Ever since the personal computer has been in mainstream use and since Microsoft bought the DOS operating system, Microsoft has had an iron grip on the computer market. Their vision was that everyone would have a personal computer and they would be the ones to let them use it (for their price and under their control), while IBM envisioned great servers around the world that would be controlled by individuals’ terminals, they would not need Microsoft’s software and so hardware was where the money was. As we know, Microsoft were correct in their analysis and the idea that people could have their own computer that they thought they could control was popular. But some people didn’t like that they had to pay £100 just to use their computer and that if they wanted to do useful tasks such as write letters or store information for an organisation or group they would have to pay yet more. Microsoft have made it harder and harder for anyone to use software other than their own and increased the price accordingly.

Some have turned away from Microsoft’s model of “every extra thing you want to do costs extra” and turned to Apple who will give you most things that you need but you have to buy everything from them. Others have created a community where people make software for themselves. The idea is that if ordinary people all around the world make our own software, it can be as good and even better than its commercial counterpart. This software does not have its code encrypted like Microsoft’s and Apple’s but is open for all to see, this is the world of open source software.

For many years this movement has been small and its products have been pale in comparison to their mainstream version. For years after most people were using a mouse to control their computer through a graphical user interface, these people were still typing out commands. But over that last decade their numbers have grown and their progress accelerated, most open source operating systems now use advanced graphical user interfaces and have more and more advanced programs to match. Linux is the most common type of software within this world and its browser ‘Firefox’ has become quite famous for its ‘Port’ to Microsoft Windows and is accepted by most to be better than Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer, even on its native Windows. This is just an example of the powerful software that is produced by the open source movement and now that the UN has chosen ‘Ubuntu’ (a Linux operating system) for its under $100 computer, to distribute in underdeveloped countries. A lot, if not most, of the movements resources are now focused on Ubuntu’s code.

Compatibility has long been an issue as with all non Microsoft software and OpenOffice has had problems creating Microsoft Office documents due to Microsoft office’s closed source nature (Microsoft obviously made no effort to read any file other than their own). The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) worked with Sun Microsystems to create a standard format for word processing documents and came up with the Open Document Format, which was then accepted as the standard word processing and office suite file format by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Microsoft refused to accept the new standardisation and Microsoft Office was still not even able to open, never mind create OpenDocument Format files. They were inundated with complaints by angry customers who were not able to use any of the standard files they were receiving and so Microsoft relented and Microsoft Office is now able to read and write OpenDocuments from Microsoft Office 2007 (from service pack 2).

People within this moment have mainly been technical in nature and have mostly let companies hold the copyrights to the names of their software, due to there being no individual creator to hold such rights. OpenOffice’s copyright was held by Sun Microsystems but when Sun were purchased by Oracle, a company with a history of commercialising and tampering with open source software, without permission from the community. The leading creators of OpenOffice became worried that the same would happen to OpenOffice so they created the document foundation to hold the copyright of OpenOffice and any other open source software that wishes to use it. Anyone can join the document foundation who agrees with its values and can take part in its democracy (based on a meritocratic, skill based division of labour). After which the developers continued to improve the software although they no longer had rights to the OpenOffice name, then owned by Oracle. The name LibreOffice was chosen for the continuation of the project until such time that the copyright of the OpenOffice name be reacquired. Oracle decided to keep offering OpenOffice and have even posted updates, but have since donated the name to Apache.

It will be interesting to see how many other software projects go down the same route and hold their copyrights in the document foundation or form similar structures. If projects continue to allow commercial entities to own and sway their products, they will likely be pushed and assimilated into commercial software such as Windows and the war will be lost.

