The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

As the United States and other member countries of the World Trade Organization continue negotiations on a new global-trade agreement in Geneva, about two dozen groups representing American colleges are beseeching U.S. officials to avoid making concessions that would threaten the autonomy of higher-education institutions.

I don’t have a subscription, but I assume the objections raised are similar to those documented in this older Chronicle piece by the same author. Applying traditional trade ideas to the services industry is sometimes a bit difficult, but here you get an infant-industry-like argument:

He says he worries that countries struggling to build a
national higher-education system could see large numbers of
middle-class and affluent students enrolling in private
foreign colleges — including distance-learning institutions
— leaving poorer students behind in a decaying public
higher-education system that does not receive enough financial
support from its government. South Africa, which is trying to
educate more black students, is particularly concerned about
this, says Mr. Hayward.

And trade hypocrisy is always in style:

Joseph Duffey, senior vice president of Sylvan Learning
Systems, which is actively establishing educational programs
abroad, says the United States should not ask other countries
to liberalize their policies for granting visas to American
educators when the United States has restrictive visa
policies.

Also check out the description of a book titled The WTO and The University:

The theory of the commodification of higher education—that higher education is increasingly being treated as a commercial product—emerged from the data as an explanation for both the USTR’s decision to include higher education in a major trade agreement, as well as the widespread negative reaction of the higher education industry to free trade in higher education services. This research revealed that American higher education was initially unprepared for the challenges of addressing trade concerns, leaving the USTR to take its cues about higher education from an organization without representative input from the broad higher education community.

I’m not at all familiar with this issue, so I’d be interested in learning what the latest Chronicle article says about the subject. I expect that the debate over education, which is the United States’ sixth-largest export, will be just one of many contentious discussions as more and more services become tradable.