2012 Academic Address: What Difference do Universities Make? Provost and Vice-­‐President Academic Brett Fairbairn University of Saskatchewan Years ago, when I was a new faculty member, I was returning from a conference when I struck up a conversation with a young woman who sat beside me on the plane. She explained she was a cosmetics representative, and seemed very pleased with her progress in her career. When I told her where I worked, she became enthusiastic, and credited the University of Saskatchewan with her success. What changed her life, she told me, was an English literature class. She had been a single parent without paid work when she read some of the novels of Charles Dickens. Those novels got her thinking about the modern economy, and how it works, and who goes where in society. Somewhere in her response to the classics of literature she found a resolve to better her life professionally and economically. I have periodically thought about that conversation. Is it a story of the success or the failure of university education? If her goal was that particular job, there may have been a more direct path. But the way she told her story, a university education was transformative for her life and goals. And I have always tended to regard people as the authorities on the telling of their own stories. Questions about the value and meaning of a university education are nothing new, but they have a new context. Across the globe, a remarkable expansion of higher education is occurring. In Canada, where we already have one of the highest rates of postsecondary education in the world, enrolments continue to grow. Countries with far fewer resources than we do, relative to their populations — China; India — are 2012 Academic Address page 2 investing in massive enlargements of their university systems. This expansion of higher education goes together with a proliferation of forms and providers. In Saskatchewan, the legislature is debating the extension of degree-­‐granting status to new institutions, removing the historic monopoly that has been embedded in law for the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina. Such developments raise age-­‐old questions with new immediacy. First, what is a university? How is it different from a technical institute, vocational training, or a liberal arts college? Second, why are there so many skeptics about universities, and how should we respond to the critiques? And third, what difference does it all make: How are people’s lives changed because of distinct things a university does? Such questions are not abstract. Sometime soon our university will pass a financial milestone: our budget, including all funds from tuition, operating grant, endowments, research, and capital, will surpass one billion dollars per year. One billion dollars. That’s a lot of cash. Are we worth it? Answering that question is the challenge I have set for this, my fourth academic address to the University of Saskatchewan community.1 I want to focus on three ideas. First, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more essential to the fabric of modern society than universities. Because of this, society has extraordinary expectations of all of us. Second, because we are a social institution deeply embedded in our society, we frequently face questions and skepticism — which we should welcome and embrace. But third and finally, I do not believe we have strayed from our mission to create ideas and to transform lives. Our university has shaped and is shaping the Province of Saskatchewan and the world beyond in ways that are both measurable and profound. 2012 Academic Address page 3 I. The Institution of the University Let me begin with what a university is: a place of knowledge; a community in which people seek truth. A modern university can be defined as a place of open debate and inquiry across a wide range of subjects. But it is also important to understand the university as a social institution that shapes and is shaped by society. The institution of the university surfaces in popular culture, film, and literature. When a plot involves arcane knowledge, writers invoke a university. Think Indiana Jones. Jurassic Park. The Da Vinci Code. The stranger and more powerful the knowledge, the more a university or a PhD-­‐wielding character is required for its legitimation. In popular imagination the university is the authoritative symbol of the power of knowledge. Fortis est veritas: that’s the motto of the university from which I received my doctorate. Truth is Strength. Our own university’s motto, Deo et patriae – God and Country – expresses our mission of service to the public interest, and associates us with power and authority. On a basic level, the association of power and knowledge is something almost everyone understands about universities. Universities are communities of people engaged in a shared search for knowledge. This is the trait that modern universities share in common with precursors going back thousands of years. Diverse cultures independently invented the idea of a community of students and masters, seeking truth and meaning together. And as a community of people seeking truth, the university has long had relative autonomy from other powers of society. The root word universitas denotes a guild: a corporation of masters and learners, enjoying legal