Freedom of information goes further than just source code in this war, Wikipedia has become the largest encyclopaedia in the world and is created by specialists and knowledgeable people all around the world. Its accuracy is doubted by many due to the lack of credentials needed to modify or create an article. However Wikipedia and its users routinely remove false, unreferenced material and lock pages that have been continuously changed to the most accountable, previous state. Pages go through a hierarchy or locked states, where only the most certified users can request a change. While vandalism and incorrect posts do occur, it is a very good source of information where cross-referenced properly, as with any other source. Wikipedia recently undertook a ‘Blackout’ on the English portion of its site in protest to bills going through the US Congress. It was not designed to block users from information as they were shown how to bypass the blackout but meant that users read about the bills that implicated any site, with a link rout to illegal copyright material, as liable. Google also showed its support for the campaign by censoring its logo on Google.com.

With Google web search using a version of the Linux kernel, the engine behind Linux operating systems, and Android phones using another version of the Linux kernel, the future looks bright for open source software. It is now very possible to move away from Microsoft’s empire. Ubuntu has a very nice interface and integrates social networking far better than Windows; while those who are less techno savvy might like Linux Mint which is simpler than Ubuntu or Windows. Office files can be created by the powerful LibreOffice and free programs like Gimp can be used instead of Photoshop. Maybe one day, if this revolution is won, taxation will pay for the effort that people put into these projects, but until then, they rely upon donations based on the ability to pay and give time, from its users. The Future is ours, if we just choose to take it.

A lot has changed since last November – from the Arab revolutions to the huge anti-cuts demonstration on March 26th to the riots that hit English cities in August. And you could tell as much from the police presence: while the 50,000 strong ‘Millbank demo’ last year was initially policed by around 250 officers, this week’s demo had the much-vaunted figure of 4,000. Not to mention the horses, armoured vehicles, two helicopters, dogs, FIT teams, rubber bullets, intimidation letters sent the previous day and the thousands of twelve page glossy booklets that the police handed out at the starting point warning everyone not to fuck with them – as if that much wasn’t obvious from the aforementioned 4000 cops, rubber bullets, cavalry… you get the picture. All justified by a bit of the usual pre-demo hysterics about anarcho-extremist infliltrators intent on causing a riot, nevermind that it was a totally legit demo organised in co-operation with the police, well stewarded and with a planned route ETC ETC.

Normally a demo of this size would barely get a mention from the media – but Wednesday had it all: rolling news coverage, TV helicopters, hundreds of photographers – all clamouring for things to kick off. And the police were trying their hardest to make sure things did as well: charging around in full Robocop get-up, shields out, and with plain-clothes occasionally jumping folk and dragging them off just cause they got a bit bored.

Elsewhere in London, thousands of electricians – currently engaged in a huge struggle against the tearing up of their national pay and conditions agreement – were at a Unite the Union organised demo, having blockaded building sites earlier in the day. While most then marched to Parliament to lobby MPs, a rank and file break-off of a couple of hundred sparks tried to march to join the student demo. Hundreds of militant private sector workers engaged in a frontline struggle uniting with the big student demo would’ve been a powerful image. With the media all over the student demo this would’ve then been hard to ignore, and something that wouldn’t have fit comfortably with the media narrative of middle class students just out to defend their own interests. And this is precisely why the state were determined to stop it from happening, with the sparks’ batoned and beaten up by the cops until being contained in a kettle away from the student demo. News quickly reached the student demo, and there was a bit of a stand-off  at one street when it was found out that the electricians were being blockaded in that direction. Such were the police numbers though that the demo was more akin to a walking kettle, and any attempt to break-off would’ve been verging towards kamikaze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUaA3dBuZWs

Electricians blockading sites before rallying later in the day and getting attacked by cops

The march picked up though, with a massive soundsystem emerging and some innovative chants, ‘You can shove your rubber bullets up your arse’ among them. It was a long route, and eventually wound its way to the end point sometime after 3pm, where the police decided to form an impromptu kettle before letting everyone go in a pretty chaotic fashion. A dispersal order was issued for 5.31pm, but most people were well away by that point.

