From Placid to Turbulent: Higher Education Turns Strategic

1. From Placid to Turbulent: Higher Education Turns Strategic Michael Buzzelli, Department of Geography and Faculty of Education, UWO Presented August 16, 2011 at the Centre for Higher Education Policy and Training, UBC, Vancouver

2. 40 – 40 – 20

3. Placid (post-WWII) • Growth and stability to ~ 1995 • Overall trends…systems and institutions • Socialised investment in HE alongside the growth of the welfare state (Mishra,1984; Axelrod, 2002) • A social contract to grow, make accessible and distribute the benefits of HE to individuals and the wider society (Fallis, 2007)

4. Placid (post-WWII) Higher education policy development in Canada in the two decades after 1970 was both modest and incremental (Skolnik & Jones 1992), an observation that is also true in Manitoba between 1967 and 1997...the broad structure of the system itself – the types, numbers and mandates of institutions established in the late 1960s – remained generally the same. Dan Smith (Manitoba’s Council on Post-Secondary Education), in CJHE, 2011

5. …to turbulent (post-1995) If Manitoba’s post-secondary system between 1967 and 1997 was characterized by stability, the system since 1997 has been characterized by considerable structural change. Orton (2003), Malcomson & Lee (2004), and Skolnik (2004b) argue that post-secondary education in Canada has entered a period of more radical transformation, with consensus that the backdrop for transformation is associated with the impact of globalization and related changing patterns of economic activity... Dan Smith, CJHE, 2011

6. Turbulent (post-1995) • Canada is ‘late to the game’ (Jones, 2004) • Some developments in other jurisdictions • G. Keller, 1983, Academic strategy: the management revolution in American higher education • In essence: “academic drift” growing out of responses to new and intensifying pressures; new ‘organisational environments’

7. Turbulent (post-1995) • Turk (ed), Universities at risk: how politics, special interests and corporatization threaten academic integrity • Desai et al., Canada’s universities go global • Cote and Allahar, • 2007, Ivory tower blues: A university system in crisis; • 2011, Lowering higher education: the rise of corporate universities and the fall of liberal education • Clark et al, 2009, Academic transformation: the forces reshaping higher education in Ontario • Bercuson et al., 1998, Petrified campus: the crisis in Canada’s universities

9. Turbulent (post-1995) • University mission statements

10. ..the question I raise is: are universities optimally organized to address the fundamental ‘global challenges’ that exist, and at the pace these challenges deserved to be addressed? If not, what should be done about this organizational-ethical dilemma? “So far, none of the university networks that sprang up at the beginning of this century has fulfilled its promise. Attempts to jump-start research collaboration on crucial issues through these networks have seen modest success at best. Let’s be honest. Just because presidents and vice-chancellors say they would like something to happen on the research front does not make it happen, even if we can cobble together ‘seed’ funding. Research networks typically arise in an organic fashion from the bottom up.” [Proposed ways forward: build from the bottom up; challenge national myopia; communicate authentically about strengths; help our students and alumni become global citizens; walk the talk]

11. Turbulent (post-1995) 40 – 40 – 20