UNBSJ senate defends academic freedom
Published Thursday July 17th, 2008
Education University's academic governing body weighs in on province's PSE action plan
SAINT JOHN - Academic freedom and independent governance are the keys to a credible university, say members of the UNB Saint John senate.
The senate has passed two resolutions in response to the Post-Secondary Education Action Plan which was released in June. Both focus on the importance of autonomy and academic freedom.
The first resolution supports an increase of autonomy for the province's community colleges, and the second recommends that senior administration ensure that university autonomy and academic freedom not be impaired by legislative changes to the institution's university act and that of other universities. It is also recommended that if university acts are reviewed, that the administration engage the university community in the process.
The university campus' senate is its principal academic governing body. Another exists for the Fredericton campus.
"A hallmark of a university is our academic freedoms," said UNB vice-president Saint John Robert MacKinnon.
The first resolution about community colleges, said MacKinnon, is "as one post-secondary institution to another - this was our senate saying that's a positive recommendation of the post-secondary education report."
The second resolution defines the need for the university community to be involved in the university acts' decision-making processes.
"We want to be involved," said the vice-president. "We want our senior administration involved and we want the academic community involved about the governance model."
Ed Doherty, minister of post-secondary education, training and labour, said he's excited to implement the action plan, as it opens up more options for students.
"We have a really good made-in-New Brunswick report that's student-focused," he said.
Doherty said he had little to say about the plan's effects on institutional autonomy, noting that what the government is interested in with the university act legislation is to see institutions' financial accountability.
"The government is interested, in that universities must be accountable financially in terms of the taxpayers' dollars that you and I pay toward their funding," he said.
The strengths of each school are recognized nationally already, he said, citing Maclean's university rankings. He said the intention of the action plan is to build on the strengths of each institution, not damage their credibility.
Opening up the university acts for the institutions is a recommendation, he said, but "I'm more interested in building on the strengths of our individual institutions and moving on from there."
He noted that in today's world, students often enter post-secondary education with one career in mind and exit with another. The action plan's call for greater ease of credit transfer will help this, he said.
"It's a whole different landscape out there now in terms of post-secondary education," said Doherty. "New Brunswick is taking the lead across the country and we're very excited for the students, who are the big winners here."
Miriam Jones, the Saint John vice-president of the Association of UNB Teachers (AUNBT), said opening up the university acts is seen as potentially detrimental by the union, as the modification of university mandates and mission statements within the acts could take away from the credentials of the institutions, should they implement any government control over programs.
"We're particularly concerned about opening the university acts and the threat of having this overseeing body that would essentially be able to tell post-secondary institutions what to do," Jones said. "We're delighted that the senate could come out so strongly and particularly and that the upper administration would vote unanimously."
Leslie Jeffrey, a political science professor and senate representative at UNBSJ, said the resolutions stand for what makes a university a university - to be free from outside control to allow free thought and speech.
"Even as government is trying through the new report to exert more control over universities, they have to be reminded that once the government starts to control a university, it loses its university status. The foundational principle of a university is to be a place of free inquiry and debate, and to have research and teaching based on evidence and inquiry, not government or corporate interests."
According to Jeffrey, the purpose of a university is to teach people how to be critical thinkers and to produce research which challenges what a group such as a corporation or the government might want to hear. Autonomy is important for this cause.
"If they continue down this path, trying to increase government control of universities, they jeopardize the recognition of New Brunswick degrees outside of New Brunswick and internationally," said Jeffrey.
Modifying university acts, she said, could lead to universities becoming a tool for government interests, and not free thought.
Fellow senate representative and history professor Debra Lindsay said that "we're worried that once the government opens the acts that the mandate will be one of governments' choosing, rather than that which is found in most universities. We don't want to be the test case for this kind of government tinkering."
Lindsay said students should be on an even playing field with those elsewhere in the country, free of government as they are right now without government modification of the institutions' individual university acts.
"Why would students want to attend universities that are not equivalent to institutions elsewhere?"
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