Moving forward, NCAFC have – much like last year – called a follow-up day of action for Wednesday 23 November. While it’s unlikely to get as much momentum behind it as last year, given the totally different circumstances – the HE White Paper is unlikely to garner as much opposition as the brazen, headline-grabbing £9k fees rise - it can be a way of buildng student and anti-austerity activity ahead of what is looking set to be a mass day of action on November 30, when three million public sector workers will be on strike. On that day, let’s meet “total policing” with total resistance.

Occupied Strathclyde

Crunch decisions over cuts at both Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities over the past week have yielded mixed results for the anti-cuts movement in the city. With, in particular, Humanities subjects under threat at both universities, a huge amount was at stake.

Since February, when course cuts were revealed at Glasgow University, a mass campaign has been mounted across the city in defence of education, coming off the back of the tuition fees protests late last year. A focus of this has been the Free Hetherington at Glasgow Uni, which enters its 150th day of (near) continuous occupation this Thursday, although a large-scale campaign has also been mounted across the city at Strathclyde which has similarly hit national headlines.

Demo at Glasgow Uni last week

At Glasgow, staff, student and external pressure was able to achieve a massive climbdown from management, who had initially proposed slashing nursing, adult education, anthropology and nearly all modern language teaching. All are now saved – or have at least gained reprieves – although last Wednesday’s vote will see Slavonic studies, the Centre for Drug Misuse Research and humanities courses at the university’s Dumfries campus go. Following a decision yesterday, Strathclyde is set to lose music, geography, sociology and community education, in line with Principal Jim McDonald’s vision of transforming the university into a ‘centre of technical excellence’ on par with MIT. In reality, this is of course a neo-liberal realignment of the university towards profitable, business friendly research, being achieved under a smokescreen of austerity savings. At Glasgow, the equally unaccountable, and equally contemptible, Principal Muscatelli has even stated, having last year fear-mongered about the ‘university going bust within four years’, that the cuts are not – after all – about financial necessity, but purely ‘strategic’. Which does help explain the huge surplus the university recently announced.

Ahead of the court meeting at Strathclyde, students and anti-cuts activists entered into occupation on Monday morning. Although an attempt to seize the senate suite, in which the actual vote would be taking place the following day, was foiled by security, the soon to be closure-hit Sociology and Geography floor of the Graham Hills building was occupied overnight, with a packed public meeting taking place in the evening, which heard from local trade union activists and community campaigners. Early the following morning a picket was then held as the University Court met, with the occupation coming to an end.

The battle is far from over, and nor will these be the last cuts that Muscatelli, McDonald and their counterparts across the country attempt to force through. Over the past few months, Glasgow Uni in particular has witnessed the emergence of a mass movement against the cuts, with upwards of 2000 joining a march on the uni court in February, and hundreds rallying to the occupation following the well-documented eviction attempt in March. The new term presents real opportunities for continuing to build and strengthen this movement against cuts and fees, as part of the wider fight across society against capitalist austerity.

]]> http://ssy.org.uk/2011/06/huge-course-cuts-voted-through-at-strathclyde-glasgow/feed/ 0 http://ssy.org.uk/2011/03/violent-eviction-at-glasgow-uni-leads-to-another-occupation/ http://ssy.org.uk/2011/03/violent-eviction-at-glasgow-uni-leads-to-another-occupation/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:14:51 +0000 Liam T http://ssy.org.uk/?p=6247

The occupied senate building

**EDIT** As of last night, the Hetherington occupation is back on as senior management offered us back the building in exchange for giving them back their beloved senate headquarters! This rendered the whole police and security operation yesterday entirely useless! As of this morning, people are being targetted by the police and re-arrested, information here **END OF EDIT**

At 10.30 this morning, university security entered the Free Hetherington at Glasgow University, just two hours before it celebrated its 7 week anniversary of being in occupation. What should’ve been a quiet morning at the space – with students and staff dropping in for cups of tea, coffee and lunch between lectures – rapidly turned into a mass confrontation between security, the police and hundreds of students and supporters,  as plans to evict the occupation became clear.

