the political and ideological system. This form of media (Sky News) aims to determine, select, shape, control, and restrict us, in ways which serve the interests of the dominant elite groups.

It appears that we are seeing an encroachment of this type of media that has been generally indoctrinating the minds of people in the USA. Speaking of which, when the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ story swept the internet I was in the gym “watching” Sky News. You guessed it, instead of showing us what’s really going on in the world, Sky News were focusing on the historic image of the Queen tipping a TV presenter on the shoulder with a sword, he is now Sir Bruce Forsyth, congratulations to him. But, still no coverage of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ or ‘Occupy London’ or occupy anywhere for that matter. This is because these movements are a threat to the elite who run the system and who own the media. But how can this be justifiable? Surely it cannot. Shouldn’t we be seeking out these forms of authority and essentially challenging their legitimacy. They [those who own the media] are not going to advertise any movement which is fundamentally a protest against their corruption and their coercion of so many. Do people really just take what they’re fed by this awful media?

The big question seems to be about public space being colonised by private interests? The Kingfisher club is a franchise that is under contract with NUIG. Once they honour the contract they can show whatever they want on their numerous TV screens.

Recently, shopping centres have been described as ‘mass private spaces’ as opposed to public space. As a citizen, I am, and yes you are, entitled to certain rights and freedoms in public spaces. Once we enter these ‘mass private spaces’, we give over some of our rights and freedoms as citizens. In the case of NUIG, another pertinent question is, what type of space am I occupying on campus? Does this change when I go from the canteen or College bar, to the library, the lecture theatre to the gym? Should students have a say in the content of media used on campus irrespective of location? If so, then how is this to be decided, and according to what criteria? I wonder why people go to a gym. I can only say why I go, to keep my body fit and healthy. I do not go to the gym to catch up on “news.” I have no problem with people watching “news”, but I think it should be done independently. After my workout, I may decide to meet some friends in the College bar for lunch, what is the first thing I see upon entering the bar? Yes, Sky News. This time it’s coming at me in the form of a cinema screen. I cannot seem to escape it! I often feel like Winston Smith out of Orwell’s 1984. Orwell would say ‘in a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me and do other students, or staff for that matter, not see anything wrong with this.

How do you feel about this issue?

Sky News: The Commercialisation of Campus is a post from Free Education for Everyone

Free Education for Everyone Galway is part of the latest expression of a long international tradition of student radicalism, dating back to the 1960’s, which seeks to challenge the injustices that exist throughout society. In the United States, for example, students held sit-ins, occupations and marches against the imperialist war in Vietnam. In April 1968 students at New York’s Columbia University took over their campus; over 700 were arrested, with 120 charges of brutality later brought against police. Students were also involved in voter registration projects amongst African-Americans in the oppressively racist Deep South. And the student struggle for Civil Rights in the U.S. inspired a student struggle for Civil Rights in Ireland’s Six Counties; in January 1969, the People’s Democracy group from Queen’s University marched from Belfast to Derry to protest against the sectarian and corrupt nature of Northern Ireland’s Government. The constant intimidation the march received from loyalists along the route, while the police stood by and watched, brought international attention to the bigoted nature of the 6 County State. A 21 year old marcher,Bernadette Devlin, became MP for Mid-Ulster in April 1969, using her platform to advance the struggle for a just Ireland. The international struggle constantly spurred the Irish one on, with student activists protesting against the Soviet repression of Czechoslovakia in the morning before campaigning for non-sectarian housing in the afternoon. ‘Remember the Mexican students!’ was one of the cries of the Young Socialists as they were beaten off the streets of Derry by the RUC, taking courage from the students who risked their lives for resisting the rightist dictatorship of that country.

 Most notable of all, however, was the French struggle. Beginning in Paris’s Nanterre University in 1968, a small and contained student protest against the university administration, involving at most two dozen protestors, burgeoned into a mass movement against the reactionary presidency of Charles De Gaulle. On May 13 of that year it brought well over a million marchers through the streets of the city, and triggered a near revolution in France. The campaign spread to workplaces as well as campuses as students and workers united; ten million workers went out on strike and occupied their workplaces. Students clashed with the hated French riot police, the CRS, and helped build the barricades that grew up across Paris.

