If one looks at a similar process that is occurring in the UK Post-secondary system, the proposals are exactly in line with the neo-liberal economic agenda that we are seeing unfold here: defining “quality” and “excellence” in research, as narrowly as possible, as what is strictly in the interests of big business. Arts, humanities, non-business related sciences, all get defunded and disappear. What’s left? Wal-Mart & Co. Universities that prepare you for work at Wal-Mart and its subsidiaries.

I do indeed hope that OUSA will strongly reject these plans, will lobby the government for increased PS funding at all levels — tied to student needs rather than business needs, and will seek to educate students against the wrong-headed notion that a University degree is to provide one with a job — it is there to provide one with an education.