Entering the building under false pretences of  a health and safety check-up (as they’ve been allowed to before, given that relations with campus security have generally been very positive up until today), more security quickly entered and police back-up was called in, with a helicopter scrambled to the scene. As more students began to arrive to show support, the front  steps were taken – with the police then resorting to handcuffing students in an attempt to remove them from the doorway. More supporters and onlookers continued to arrive, as did the police – in the end over 80 officers and 20 vehicles attended, alongside the constantly circling helicopter.

With just a handful of occupiers in the building at the time, people on the outside made an attempt to gain access through a fire exit from an adjacent building. They were stopped by uni security, who assaulted a number of students – including one who later had to leave in an ambulance after suffering concussion from a head injury. The police then intervened and arrested a number of people. However, with hundreds now gathered outside, they refused to let anyone leave the building and those arrested were held inside, including the person suffering concussion. This also had the effect of holding entire classes of students hostage, as well as those in offices and computer labs.

Around 1pm, the police entered the Free Hetherington in numbers and dragged the remaining occupiers out by force. Hundreds remained outside, with the stand-off next door, at 11 University Gardens, continuing. This came to an end around an hour later – with those who’d been arrested, with the exception of the person who had already left in an ambulance, now being told that they were apparently not arrested after all! Clearly the police were trying to diffuse an increasingly volatile situation.

Both this, and the eviction in general, spectacularly backfired. Students and supporters outside the Free Hetherington then blocked the road, preventing two police vans from  passing by. To chants of ‘who’s kettled now?’, two police vans were forced to reverse out of University Gardens. Around 300 students then broke off and marched to the university main building.  From here, the doors to uni’s head offices were broken down and several of the key rooms at the uni – including the Senate – occupied. This is currently ongoing, with freedom of access.

Glasgow University is at the forefront of a battle over the future of education. Management have consistently ignored the university’s own democratic bodies, including the Senate, pressing ahead with their corporate, business-oriented vision of what education should be. Principal Muscatelli and his senior management team must go. The battle continues.

]]> http://ssy.org.uk/2011/03/violent-eviction-at-glasgow-uni-leads-to-another-occupation/feed/ 2 http://ssy.org.uk/2011/03/key-struggles-in-education/ http://ssy.org.uk/2011/03/key-struggles-in-education/#comments Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:06:17 +0000 Liam T http://ssy.org.uk/?p=6185

'Students support UCU strike'

Academic staff at over 60 universities across the UK are set to take strike action over the next two weeks. Next Thursday 17 March will see the first day of action, with members of the UCU union at seven Scottish universities walking out. This will be followed by consecutive days of action in Wales, Northern Ireland and England, before a national strike on Thursday 24 March. The action is being taken over proposed changes to pensions, and comes after universities refused to engage in negotiations with the union.

The ballot comes at a key time for the wider trade union movement, coinciding with both the latest round of cuts in the budget on 23 March, and the national anti-cuts demonstration on Saturday 26 March, which will see hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in London, in the largest display of opposition to the government’s austerity programme so far. Just this week, it was revealed that public sector unions are looking at the possibility of co-ordinated strike action over the summer, again over pensions.

Pensions are in reality one of the few issues that co-ordinated industrial action can be taken around; political strikes are banned under the anti-trade union laws, meaning that strikes against government policy in general are effectively illegal. However, by taking co-ordinated action around specific workplace issues – in this public sector pensions –  it’s basically the closest thing we can have to a general strike, without getting into the realm of illegality.

At Glasgow University, the strike has taken on added significance, with the university emerging over the past month at the forefront of the struggle over the future of education itself, pitting a dictatorial, business-minded senior management against both academics and the student body. At the beginning of February, management revealed £3 million of cuts, including proposals to scrap a number of courses entirely, including nursing, social work, several modern languages and the whole Department of Adult and Continuing Education. Under the cover of ‘budget restraint’ and an ‘unsustainable deficit’, it represents a wholesale neo-liberal restructuring of the university, spearheaded by free market zealot Principal Muscatelli and his henchmen: head of finance Bob ‘the eraser’ Fraser and master of intrigue David Newall (collectively known as the Three Muscatellis. Hohoho). All receive six figure salaries; Muscatelli earns £280k per annum.