In the Ireland of today where a treacherous Fine Gael/Labour coalition in cahoots with the IMF/ECB is in power, the need for a vibrant and strong student activist movement is more important than ever, to defend the principle of free education from those who are attacking it. Already this odious government has cut all grants for students entering postgraduate study, and Enda Kenny and Ruairí Quinn have made it clear that plans to increase Third Level Fees. The Union of Students in Ireland has failed to put forward a real challenge to these crises; with the so-called student ‘contribution’ rising year on year and the postgraduate grant axed, students need to take it into their own hands to become active and take the student movement back.

Who Fears to Speak of ’68? is a post from Free Education for Everyone

Recently, Education Minister Ruarí Quinn and Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced that third-level fees will have reached €3,000 by 2015. Coupled with the recent removal of the maintenance grant for Post-Graduate degrees, this measure comes as a serious blow to current and prospective students.

The same week as this revelation, FEE held a forum for students and others to come and speak about how the cuts have been affecting them. There were young people who had been forced to drop out because they could no longer afford to support themselves, graduates who have been forced to sign on, and students whose siblings will not get the opportunities that they have had. The Government claims that a registration fee in conjunction with a grants system does not create an inequality of access. Clearly, they are mistaken. The grant has been cut by 13% over the last three years, and for many students it has been cut by as much as 60%. Now, the maintenance grant for students who wish to begin a post-graduate degree in 2012 is gone. Support for the payment of fees will only be provided for those from
families within a new, further restricted income band. There is an increasing disparity in who is capable of pursuing a university education in this country, and the actions of the Government are antagonising the situation.

An Taoiseach claims that these measures are necessary to improve the quality of our suffering education system, asserting that “a really strong and vibrant third-level system is fundamental…and it’s got to be paid for.” However, alongside the increases funding for third-level institutions will be cut by
a total of 6% over the next three years. In combination with rising student numbers, we are essentially being asked to pay much more, for far less. The money being squeezed from students and their families every year is, like all austerity measures, being used to service the massive private debt the Irish people have been burdened with. Mr Kenny attempted to justify this injustice by declaring that austerity is affecting “every single person in the country” – he earns over €300,000 per annum in total, over 8.9 times the average industrial wage.

On Monday the 13th of February, the class reps council voted in favour of a number of motions that mandated the SU Executive to consider a number of new tactics in the fight against education cuts. Presented by Equality Officer William O’Brien, they included occupations of university buildings, a
student strike, and a mass boycott of fees. This progressive move marked a significant turning point in the attitude of the NUIG SU. Evidently, they have come to the conclusion that their traditional methods of sporadic marches and lobbying have failed. With a clear majority in favour of these actions it is now vital that all students come together as a cohesive movement. We must mobilise to protect our fundamental rights and to resist those in Government, the IMF, and the ECB, who wish to compel us to inherit a future of desolation, or emigration.

€3,000 for Under-Grads – No More Grants for Post-Grads – What Now? is a post from Free Education for Everyone

In his first article for the Student Observer, Eoin Griffin writes of the need for a coherent and empathetic student leadership in the wake of serious problems locally and nationally.

Recently in UCD some 300 students marched in protest at cut backs to student services. This would not seem the most unusual occurrence, except for the fact that they were not voicing their anger towards college administrators or government ministers. Instead they were actively challenging their own Students’ Union.

They marched to deliver approximately 3 000 signatures to SU President Pat De Brún demanding an explanation as to why the SU operated print facility was closed in early December. This closure resulted in the loss of, what many considered to be, an essential service and two long term jobs. In a worrying development it was revealed by the UCD SU, in an open letter to students, that they have debts of approximately €1 million. External auditors will soon be publishing a report on the exact financial position of the Union. Considering proper accounts for the UCD SU bar have not been filed since 2004 it would seem that this could be just the beginning of a raft of cut backs in student services on the Belfield campus.

UCD Save our Staff Protest

It Is Now That We Need A Collective Voice More Than Ever. is a post from Free Education for Everyone