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The Government and Politics of a Developing University: A Canadian Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

InCanada, more perhaps than in any other country, the 1960's have seen such a quantitative change in higher education that it must be judged a qualitative change as well. A significant number of new universities, including my own York University, Toronto, have come into being, and most recently a system of community colleges has been created to cope with the large number of students who wish to proceed beyond high school but who are unable to obtain university places. In my province of Ontario the number of students attending university has doubled in the past four years. Five years from now it will have doubled again.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1969

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References

* This paper was presented at the Conference on “The Task of Universities in a Changing World,” University of Notre Dame, April 16–19, 1969. I am indebted to Mrs. Iris Mason, Librarian, Department of University Affairs, Province of Ontario for her help in preparing the footnote material.

1 The Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa (DBS) produces statistics on Canadian universities in Canada Yearbook (annual). Its Education Division publishes Survey of Libraries (annual) and University Student Expenditure and Income in Canada (occasional). Its Higher Education Section publishes Canadian Universities, Income and Expenditure (annual), Fall Enrollment in Universities and Colleges (annual), and Salaries and Qualifications of Teachers in Universities and Colleges (annual).

The Department of External Affairs, Ottawa, publishes Survey of Higher Education; notes for the guidance of students considering university study in Canada (annual).

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) publishes University Affairs six times a year and the Proceedings of its annual meetings. The AUCC was established by act of parliament in 1965. It succeeded the National Conference of Canadian Universities (NCCU), the executive agency of which had been the Canadian Universities Foundation (CUF).

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) publishes the C.A.U.T. Bulletin quarterly.

Two recent commercial ventures are Canadian University (Toronto: Maclean-Hunter, 1966Google Scholar) monthly, and Canadian News Facts (Toronto: Marprep, 1967Google Scholar) twice monthly.

2 See for example the reports of the Committee of Presidents of Universities of Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press): Post-Secondary Education in Ontario, 1962–1970 (1962), The Structure of Post-Secondary Education in Ontario, Supplementary Report No. 1 (1963), The City College (1965), From the Sixties to the Seventies: An Appraisal of Higher Education in Ontario (1966), System Emerging, First Annual Review, 1966–67 (1967), Collective Autonomy, Second Annual Review, 1967–68 (1968).

3 The standard work is Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., The Politics of Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar.

4 All professors at new universities are graduates of older institutions. Presumably all politicians and civil servants in new countries have been educated under colonial regimes.

5 For Ontario see Report of the Minister of University Affairs 1967 and Report of the Committee on University Affairs 1967. These are the first reports. They list no publisher or date.

6 For York University see Ross, Murray G., The New University (Toronto, 1961Google Scholar) and New Universities in the Modern World (London, 1966)Google Scholar. Dr. Ross is President of York University.

7 See Sheffield, Edward F., University Development: The Past Five Years and the Next Ten (Ottawa, 1961)Google Scholar. Also Stanley, George F. G. and Sylvestre, Guy (eds.), Canadian Universities Today (Toronto, 1961Google Scholar) and Enrollment in Schools and Universities, 1951–52 to 1975–76 (Ottawa, 1967)Google Scholar. The rate of Canadian university growth is evident from the following approximate estimates compiled by George Michie, formerly Research Officer, Department of University Affairs, Province of Ontario:.

8 Seeley, John R., “Quo Warranto: The ‘Berkeley Issue’” and “The Berkeley Issue in Time and Place,” in Adelman, Howard and Lee, Dennis, The University Game (Toronto, 1968)Google Scholar.

See also Richard W. Burkhart: “Mario Savio's call to action and the founding of the UGEQ [Quebec Union of Students] were independent events but less than two months apart. The Twenty-ninth Canadian Union of Students (1965) Congress adopted an activist semisyndicalist stance.” “The Emerging Students’ Society,” “Tripartite Commission on the Nature of the University [McGill] Vol. 1, April 1968. Position paper No. 9.

9 Williams, D. C., “The Nature of the Contemporary University,” Proceedings, AUCC, 1968, p. 104Google Scholar.

10 SirDuff, James and Berdahl, Robert O., University Government in Canada. Report of a Commission sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (Toronto, 1966)Google Scholar. See also Governments and the University, the Frank Gerstein Lectures, York University, 1966 (Toronto, 1966)Google Scholar. A study of the relations between universities and governments has been sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Canadian Union of Students and L'Union Generale des Etudiants du Quebec and financed by the Ford Foundation. AUCC, Proceedings, 1968, p. 65.

11 “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly or even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, National Press Club, Washington, D.C. March 25, 1969.