privileges. The relative autonomy of universities is a corollary of the open search for truth that is at their heart. As I argued in an earlier academic address, today we can understand our autonomy as a kind of trusteeship in which our university independently serves the public interest. A particular approach to knowledge informs the cherished institutions of academia. Members of a university community have academic freedom including the freedom 2012 Academic Address page 4 to teach and the freedom to research. Such freedom is expressed in institutions such as faculty tenure, accountability for quality, peer review and public testing of knowledge, and collegial self-­‐governance. None of these exists on its own or for its own sake but rather to further knowledge. The search for truth, in a university, is free in another way: it is exercised across a nearly unbounded sweep of subjects and disciplines. Universities are not narrow. While they may vary in the particulars, universities offer education in arts and natural sciences, social sciences and humanities; and in a medical-­‐doctoral university like our own, also preparation for a significant range of professions and higher studies. Free inquiry across a vast range of human knowledge: that’s a university. I have mentioned that the university is also a social institution, but in fact it is more than just a social institution. The university is arguably the key social institution of our times. The church, the state, and business are important institutions, but today the leaders of every kind of large-­‐scale organization are largely and increasingly trained in universities. The ideas people apply in almost every setting are ideas that are formulated, refined, and spread through universities. When sociologists try to pin down the nature of social class in modern society, many of them find educational attainment to be the definitive marker: it is not just that middle-­‐class people go to university; it is that people become middle-­‐class by going to university. Not surprisingly, those in our society who desire social advancement identify university as the key to their future. In the last generation, women have turned to university in steadily growing numbers, now comprising about 60 per cent of our students and 40 per cent of our faculty.2 Aspiring First Nations and Métis people, New Canadians and their children, are also among those discovering university as a way to advance themselves. Universities advance people and communities. They create social inclusion and cohesion. They shape society — and they are intimately interconnected with it. Knowledge as power. Self-­‐governing service to the public interest. Freedom across a breadth of disciplines. Universities as shapers of society, and shaped by it. These are high ideals – and ones that inevitably will be only partially realised in any time or place. If you want to work in a university, you will need to get used to the idea that society has extraordinary expectations of each and every one of us. 2012 Academic Address page 5 II. Being Different and Making a Difference Because the university is a deeply embedded social institution, with many purposes and many constituencies, we are frequently seen to have strayed from one or another of our missions. In today’s world, I particularly think about five sets of views about the ways in which people think universities may be falling short: •
First, the view that universities are the preserve of the privileged few, or alternately, that we have been inundated by the mediocre masses; •
Second, the view that universities are not fulfilling their true role because we have become “corporatized”; •
Third, the concern that universities have become undemocratic; •
Fourth, the view that universities neglect teaching in favour of research no one cares about; •
And fifth, the view that universities have become too expensive for society to sustain. All five propositions have a kernel of truth to them, which is what gives them currency. I will address each of them in turn. The idea that universities are the preserve of a privileged few is an old notion and goes back to a day when it was unequivocally true. Similarly the idea that increased and more diverse enrolments will dilute standards is also not new. These anxieties about privilege or mediocrity are competing and interrelated. Universities represent quality and achievement; and we are open to and extensively interconnected with society. We could make a start, on the quality side of the question, by documenting the learning outcomes we expect from students. On the 2012 Academic Address page 6 accessibility side, we know that talented students from families of low previous educational attainment, including Aboriginal families, attend and succeed at our university less frequently than they should. We need strategic enrolment management to ensure that the students who should populate our university do so, and we need to augment our strategies to overcome barriers to them being here.3 Defining learning outcomes and undertaking strategic enrolment management address the kernel of truth in concerns about quality and access. The second proposition I want to address is the idea that universities like ours have strayed onto the path of “corporatization.” There can be a perception that because universities have specialized