International Higher Education, Fall 2004

GATS Redux: The WTO and Higher Education Returns to Center Stage

Philip G. Altbach
Philip G. Altbach is J. Donald Monan SJ professor of higher education and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.

With the collapse of the WTO’s Cancun trade talks a year ago amidst recriminations between developing countries and others concerning agricultural exports and other issues, treaty negotiations were pushed to the back burner. Trade discussions moved to the regional and bilateral levels. Now, there are signs that WTO negotiations are again taking center stage. Leaders of the world’s trading nations worry that failure will weaken the WTO, move negotiations on to a highly complex set of bilateral treaties, and prevent a “rational” world trade regime. The “Doha round” is being resurrected.

All of this has implications for higher education. The momentum to conclude formal treaty agreements relating to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) also weakened in the aftermath of Cancun. What had been an active set of discussions among trade officials and some in the education community in many countries slowed down. It is likely that GATS will again move to center stage.

Why GATS is Important
It is very difficult for the higher education community—and, for that matter, the general public—to understand GATS and its implications. It is stated in “trade speak” and the legal circumlocutions of treaties. And much of GATS focuses on broader issues relating to intellectual property, banking services, and other aspects of the international flow of services peripheral to higher education. Parts of GATS, however, have implications for higher education. GATS, as an element of the WTO is part of an international treaty. Countries, and by implication academic institutions, are subject to WTO adjudication decisions. Thus, the stakes are very high.

GATS potentially strikes at the heart of academic autonomy, institutional decision making, and national higher education policy. GATS agreements can, once individual countries have agreed, enforce open higher education markets and enable institutions and companies from other countries to engage freely in higher education activities—setting up branch campuses, offering degrees, and so on. Local authorities, perhaps including accreditations and quality control agencies, might have little control. Local institutions, unless complex exceptions were written into the treaty, might be forced to consider foreign applicants for academic posts on an equal basis with local applicants. For countries such as the United States and the larger European countries with strong and mature higher education systems, the chances of being greatly affected by foreign providers is slim. However, for countries with high unmet demand for access, smaller academic systems, and universities at the periphery of the world knowledge network, GATS could result in considerable external impact.

GATS as a Political/Ethical Issue
GATS is actually being pushed by a small but very powerful segment of the education and trade communities. It is highly significant that the government agencies arguing for GATS are not education departments or ministries in general, but rather trade and commerce agencies. In the United States, it has been the U.S. Trade Representative and, in the United Kingdom, the Department of Trade and Industry. The growing for-profit education sector, the testing industry, and the English-language schools, among some others, have also favored GATS as a way of obtaining easy access to markets overseas.

Until 2000 or later, the higher education community worldwide, including the universities and other institutions, accrediting agencies, faculty and student organizations, education unions, and other groups, had little awareness of GATS or its implications. This has changed. A large number of institutions, organizations, and interest groups have now educated themselves about GATS and now constitute a significant force. Conferences about the WTO and GATS have been held around the world. Recently, the Association of African Universities sponsored a conference that passed a statement highly critical of GATS. The International Association of Universities, the American Council on Education, and others have drafted a statement focusing cross-border education and the public interest, dealing in part with GATS. Education International, a federation of major education trade unions such as the National Education Association in the United States and the German teachers union, have also been quite critical of GATS.

Why the Opposition?
While the groups critical of GATS have many rationales and represent many different interests, they are unified by a concern with what can be called the public good and by a conviction that higher education is not a commodity to be traded without constraint. There is recognition that higher education is a complex phenomenon involving not just the marketplace but also national culture, the values of a society, and access and social mobility.

GATS opponents do not oppose the internationalization of higher education, cross-border collaboration, or even necessarily trade in education. Overseas study, collaborative research, institutional cooperation, and other aspects of internationalization are welcomed. They do oppose at least three basic underlying elements of the WTO-GATS approach to higher education—the dominance of the market and the accompanying notion that higher education is a commodity to be traded on an open market where those who have a “competitive advantage” will come to control, the idea that higher education is a private good (to be paid for by “users”—students), and the idea that higher education is a common commodity, easily transferable from one country to another.

GATS critics see the role of higher education differently. Higher education is seen as more than a commodity—it is part of the cultural patrimony and the research infrastructure of a society, and is therefore a public good and at least to some extent, a public responsibility. It is seen as a means of access and social mobility to disenfranchised segments of the publication. And for developing countries, it is seen as a central element for nation building. GATS opponents see higher education as much more than a tradable commodity to be determined by the vagaries of an international marketplace.

The Future
For the first time, there are articulate groups debating the pros and cons of GATS and seeking to understand the highly complex details. The playing field, which was at one time completely dominated by pro-GATS forces, is now contested, with ideas flowing in all directions. The WTO remains dominated by government agencies and commercial interests, and it is thus difficult to gauge the outcome. It might be that the very complexity of the issues involved will make GATS difficult to legislate and even more difficult to implement. One thing is clear—those with concerned about the future of higher education need to be actively involved in the debate and the politics that will inevitably follow.