The war against unaccountable managerialism is being waged on several fronts: The Herald runs near-daily stories detailing the ‘despair and demoralisation’ at the university, huge protest marches have been held, and staff have called an emergency meeting of the university senate – the first in over a century – in order to present their concerns to management. The occupation of the Free Hetherington is also going strong after over five weeks, and continues to be at the heart of the anti-cuts struggle on campus. Next week, the battle will enter a new phase with UCU strike action.

Onwards to the spring of discontent.

The club is now a fully functioning social and educational space, with an ever-expanding schedule of meetings, film showings, discussion groups, workshops and more.

Yesterday, the occupation was privileged to get a visit from Iraq veteran and US anti-war activist Mike Prysner, who packed out the top floor of the building in the afternoon for his talk. Mike spoke about how he’d joined the army believing it to a force for good, but how his experiences in Iraq had rapidly led him to realise the true role of the military in the country, with his unit despatched to protect oil wells and corporate interests, much less help the Iraqi people. Now an organiser with March Forward!, Mike agitates and organises among US soldiers. We also heard from Hasan Nowarah, a Palestinian human rights activist who was on board the aid-ship convoy attacked by Israeli commandos last May.

Today the occupation really came into its own. As word spreads around campus, and across the city, that the Hetherington is re-open, more and more people, staff, students and well-wishers, are dropping by. Some are just curious, some are after the free tea and coffee we’re offering, others are keen to find a quiet place to study. The Free Hetherington has already become an important part of the uni, and long may it thrive!

A full list of events is available on a calendar here, and check out the facebook page for regular updates of what’s happening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOyHyAKru5o

Marxist anthropologist David Harvey

Tomorrow SSY members will be among the folk going along to the Right to the City discussion forum on education.

Right to the City is a political group that is based on ideas put forward by the Marxist anthropologist David Harvey (he’s the guy in that cool cartoon about the economic crisis). The idea is that people should have the right to transform the cities they live in to change society and make them more liveable. In Glasgow, Right to the City has organised in depth political discussions over the last year.

Tomorrow, they’ve agreed to provide a space to talk about education. The idea is that we can make some time for the student movement to go beyond just organising protests against cuts, and talk about what we want as well as what we don’t. We’ll be discussing our vision of an alternative education and what role it can play in changing society. There’s going to be lots of different people from different political backgrounds, so it should be interesting. Here’s the info they’ve put out about it:

Right to the City Forum has been running events since last summer creating spaces for discussion, and exploring ideas of community activism and how to define our own lives.

We are hosting an education forum on Saturday 22nd January at Partick Burgh Halls, Burgh Hall Street, Glasgow, from 12.30-4.30 pm. The venue is just off Dumbarton road, Partick, only two mins from Partick rail and subway lines:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=…55.87129974%2C-4.30905008

The Forum will attempt to open up the education debate beyond an immediate defence against the cuts, and make a useful contribution not only to the education movement but to wider activity against the marketisation of cultural and public space. Members of the forum are not aligned to any one party or political position, however, the ‘Really Open University’, in the statement below, express some of our concerns very well: http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/

“The recent response to the marketisation of higher education has given a voice and a collective identity to a discontent stretching beyond funding constraints. It is now time to respond as well as create, looking for new action and dialogue for the future. We want to open up debate, not close it down.

Issues to consider: What is worth salvaging from the university system? What strategies do we have for attracting those who ought to be sympathetic: passive academics, apathetic students, individuals outside of the University, young people? How to operate within the academy without being corrupted by it? What could The University be? How do we make this happen?”

In short, the Forum will attempt to ‘re-imagine the school and the university’ – fighting for what education should be, not just preserving what it currently is.