managers and technical staff, professional financial processes, and strategic planning, that they have become like corporations, which also have these things. A second part of the argument is that universities have formed too many connections with business, and are too strongly influenced by these connections.4 The corporatization critique raises the question, how different do universities have to be from other organizations in order to make a difference in the world? In my view, part of the corporatization argument is conceptually confused. Some of the features attributed to corporations are not features of corporations only, but of effective modern organizations generally. The issue is not one of maintaining a mythical purity of universities, but rather a less exciting issue of making selective adaptations that are appropriate to our needs and circumstances. The fact that we use management, budgeting, and planning to do what we do makes us like all other effective not-­‐for-­‐profit organizations, social enterprises, churches, governments and so on who also use these tools. Perhaps I could use an analogy. Universities have locks on our doors, and penitentiaries have locks on their doors, but having buildings with locks does not make us a prison. We have a senate, and ancient Rome had a senate, but our senate does not make us Roman. 2012 Academic Address page 7 Universities are fundamentally unlike business corporations in key respects, and enduringly remain so. Business corporations are modeled by economists as profit-­‐
maximizing firms with a single overriding purpose and a single set of defining stakeholders: corporations maximize profit for investor-­‐owners. Universities are characterized by multiple objectives which do not include profit — the public interest; knowledge; teaching; research — and which we pursue for the benefit and with the involvement of diverse stakeholders. We don’t maximize anything: our culture is to optimize, or seek a balance. Our not-­‐for-­‐profit orientation toward the public interest, combined with openness and plurality of purposes and stakeholders, gives a university an inner life that is distinctly different from virtually any other corporation. When I listen to conversations across our university, I hear and see academic priorities, student interests, community impacts in every forum. An additional part of the argument is that universities have become diverted from our purpose by corporate partnerships. But the critique is frequently out of proportion with the evidence. To fulfill our mandate as a leader of social change and innovation, universities have to partner with not-­‐for-­‐profits, governments, NGOs, and also corporations. It would be a concern to me if corporate partnerships drove the vast majority of what universities do, but corporate involvement is far rarer than some suppose. A review of last year’s financial information for the U of S shows that nongovernmental research grants and contracts amounted to 0.9 per cent of our consolidated revenues, while corporate gifts and bequests amounted to 0.4 per cent. That’s 1.3 per cent of our revenue in total.5 Across Canada the university research funded by corporations appears to be about equal to the university research funded by not-­‐for-­‐profits; you could argue that it would be reasonable for corporations to contribute more than they now do. Vigilance is called for whenever we have a powerful partner, whether this partner is a big government, a big corporation, or an NGO with its own agenda. We should always be concerned to define and maintain our academic principles: openness of inquiry, peer review as a mechanism for assessing quality, autonomy. And I see evidence day in and day out that this is exactly what our faculty and academic leaders do. 2012 Academic Address page 8 This brings me to a third, and related critique: the charge that universities have become less democratic. Of course, any idea that there was a golden age of university democracy should be put to rest by mention of gender, racial, ethnic, and religious exclusions and other forms of inequality that prevailed in bygone years. Universities have generally mirrored and been marginally more democratic than the society around them. We have become more democratic in tandem with wider social change. What is democracy, anyway? Democracy does not mean everybody voting on everything all the time. It is not majority rule, since protections of minority rights and of privacy have long been considered fundamental. Nor is democracy about the unfettered rights of individuals, since democracies constrain individuals all the time. In fact, democracy can be expressed in various decision-­‐making procedures and various versions of rights and obligations. What lies behind all versions of democracy, though, is a common set of values. At its core, democracy is a system of values built around respect for the dignity of people. Values associated with democracy prominently feature equity, freedom, equality, openness, participation, and inclusion. These are also the values of the search for knowledge in higher education. In this sense the university is a fundamentally democratic institution. Our mission entails the cultivation of the values of democracy in our teaching, research, self-­‐governance, and community engagement. Also implicit in