OECD/Norway Forum on Trade in Educational Services,
Trondheim, 3-4 November 2003

Kristin Clemet, Minister of Education and Research, Norway:

Norwegian Perspectives on Internationalisation and Trade in Educational Services

First of all I would like to welcome you to Trondheim, Norway’s historic capital and arch bishop’s seat until the Reformation. Many of you came to the reception in the 12 ^th>-century Arch Bishop’s Palace yesterday, and I know that some have also been to see the cathedral, supposedly built on the site where St. Olaf, King of Norway, was buried nearly a thousand years ago. Trondheim is also a centre of higher education, with some 27 000 students, including several hundred from other countries. It is therefore an appropriate venue for this conference. The picture on the front of the programme shows the Main Building of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which currently offers 11 Master’s programmes in English and receives about 8 000 requests for information about admission from international candidates every year.

The Norwegian government is very pleased to host the second OECD Forum on trade in educational services. I was myself a speaker at the first Forum in Washington DC last year, which as far as I know was the first major international conference on this theme, bringing together all the main stakeholders. These include traditional higher education institutions, new types of providers, professional associations, students and policy-makers. Because of the increasingly international nature of higher education, to which this conference in itself is testimony, international organisations, both inter- and non-governmental, also have an important role to play. Our aim during these two days is to build on last year’s Forum and take the debate a step further, supported by new data on cross-border higher education and analyses of its implications. For reasons which I will come back to, there will be a particular focus on quality assurance, accreditation and recognition. I am pleased that so many of you, more than 160 people from some 25 countries, have found your way here. Again: welcome.

Norway is currently playing an active role in international forums where higher education is on the agenda, and will continue to do so. In May we hosted a UNESCO conference on "Globalization and Higher Education: Implications for North-South Dialogue", and at the recent UNESCO General Conference Norway, supported by Iceland, Japan, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania, proposed a resolution aimed at strengthening UNESCO’s role in assuring the quality of global higher education. The resolution, which was adopted by consensus (with some amendments), emphasised the importance of international education agreements as a normative framework for responding to the challenges of globalization. With its 190 member states UNESCO is uniquely positioned to develop such agreements, and the resolution gives it a mandate to "develop practices and principles to guide cross-border provision of education" in cooperation with other relevant organizations, such as the OECD. We are fortunate to have with us Assistant Director-General John Daniel to draw the line from the conference in Oslo to this one, and bring us up to date on UNESCO’s work in this area.

At the conference in Oslo, Mr. Daniel used the expression "horses for courses" about UNESCO and the General Agreement on Trade in Services: they serve different purposes. The GATS agreement, which we will again discuss here, is not an instrument for regulating the content or quality of educational services. Rather, it encourages the development of international cooperation and international standards for such services in other contexts. Nevertheless, there is a lot of scepticism to the inclusion of education in the GATS, not least in the developing world, but also among higher education institutions, academics and students in developed countries.

I believe this scepticism to a large degree can be traced to two factors: Many academics find the terminology of economics alien – and even alienating – to the education sector. Also, in line with a kind of precautionary principle, many remain sceptical until they feel that they have an adequate basis for drawing their own conclusions.

Such concerns are legitimate and must be taken seriously. Thus, it is very important that the education sector is properly informed about the agreement, the ongoing negotiations and their implications. Further, that the negotiations that should lead to fair and transparent regulations, are themselves as transparent and inclusive as possible. This is a challenge both for the WTO itself and for organizations active in education, such as the OECD and UNESCO.

It is therefore essential to analyse the possible consequences of increasing trade in educational services in general, and the GATS agreement in particular, for national education systems, institutions and students, and to discuss policy options and choices. All relevant stakeholders must be involved. Indeed, this is one of the main objectives of the present conference. In connection with the GATS negotiations, Norway has initiated a contact group to discuss education questions. The group is diverse, and includes major exporting countries, a major importer such as China, and several countries from the developing world. In all, 17 countries take part. Again the objective is to make sure that education perspectives are sufficiently taken into account.

Norway is of course itself an importer: at the latest count, we had about 23,000 students abroad, whereas the number of those who come to study in this country is much smaller. As such we are naturally concerned that the education offered is of the highest possible quality, and that it is offered on terms which are fair and transparent. In relation to education the GATS agreement is in my view primarily a means of regulating an activity, trade in educational services. I believe two observations should be kept in mind when discussing globalisation and higher education: The first observation is that trade in education is nothing new, that it actually does occur, both domestically and trans-border, and that it will continue to grow whether we ignore it, try to wish it away, or take an active approach. The second observation is that education is not a commodity. It is a highly complex good, and must be considered with due regard for its special characteristics, and thus cannot be commodified.