We will be looking at wider cuts/resistance in education and not just the university. We also recognise that education is not confined to educational establishments, and that those outside of educational establishments have just as much if not more to teach than those in education. The event is open to all. It is an opportunity to meet other like-minded people to discuss the deep political implications of how the education system manages human potential.

A set of short texts will introduce the main themes the forum will explore. These will be handed out to all participants on the day and used in the initial discussion session to develop more in-depth discussion from people’s responses. Some themes to be explored include: student debt as training for life, the function of education in market relations, transformative potential of education/what education might be, uneven cuts to arts and humanities, academic ‘autonomy’?, disciplinary role of cuts/debt, crisis of aspiration (hope), wider cuts beyond education, and linking of struggles within and beyond education.

Best Wishes,

Right to the City Forum.

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143062559084259

This event is hosted by Strickland Distribution http://www.strickdistro.org/.
It is supported by ARIKA http://www.arika.org.uk/.

“The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire.
The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.” David Harvey

Also, beforehand in the morning there’ll be a Glasgow Against Education Cuts stall to promote the next planned protest in Glasgow, which we’ll be posting details about soon. Meet at the Donald Dewar statue at 11am.

Funding for Bookstart, which provides a free pack of books to every baby in the UK in order to “inspire, stimulate and create a love of reading that will give children a flying start in life”, is to be completely axed.

The organisation provides free books for children from the age of nine months until their first term of high school.

They began as a pilot project in 1992 but were awarded government funding in 2004 to become universal.  Despite having previously offered to take a 20% funding cut, Bookstart were recently  told they were to lose 100% of their £13m-a-year government grant, meaning the free books will end when the current contract does, in April.

Viv Bird, Chief Executive of Bookstart described being “astounded and appalled” on hearing the decision, saying:

“There was no dialogue. It was completely devastating.”

However, in the 10 days since the decision was announced, there have been messages of support and protest from a number of famous writers, including the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who said:

Support for Bookstart is support for the dreams and imaginations and futures of British children. To withdraw that support is to behave like Scrooge at his worst. Here’s hoping the powers-that-be see the light in tiime, as he did.

Duffy’s sentiments were echoed by previous Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion:

The decision to scrap Bookstart is an act of gross cultural vandalism. For the last 20-odd years the scheme has successfully introduced an enormous number of young people to both the pleasure and the necessity of reading and has been of tremendous benefit in the drive towards literacy. Very well organised, and very well run by Booktrust, it has become a national institution, and the envy of the world.The savings made by its abolition will be negligible; the damage done will be immense.

Renowned author Ian McEwan joined the chorus of support for Bookstart, saying:

I’m appalled to hear that Bookstart is for the chop and I’m counting on Michael Gove to reconsider. This modestly funded, truly civilised scheme has brought to millions of kids benefits far beyond the calculations of politicians. Who knows what seeds have been planted in young minds? It’s by initiatives like this that we hope to measure ourselves as a mature and thoughtful society. A U-turn on this would be an honourable choice.

But it’s Philip Pullman who spoke about Bookstart most beautifully:

It’s like seeing someone smashing aside a butterfly with the back of their hand: wanton destruction. Sheer stupid vandalism, like smashing champagne bottles as a drunken undergraduate. It doesn’t matter: someone else will clear it up. Well, if you miss the first years of a child’s development, nothing can clear it up. It’s gone. It won’t happen. A whole generation will lose out.

Bookstart is one of the most imaginative and generous schemes ever conceived. To put a gift of books into the hands of newborn children and their parents is to help open the door into the great treasury of reading, which is the inheritance of every one of us, and the only road to improvement and development and intellectual delight in every field of life.

Without access to literature, how can we be surprised when literacy levels are so low? In a world where many children start high school barely able to read and a child’s horror and confusion at receiving books for Christmas becomes an internet meme, we need a government that will encourage and nurture children, not abolish their chances in life to save a few pennies.