what I’ve said is that democracy will never be achieved fully: it is an ideal. But we can look to the underlying ideals of democracy and use them as our guide to strengthen the democratic character of the university: to be and become an institution that in our thoughts and processes, debates and procedures, expresses inclusiveness and respect for people. These thoughts bring me to the fourth claim I mentioned: that universities neglect students in favour of research. I believe we can and should do more for students. But I am not sure that research is the problem. Here I differ notably from Tom Pocklington and Alan Tupper, who declared a decade ago “that university research 2012 Academic Address page 9 often detracts from the quality of teaching.”6 I think Pocklington and Tupper are wrong. Teaching and research are not opposed but rather complementary. It is inconceivable that faculty would focus on teaching received knowledge without attempting to create, test, expand, or revise it. There is of course a sense in which, with limited time and resources, any two activities compete with each other — and faculty members do have limited time and resources. This is like saying that eating and sleeping detract from each other. The point is that both are necessary and we need to arrange our time to include both of them. We would benefit from greater integration: we should seek those kinds of teaching that are most complementary to our research; and we should pursue those kinds of research that inform and connect to our teaching. Most of all, we should strive to have the same spirit and passion inform both activities. I see passion for teaching and learning across our university. Countless faculty members and staff are committed and creative. A national workshop in 2011 highlighted innovative and desirable practices in higher education, and the leadership necessary to achieve them. The measures outlined — things like experiential learning, problem-­‐based inquiry, undergraduate involvement in research, learning communities — are generally things we have underway at our university as well.7 The idea that universities systematically neglect teaching simply does not wash. However, innovations in teaching and learning are not as widespread or definitive as we might like. There is more we could learn from other institutions, from our own students, and from our most creative teachers. The kernel of truth here is that, while we have hardly neglected teaching, we nevertheless need to pay increased attention to innovation. The final proposition I wish to address is that universities, however magnificent they may be in theory, are simply too expensive for society to sustain. Such a suspicion has grown in recent years, conditioned by out-­‐of-­‐control health-­‐care costs that devour larger proportions of public finances; by economic downturns; and by salary growth that has made Canadian academic salaries among the highest in the world on average.8 I find the proposition of university unsustainability troubling, and difficult to dismiss. Universities do consume colossal resources. I see no way 2012 Academic Address page 10 around four large tasks in our near future, First, we will need to simplify, and focus our resources only on those few chosen things that are most important. Second, we will need to economize. Efficiency should not determine what we do; but once we have chosen what to do, efficiency must shape how we pursue it. Governments and the public expect no less. Third, we will need to continue to diversify our sources of revenue. Saskatchewan universities stand out as among the most dependent on government grants of any universities on the continent. Fourth and finally, despite all prioritization, economy, and diversification, we will remain reliant on huge levels of public support. We will need to justify that support by showing the ways in which a university like ours continually makes an impact on people. III. Ideas That Transform People’s Lives The heart of the matter is that universities are about ideas that transform people’s lives. At the creative core of a university is the engagement of our faculty and students in the discovery of knowledge. There are two equally important pieces here: creativity is one, novel insights, compelling new questions, provocative connections. But the second piece is the transformative effect on society – discovery with impact, as our vice-­‐president research, Karen Chad, says. Like many universities, we have done too little to create a pervasive culture of creativity; and we have particularly done too little to document and explain the external impact of what we do. But on balance, I think we have not strayed from our purpose to create ideas and transform lives. Some examples? Two of our university’s synchrotron scientists and Canada Research Chairs — Ingrid Pickering and Graham George — are part of an international team that is solving a mystery of poisoned water affecting tens of millions of people in Bangladesh. George and Pickering are among more than 250 U of S faculty and students using and building experimental facilities at the Canadian Light Source to identify ways to 2012 Academic Address page 11 mitigate impact of mining, create novel materials, and improve human and animal health using advanced techniques of imaging and new treatments for disease. The