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The Norwegian students' camp

The student revolt goes from one country to another, and has now also reached the University of Oslo. This does not mean that Norwegian students are facing an imported "revolution". The Norwegian uprising originated partly in special Norwegian conditions, and partly in conditions common to the universities of the industrialized countries.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Orientering 1. May 1968

In particular, two features of the education system form the basis of the university conflict. Both follow the highly industrialized welfare society, and are closely interwoven with each other.

One feature is the democratization of higher education recruitment. Despite the fact that this process has not kept up with the democratization that has otherwise been carried out under seine capitalism, universities today are recruited from far broader teams than before. This is partly a product of the political struggle of the underclass, partly the result of a growing need for academically educated labor.

The second feature is the streamlining of education. The modern industrial state requires an increase in the academically educated workforce, and it also requires as fast and cheap education as possible.

The University's critical function. The universities have always had the task of reproducing academic manpower and technical knowledge, and of producing new knowledge. But it has also played the role of a critical institution in society. As long as the university was exclusively recruited from the higher citizenship, its critical function was not only an ideal for the existing, but was considered useful and desirable. There was little likelihood that the criticism directed at the society by the university would go beyond the existing framework. It would concentrate on bias within the existing, and thus be of a positive nature.

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The critical activities at the university could probably hinder the running of the program. But this did not matter as long as the students had parents who could finance their studies.

New situation. With the increased recruitment to the university, a fundamentally new situation has arisen. It is no longer so certain that the students in their criticism of society will stay within the existing framework. It has also emerged that the universities have increasingly become the hatchery for revolutionary ideas and leaders. Furthermore, the majority of the student body is no longer able to finance their studies themselves.

In this situation, the state and private bureaucracy are deploying their efficiency measures. In Norway, they have seriously come into the picture with the Ottosen Committee's recommendation on post-secondary education. The Ottosen Committee proposes a tighter education pattern in the form of time-limited studies, a stronger custody of students, and a strict separation between vocational education on the one hand and a research education for a small elite on the other. In practice, the proposals will greatly reduce the university's critical function, unilateral emphasis on the rule-taking of technical knowledge, a reduction in the deeper understanding of the subjects in the students, and a reduction in the students' extra-curricular activities.

Major finance and government bureaucracy. For the large part of the students, the Ottosen Committee's attitude has meant a strong awakening and an awareness. They look at the setting not as an investigative work raised above politics, but as a document that speaks the language of big finance and state bureaucracy. They see the attitude as, on the one hand, an attempt to stifle the threat the university's critical function poses to the existing, on the other, an attempt to streamline and rationalize the recruitment of academic staff to the state and business. Clearly, the Committee's political stance is stated when it states that it has drawn its conclusions on the basis of the economic structure in Norway today and the extension of this structure 20 years into the future.

To date, the Ottosen Committee has met with strong opposition from all student bodies that have dealt with its attitude. But the students don't just say no to the committee. The awareness-raising that the committee has created has also led the students to focus on the university structure as it is today, and the relationship the university today has with society.

Lack of democracy. Firstly, the focus is on the lack of democracy at the university. So far, the student bodies have been fairly casual and non-committal. In the shelter of a formal student democracy, a bureaucracy has grown up of student unionists who have been out of contact with the student body, and which administration and authorities have therefore easily been able to manipulate and use as an alibi towards the mass of students. The lack of student power has enabled an authoritarian university structure.

The university's highest body of government, the Academic College, is completely dominated by professors and has only one student representative. The field of professors has meant that the students have minimal influence on the syllabus and teaching curriculum.

This whole structure makes it clear that the Ottosen Committee does not represent a fundamental breach of conditions at the university today. In a number of studies, such as medical, dental and technical, the committee's educational pattern is already a reality. The deeper academic understanding and extra-curricular activities in these studies are also a marked shortcoming. But also in other studies, the critical business is weak. Lack of democracy and lack of critical discussion of teaching and subjects have partly maintained, partly themselves the product of a passive and professionally and technically oriented student population. Thus, the Ottosen Committee's proposal does not represent anything fundamentally new. What is new is that it presents the requirements of big finance and bureaucracy to the university so consistently and explicitly that it has caused the illusion of free academic study to burst for students, even with a view to the current situation at the university. The gap between ideal and reality has been revealed: The Emperor's old clothes were imagined.

Social and financial requirements. It is in this perspective that it must also be seen that the students are now raising social and financial demands. The impression of the students as a privileged group is a relic from the time when the university was exclusively recruited from a small upper class. This impression has no reality today. The majority of students are dependent on loans from the Norwegian Student Loan Fund. These loans are so small that most of them have to take out loans in private banks and work alongside the studies to exist.

The university has long been considered an island isolated from the rest of society. The university has never been, and it is not today. In addition to reflecting and exercising political influence on society, its scientific and critical activities have helped to maintain and continue the existing society. The demands of major finance and bureaucracy for the university clearly show that research represents a productive factor in society.

On this basis, the students now regard themselves as workers in line with other groups of workers in society. They want, like other workers, to sell their labor most expensive. As borrowers, they regard themselves as a low-wage group, and they want to solidify themselves with other wage earners in the fight against the Sandberg Committee's proposal for a tax reform that will affect wage earners. They require student pay, and they require greater government grants for student social purposes. They do not want to meet their demands at the expense of other wage earners, You know that the fisherman, the smallholder and the worker do not get more income in a capitalist economy if the students relax on their demands. They want to ally themselves with other wage earners against the forces they regard as the common enemy, namely the alliance of signal capitalism between big finance and the state bureaucracy.

Political and social involvement. Thus, the student revolt is not an isolated group struggle. Those times are about to disappear as students come together in academic leisure clubs and consider their interests as elevated across the rest of society. The Ottosen Committee's approach has created awareness of the connection between student politics and general politics. Gone is the illusion that a free university can exist in an authoritarian society. It is no coincidence that socialist students are leading the student uprising. The students have discovered that in order to liberate themselves, the entire community must be liberated. And that to free society, it is necessary to control the power of big finance and bureaucracy in favor of a socialist democracy.

The Ottosen Committee's aim was to annihilate the university's critical function, make it a factory for technical knowledge, and further remove students from political and social engagement. The purpose has not been achieved. Instead, the committee's attitude has increased the students' awareness of their situation and their relationship with society. The manipulators have once again suffered their eternal destiny: they forgot that there were people they wanted to manipulate, and thus they once again became victims of their own manipulation.

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