12 Amongst the critiques note Al Purdy (ed.), The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S. (Edmonton, Alberta), and The University League for Social Reform's The Americanization of Canada (forthcoming).

13 “This Report has been sponsored by the entire university community in Canada” (my italics), Claude Bissell, President of the University of Toronto in University Government in Canada, Foreword, p. v. The sponsors of the study (commissioned in 1962) did not include the federal or provincial governments, boards of governors, or students.

14 Churchill, Winston S., A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. 1 (London, 1956), 35Google Scholar.

15 Note the connection between culture and technology assumed by Pye, Lucien in Aspects of Political Development (Boston, 1966Google Scholar) and Communications and Political Development (Princeton, 1963)Google Scholar.

16 For Canadian development see Harris, Robin S. (ed.), Changing Patterns of Higher Education in Canada (Toronto, 1966)Google Scholar, and Sheffield, Edward F., “Post-Secondary Education in Canada” in Universities and Colleges of Canada 1969 (Ottawa, 1969), pp. 1517Google Scholar. There is a critical review of reports on Canadian research resources in Downs, Robert B., Resources of Canadian Academic and Research Libraries (Ottawa, 1967), pp. 1120Google Scholar. For Ontario developments see The Structure of Post-Secondary Education in Ontario.

17 For Quebec see Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education: Report of the Commission (Quebec, Queen's Printer, 19631966), 5 vols.Google Scholar (The Parent Commission).

18 Report of the Commission to Study the Development of Graduate Programmes in Ontario Universities (Toronto, 1966)Google Scholar. (The Spinks Report.)

19 See Financing Higher Education in Canada, being the Report of a Commission to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (Toronto, 1965)Google Scholar. (The Bladen Report); also Graduate Studies in the University of Toronto, Report of the President's Committee on the School of Graduate Studies, 1964–1965 (Toronto, 1965)Google Scholar. (The Laskin Report.)

20 Lee, Dennis, “Getting to Rochdale” in The University Game, pp. 6994Google Scholar, and Edmonds, Alan, “Today it's chaos, tomorrow… freedom?Maclean's, Vol. 82, No. 5, 05 1969, 68 ffGoogle Scholar.

21 Development at Simon Fraser University” and “Removal of Censure of Simon Fraser UniversityC.A.U.T. Bulletin, Vol. 17, Nos. 1, 10, and 2, 12, 1968Google Scholar.

22 This does not mean that the military as such should be allowed to penetrate the academy.

23 Bissell, C. T. (ed.), Canada's Crisis in Higher Education, Proceedings of the National Conference of Canadian Universities, 11 12–14, 1956 (Ottawa, 1957)Google Scholar.

24 Compton, Neil, “Sir George Williams loses its innocence,” Canadian Forum, XLIX, 579, 04 1969, 24Google Scholar.

25 Seeley, John R. mentions it in The University Game, p. 142Google Scholar.

26 Compare the difficulty which some professors and administrators have had in comprehending student unrest in Student Participation in University Government, a study paper prepared for the Committee of Presidents by its subcommittee on research and planning (Toronto, 1968Google Scholar) with the papers on “The Nature of the University” by Professor G. B. Macpherson, president of the C.A.U.T., Peter Warrian, president of the C.U.S., and most surprisingly, Gerard Pelletier, the Secretary of State for Canada at the annual meeting of the AUCG (Proceedings, 1968).

27 For further materials on Canadian universities consult Canadian Books in Print (1967); Canadian Periodical Index (1947); Canadian Education Index (Canadian Council for Research in Education, 1966)Google Scholar; A Bibliography of Higher Education in Canada, Harris, R. S. and Tremblay, A. (Toronto, 1960Google Scholar; Supplement, 1965).

28 Students in new institutions with pretensions regarding research are hardly likely to accept such bland statements as Robert Down's remarks on “The Role of Faculty and Library Staff” in Resources of Canadian Academic and Research Libraries, pp. 60–61: “In the future, librarians will be able to rely less on faculty members for aid in book selection, because academic careers are being built increasingly not on teaching but upon research and publication and foreign assignments, with little time left over for the ordering of books.” Such assumptions may explain why J. G. McClelland has said: “One part of the student protest movement thinks it knows the name of the game: confrontation politics. It believes that university government reflects the general social norm, a power struggle in which pressure groups operate from positions of strength,” in “The New McGill — A Place for Liberty?” Position Paper No. 11, Tripartite Commission, McGill University, 1968.

29 At such a time, attention may be drawn to Wittenberg, Alexander Israel, The Prime Imperative: Priorities in Education (Toronto, 1968)Google Scholar.