synchrotron was the first in the country, and also now includes North America’s first Biomedical Imaging and Therapy Beamline. These firsts build on earlier successes such as the first successful cobalt-­‐60 unit for treating cancer. Saving lives and improving health are powerful impacts on society.9 At the U of S Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization — International Vaccine Centre (VIDO/InterVac), associate director of research Volker Gerdts is developing an effective, single-­‐dose vaccine against whooping cough that can be inhaled by newborns through a mask. So far VIDO has commercialized eight vaccines, six of which were world firsts. VIDO vaccines for the prevention of calf scours (diarrhea) have saved billions of dollars per year in economic losses across North America. Nation-­‐ and world-­‐leading facilities such as the CLS and InterVac are complemented by one of North America’s most successful research parks with more than 3,400 employees and annual economic impact of more than half a billion dollars. Sixty Saskatchewan companies, including direct spin-­‐offs from U of S research, have started business since the park was founded in 1980. From its creation, the U of S has always supported industries that are represented in Saskatchewan, and sought to maximize the benefits for society. Agriculture has been transformed by U of S research. More than 345 commercial crop varieties have been developed at the University of Saskatchewan, including innovations in spring and winter wheats, durum, barley, oats, flax, peas, lentils, and chickpeas. Pulse crops alone are a billion-­‐dollar industry in which Saskatchewan has become a world export leader, based on research at our own Crop Development Centre. Then there is mining and the environment, where one of the researchers who has made an impact is geoscientist Jim Hendry. Hendry’s work on management, storage, and disposal of metal contaminants has set the standard for safe management of mine tailings and protection of groundwater. 2012 Academic Address page 12 World-­‐leading eco-­‐toxicologist and Canada Research Chair John Giesy has developed new tests for chemicals like bisphenol A that are suspected of binding with hormone receptors to alter the normal chemistry of human bodies. Giesy and other U of S team members have created a cost-­‐effective test that enables regulators to predict what chemicals will do without having to test them on animals. They have created a wholly-­‐owned U of S subsidiary to provide testing worldwide. Dr Roger Pierson, U of S professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, is remaking our understanding of human ovulation. Pierson’s research suggesting that the traditionally accepted model of the human menstrual cycle is wrong won him the 2003 Women’s Health Hero Award by Chatelaine magazine, and has led to improved techniques for in vitro fertilization and for new systems of contraception. I have chosen striking examples from physical and health sciences, but every sphere of university research and scholarship produces transformative ideas. The history of innovation in the humanities here has included the first Drama department in Canada, the first Canadian literature course in the world, and the first comprehensive history of native residential schooling by SSHRC Gold Medal-­‐
winning historian Jim Miller. Miller’s research is foundational for the initiatives around the residential school issue, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as for the work by Saskatchewan’s Office of the Treaty Commissioner to develop school curriculum about treaties. Similarly Law professor Dwight Newman’s book The Duty to Consult: New Relationships with Aboriginal Peoples provides a scholarly treatment of Aboriginal rights that has been applied by courts, governments, businesses and Aboriginal organizations, including being cited in judgments by the Supreme Court of Canada. While university research can occur on any topic, it is striking how often Saskatchewan-­‐based researchers make national and world contributions by looking at things that are represented in our own local environment. The U of S is home to leading research into the earth’s upper atmosphere, including the first three-­‐
dimensional observation of the ozone hole from space, because early researchers 2012 Academic Address page 13 Frank Davies and Balfour Currie were fascinated by the northern lights. It is not surprising that the U of S hosts a Global Institute of Water Security, with Howard Wheater as Canada Excellence Research Chair, given that continuing wise management of water is so vital to Saskatchewan’s population and industries. Our university prominently features established, signature areas of research that have been inspired in part by Saskatchewan realities and in which this province can make a global contribution. Ideas that change society and transform lives emerge from and are tested in the culture of creativity that is at the heart of a university. A great university is distinguished by a vibrant culture of research in which all faculty members contribute, and all of us generously celebrate the successes of our colleagues. And research, in a university, is not only for faculty. Perhaps you have been excited, as I have been, to see the remarkable accomplishments of U of S graduate students that have been profiled in our local newspaper over the last two years.10 Young innovators mentored here are doing remarkable things: •
