In order to reflect to the European Degree package, ETUCE Committee adopted today a position paper which commented the two proposals for Council recommendations on attractive careers in higher education and on quality assurance. In this paper ETUCE reminds the EU institutions that higher education is a human right and public good. EU countries and higher education institutions need to improve the quality, fairness, equality and social inclusion and public funding of higher education and to consider the recommendations to be implemented according to their national and local circumstances while respecting academic freedom, institutional autonomy, social dialogue and collegial governance.
Education trade unions regret that the initiative sees higher education mostly from the perspective of addressing labour and skills shortages in the EU also by attracting talent to the EU labour market from other continents without mentioning how to avoid global and intra-EU brain-drain. Trade unions strongly believe that education is a public good and the right to access to education goes beyond the employability and the quickly changing needs of the labour market.
Education trade unions remind the EU institutions about the fundamental role of teachers in quality education. In her Political Guidelines for the European Commission 2024-2029, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pointed out that “Europe needs a radical step change in ambition and action – for all skill levels and for all types of training and education”. To make this ambition a reality, Europe also needs a step change in raising the standards of academic freedom and the security of employment. There should be no higher education institution without protection of academic freedom and tenure in the EU.
The Communication underlines that the initiative is voluntary to the EU countries to implement, especially on altering quality assurance regulations, while EU funding may link to this. We remind that higher education institutions need to be supported by appropriate resources, in particularly by sustainable public investment, in order to effectively implement the initiatives, and as quality assurance clearly links to staff workload. The EU Member States should involve trade unions representing academics in decision making on resource allocation on quality assurance systems.
Higher education and research staff have been suffering from increased precarity due to short-term project-based contracts which is a result of reduced or unstable public investment to higher education institutions. ETUCE welcomes that the initiative acknowledges that right to collective bargaining, effective social dialogue with education trade unions, academic freedom, inclusiveness and gender equality in work, job security and decent working conditions need to guaranteed in order to support academics’ work for quality teaching and research. Paid educational and sabbatical leave must also be guaranteed in order to support academics’ work for quality teaching and research. We also suggest more joint work between European Commission’s DG EAC and DG Research to find additional synergies in the implementation of the European Career framework for higher education and the European Career framework for researchers, as in many HEIs teaching and research work cannot be separated.
ETUCE is looking forward to further work on this initiative with the European Commission and within the European Sectoral Social Dialogue for Education.
https://www.csee-etuce.org/images/Position_on_European_Degree_and_Academic_Careers.pdf