The two main issues then become how to minimise the threats and maximise the benefits of globalisation in education. Further, how do we narrow the knowledge and technological divide between developed and developing countries?

In my mind, the alternative to an active approach is further unrestrained growth of an unregulated market – diploma mills and dumping of low quality education. This is not least an issue of great concern for developing countries, and poses, for instance, a real threat to the UNESCO Education For All goals.

The background reports from the OECD secretariat show that although student mobility remains the main form of cross-border post-secondary education and is growing steadily, other forms are also expanding quickly. Several countries regard foreign provision on commercial terms as a means of widening access for the population, with e-learning as an important element. It will be interesting to hear what the speaker from China has to say on this point. Next year’s forum on trade in educational services, to be hosted by Australia in cooperation with both the OECD and UNESCO, will have capacity-building as a special theme.

I believe that increased trade in education, as part of a wider movement of globalization and properly regulated, may benefit all parties and stakeholders. I further believe that it is better for the countries involved to agree on some basic rules rather than leave the market largely unregulated. This is not to say that the GATS or other trade agreements solve all problems. Experience shows that in some cases trade liberalization has led to unequal benefits. A commitment to fairness must also mean an obligation to ensure that this does not happen. Furthermore, a well-functioning market depends on sufficient and fairly distributed access to information. The students (in this case) must be able to make informed choices. This includes protecting them from rogue providers and sub-standard provision.

To achieve these goals other instruments than the GATS are needed. In particular, quality assurance should be seen as the domain of the education community itself, starting with the institutions and including quality assurance, accreditation and recognition agencies as well as the national policy level. In Europe, quality assurance is an area of priority in the so-called Bologna process in the period leading up to the next Ministerial Conference in 2005. The conference will be held in Bergen here in Norway, and we are currently setting up a secretariat in the Ministry to prepare it and, more importantly, to serve and support the various activities in the process in the meantime. At the global level I have mentioned the role of UNESCO and the mandate it was given by the General Conference in relation to quality assurance in cross-border education. I will conclude by commenting on some points in the resolution and their implications for our discussions here.

The resolution contains a number of recommendations for member countries and then draws up a line of action for UNESCO itself. I will single out three points. The director-general is invited, as I already mentioned, to

develop practices and principles to guide cross-border provision of education, drawing on the competence of UNESCO and other international agencies, in close cooperation with quality assurance agencies and educational providers;

and further, to

promote the development of information tools for students regarding access, qualifications recognition and quality assurance of higher education;

and

develop a plan for building regional and global networks of information on quality assurance and accreditation among national education authorities and quality assurance agencies to provide relevant information including lists of bona fide institutions of higher education approved or accredited by the authority in each country.

Finally, the general conference invited UNESCO partners to cooperate in the attainment of the objectives listed in the resolution.

The OECD has taken up this invitation. Among your papers, you will find a description of a proposed OECD/UNESCO initiative on enhancing "consumer protection" in cross-border post-secondary education. The focus is on international quality assurance, accreditation and recognition issues. "Consumer" is of course a term from the market, which does not take into account the interaction between student and teacher in the learning process, and hence not the contribution of the students themselves to its outcomes. Neither does it take into account the fact that students are an integral part of higher education institutions in a way that customers in the market are not. However, it is felt to be appropriate here, since a central aim of the initiative is to protect students, and in a wider sense employers and society at large, from misinformation, educational programmes of questionable quality and qualifications of limited validity.

The background reports show that quality assurance, accreditation and recognition systems at the national level are in many cases not designed to deal with cross-border education and for-profit providers. Measures at the international level are therefore needed. The document stresses that such measures must be based on mutual trust and respect between countries and stakeholders, and proposes a number of possible actions to be taken on this basis. Among them is an international database of education institutions and study programmes that have been approved in each country under the country’s own system.

The OECD/UNESCO initiative will be further presented and discussed at the Forum, not least in the concluding panel discussion. The Norwegian government supports the aim of developing strong national systems for approval, quality assurance and accreditation in post-secondary education, with supplementary measures at the international level, in order to ensure that students all over the world get the educational opportunities and quality they deserve. This must be our vision: access to the benefits of knowledge for individuals and societies in all parts of the world as a means of continued cultural, social and economic development. The question is how to get there. I look forward to hearing your views and ideas, in the context of a broader discussion of the continuing globalization of education and its consequences.