Screwing English, Welsh & Northern Irish students, screwing Scottish students (but after they graduate!), turning over education to big business, slashing spending, or relying on charitable donations – that’s the spectacularly shit choices for the future of  our universities and colleges outlined in today’s long-awaited Scottish Government review on higher education funding.

It’s the first steps in undoing what’s gradually become accepted in Scotland over the past decade – that education should be free. In 1999, it was, ironically enough, the Lib Dems who oversaw the abolishing of fees, and then in 2007, it was the SNP who got rid of the graduate endowment, a one-off sum paid after completing studies. It’s put Scotland miles ahead of the rest of the UK in providing access to education for all, and is one of the best achievements of the devolved administration. Today’s announcement now sets the ground for its gradual reverse.

There’s little in the way of surprise in the proposals, coming just one week after the House of Commons vote which will see tuition fees at English universities rocket to between £6-9000 a year from 2012, largely to substitute a dramatic fall in state funding. Given the knock-on impact that the changes in England will have on Scottish funding via the Barnett Formula, the argument being put forward by the Scottish Government, and Scottish unis themselves, is that something is going to have to give.

However, what’s put forward in today’s report is only tentative at this stage, with the SNP to line up their concrete policy in the coming months, prior to May’s Holyrood election. As such, the paper is more a list of possibilities rather than any definite policy proposals, but nonetheless it does point in a direction which has worrying implications for future Scottish students.

While much is being made of the fact it rules out “up-front” tuition fees, this is a virtually meaningless phrase – no one, in England or elsewhere, pays  up-front tuition fees. Almost everyone gets a student loan to cover their fees, which is then paid back (with interest) in the decades following graduation. This is why it’s a total myth that a “graduate contribution” is somehow a progressive alternative to fees – they’re the same thing. Yet a graduate tax is exactly what the Scottish review lays out.

In all, there’s six different proposals in the review, in order to “stimulate a debate” over the coming months on the best solution for the future of Higher Education. In reality though, most of them are complementary and in all likelihood we’ll see a mixture of them being implemented in 2012, to coincide with the changes in England. To summarise, the main policy ideas in the paper are:

• for the state to keep its role as the main source of education funding
• for the state to remain as a funder of education, but alongside a graduate contribution
• increasing fees for English, Welsh & Northern Irish students, who currently pay just under £2000 a year, to £6,000
• increasing income from donations & charity
• increase investment from businesses
• “efficiency savings” – a.k.a. cuts

We need to be clear that all of these – with the exception of the first (ie. the status quo) – are regressive measures that seek to bring individual contributions into the fray, negate state funding and add to the overall marketisation of education. The idea that business contributions can replace state funding is particularly dangerous; while there’ll be plenty of money from the likes of BAE Systems for cutting-edge bomb making and Glaxo for profit-oriented medical research, what about every other subject that isn’t worthy of corporate investment? Only last week, staff at Glasgow Uni had to come together to vote down management proposals to allow business members onto the university court.

The SNP will argue that they’re only implementing these measures through necessity, and that unlike the Tories  in Westminster, they’re not hellbent on privatising education. But this doesn’t change what they’re trying to enact – we need ‘Scotland’s Champions’ to stand up to the Coalition, not cower and implement the cuts, fees or backdoor privatisation on their behalf. As for making students from the other parts of the UK pay more – in a bid to quell overblown fears about thousands of “fees refugees” pouring over the border seeking cheaper education – it’s divisive and unfair.

We’ve already seen thousands of students on the streets and university, college and school campuses across Scotland – while our ‘representatives’ in NUS Scotland might be happy to settle for a graduate tax, let’s make it clear that we won’t. A huge fight to defend the principle of free education is on our hands, but we’re entering it in good stead, with even today’s announcement made in virtual secrecy – its date made public only yesterday due to the fear of student protests at its unveiling. Ahead of the Scottish election, maximum pressure must be placed on every party to not go down the road of a graduate tax or fees – and after their election, to stick to their fucking promises.