A few days ago i was in Den Haag at the Eurostudent 4 kick off meeting (yes, they are continuing the good work). They asked me to give a speech on the relevance of the social dimension. But writing that speech was more difficult then i imagened. Difficult because i find it self-evident. And also because i was feeling realy bad the day i planned to write the speech. But after i while i found some inspiration, mainly from ESU policy papers. And as some people told me they liked it, i’ll just share it with my audience here as well.

The European Students’ Union (ESU) is the umbrella organisation of 49 national unions of students from 38 countries and through these members represents over 11 million students. The aim of ESU is to represent and promote the educational, social, economic and cultural interests of students at a European level towards all relevant bodies. One of our main goals is fighting for a social dimension.

So when I read the title of this panel, I thought it would be easy to prepare this speech. But is was not so easy. Because as students, we consider the relevance of the social dimension to be self-evident. Education is a right not a privilege. And that statement should not need argumentation. And indeed, we often get support for this goal. But still, reality shows, Eurostudent data shows, that it is not self-evident.

Higher education serves many goals. To ESU, higher education should mainly serve as a means for social development and democratic empowerment, a means of accumulating and sharing knowledge and economic competitiveness, and as a means for personal growth and well-being.

ESU promotes the democratisation of higher education, so that everyone will be able to access and succeed regardless of their background. ESU objects to all discrimination equally. We consider education to be the main instrument for emancipation.

Education is a potential tool for people to break away from poverty. Higher education should be a tool of social mobility. In the vision of ESU the emancipator function of HE is extremely important. Therefor we demand more attention in the future to the problem of lower participation of people from lower social-economic background and migrants. Instead of only focusing on excellence, higher education should focus on accessibility and retention rates.

Certain conditions are needed to meet these objectives, that to us are self-evident as well. Education is a public good and a public responsibility and therefor should be publicly funded. The accessibility of higher education should not be affected by inequalities such as disabilities, distance, economic disadvantage, age or social and cultural background.

Unfortunalty, the reality is that this social dimension as we see it, is not so evident. Higher education is reproducing, and even reinforcing, existing inequalities in society. Education opportunities are linked to background. Education is reproducing a largely “monocultural” society, preserving the values of the dominant groups. This monoculture has systematically led to the exclusion of many in society. And instead of reducing poverty, attending higher education is sometimes creating poverty, as many students live in a difficult financial situation.

In the past many promises were made to make the social dimension a reality. At the Unesco World Conference in Higher Education in 1998, the folowing was stated: “We, participants are convinced that education is a fundamental pillar of human rights, democracy, sustainable development and peace, and shall therefore become accessible to all throughout life.”

In the Bologna Process, already in Prague in 2001, the ministers stated that they “reaffirmed the need, recalled by students, to take account of the social dimension in the Bologna process.” By 2005, so four years later, the ministers managed to define this social dimension: “the student body entering, participating in and completing higher education at all levels should reflect the diversity of our populations”. Unfortunalty, the social dimension still is the most vague and inconcrete of all action lines.

Since 1966, the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, also known as the Pact of New York, states that “Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, […], in particular by the progressive introduction of free education”.

But, these promises made by the ministers have been violated in many countries. Education funding and financial support for students has become the biggest area of concern for our member unions. Across Europe, we see tuition fees being introduced or where they exist already, raised in value.

The fear of debt is preventing potential students of entering higher education, especially for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. There are constant calls for a marketisation of education to substitute for the lack of public funding for institutions. These moves are contradictory to the ministers’ intentions as mentioned before.

Despite the importance being given to the social dimension, the commitments remain vague. Ministers should, for the coming years, commit to lowering study costs and providing adequate support to students through sufficient student financing and student service systems. There remain many barriers to education, including admission policies based solely on prior academic achievement and extra-curricular activity, inaccessible curricula, materials and buildings and a lack of appropriate information available to first generation students.

In the comming months, new policy lines will be set out. In the Bologna Process, the ministers will decide on the future of the Bologna Process. The European Union will also adopt a new education agenda for the next decade. And the Unesco will organise another World Conference on Higher Education. Our ministers should agree on concrete measures to make progress on the social dimension. Otherwise, in 10 years time, we will come to the same conclusion as we do today: the social dimension is very relevant but not a reality.

As students, we put forward the following demands:

• establishing generous, accessible and parent-independent systems of grants that supports the student as a learner, meaning covering all costs of living and learning.

• Tuition fees must be abolished. When existing, measures should be taken to compensate for the burden of fees.

• Study costs should be monitored regularly.

• Student services should be subsidised sufficiently to provide student housing, transportation discounts, healthy food provisions, sport facilities, medical care, etc.

• Anti-discrimination legislation covering higher education must be set up so that all kinds of discrimination can be fought.

These should result in an increase in participation rates. A target to increase participation by 2020 should be established. But this benchmark should not be about providing more knowledge workers to support our economy. It must be implemented in a balanced way that ensures participative equity and fully accessible higher education, so that the expansion of higher education is accompanied by the real democratisation of HE.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Eurostudent on behalve of the European students, for their work in gathering data on the social dimension. Some of the results are a strong support to our work and we will do our best to get the ministers to listen. It is time for policy makers to draw conclusion from the data that has been gathered.