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Contested Values and Critical Debates Interventions: Position Papers and Dialogues
and obligations of professors have significantly increased, while, at the same time, the number of students is also rising (multiplicity and de-individualisation), which makes it impossible for professors to provide high-quality instruction of any depth or to pursue research work of any breadth. This is the first cycle of commercialisation, in which universities and faculties have had to (and still have to) adapt their programmes to the interests of industry – leading to the fragmentation and ‘specialisation’ of learning processes – or they have introduced ‘focused’ or ‘applicative’ programmes (e.g. a new private faculty of ‘applied social sciences’ in Slovenia). Here, we are no longer talking about providing independent, systematic, ‘academic knowledge’ that is broad and comprehensive, but rather about explicitly practical and narrowly focused ‘new programmes of study’ that are supposed to satisfy the current – and commercial – needs of society. At the same time, a negative atmosphere has been forming, and indeed, has already formed, toward the social sciences and humanities, which are seen as ‘not necessary’ or ‘not useful’. This leads to segregation and a lack of equality between different programmes of study and different kinds of knowledge, and even to the unequal standing of disciplines and knowledges within the university. The study of art is, perhaps, in an even more fragile position, as its specific nature and small ‘numerical’ size, its lesser ‘influence’, make it a weak opponent to neoliberal thinking, to which art and culture appear to be ‘nothing but an expense’. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia, every citizen has the right to public, accessible and free schooling and education. There are no tuition fees in public schools and universities. The state is also obliged by the constitution to fund public universities, which are, in their programmes as well as in their research and artistic explorations, politically independent and financially autonomous institutions. However, the state has not prepared or commissioned any serious analysis in connection with the introduction and implementation of the Bologna Process, nor did it foresee the potential organisational, technical, spatial, material, staffing, etc. consequences of these changes. At the same time, it also failed to provide any additional funds whatsoever for the preparation or introduction of new programmes and academic content, all of which have had to be planned, implemented and carried out ‘ad hoc’, as it were. Meanwhile, since 2009, and especially under the new ‘austerity measures’ of the past two years (2011–2012), funding has dramatically diminished. Despite not being funded by the state, the reformed programmes have, nevertheless, already begun at the master’s level. In Slovenia,