developing a novel filtration material that may offer a green solution to contaminated oilsands process water •
improving the cold-­‐hardiness of wheat •
creating electrical fuel cells powered by microbes •
helping to save Saskatchewan lakes from pollution •
improving society’s views of people with disabilities •
finding hope for treatment of psychopaths •
creating digital apps to assist people with eating choices to manage weight, diabetes, or fitness •
and creating new understanding of housing issues in Aboriginal communities. The spirit of discovery represented in our research is the same spirit of discovery our graduates take with them to make an impact in the wider world. In the course of a university education, students develop intellectual and personal skills such as 2012 Academic Address page 14 critical thinking and analysis, creative synthesis and expression, judgement, and ethics. These abilities have become important to a wider and wider array of life’s problems as our society has become more complex and more interdependent in an age of globalization. As a result university degrees are increasingly sought-­‐after as a criterion for employment. Many organizations do on-­‐the-­‐job-­‐training; but what they often need first is educated individuals who have the intellectual skills that are in demand for today’s world. The largest proportion of new jobs over the last decade have been jobs requiring university education. It should not surprise us that people who have undergone a challenging education do better in life, in aggregate, in every measurable way. Rates of employment and levels of earnings are higher for university graduates than for college graduates, which are in turn higher than for those with high school alone. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada has calculated that a university degree will bring $1.3 million in increased earnings over a person’s lifetime.11 And by the way, we graduate nearly three thousand students per year: that’s nearly four billion dollars in increased income throughout society caused every year by our university. Income is not the only measurable benefit. University graduates make life and career choices informed by what they have learned, and are happier, healthier, more self-­‐reliant, and more fulfilled as a result. Statistics show that university degree holders volunteer more; engage more often in social and political activities; rely less on government benefits; access the health system less; and positively influence the educational values of their children.12 All in all, Professor Eric Howe of U of S calculates that the total benefits of a degree are several times the value of the increase in earnings alone. Billions of dollars a year means a large impact on the economy. A study of 146 countries over a 60-­‐year period indicates that education is a powerful determinant of economic strength. Across the world, economic output increases with each additional year of schooling, with the highest economic impact coming from advanced education at the postsecondary level. 13 Universities like ours notably produce thousands of carefully educated professionals who provide leadership and service throughout many of society’s other important institutions including health care, education, justice, engineering, business, and 2012 Academic Address page 15 many other fields. Our university’s living alumni include thirty thousand education graduates, nearly twenty thousand graduates in business, over eleven thousand in engineering, nearly seven thousand in nursing, four thousand in law, and equally four thousand graduates in pharmacy and nutrition. A majority of our university’s alumni graduated from professional colleges and programs – an especially important statistic in a province like ours that has only a single medical-­‐doctoral university. Generations of U of S alumni have shaped the society around us. Let me give a few examples. We could begin with health care. Dr Orville Hjertaas is one of the physicians recognized as a father of medicare for his work to organize Saskatchewan’s first two experimental health regions in Swift Current and Weyburn. Then there is Emmett Hall, chief justice, supreme court judge, also considered a father of medicare for his leadership of the royal commission that established medicare as a national program. In recent years Dr Anne Doig has been president of the Canadian Medical Association, named as one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women in 2010, and has been a public commentator on the future of our health-­‐care system and the urgency of change. Another of our graduates is Dr Marlene Smadu who has been appointed to co-­‐chair the Canadian Nurses’ Association National Expert Commission on health system improvement. Generations of U of S graduates have worked and are working to improve health care. We see similarly extensive contributions and leadership in business, from “Doc” Seaman to Brett Wilson and N. Murray Edwards. And in 2010, young graduate Michael Scissons saw his company, Synapse Corp., named to two top-­‐50 lists of companies to watch, by PROFIT Magazine and by Deloitte. In politics: Diefenbaker to Romanow to Wall. Roads to resources, balanced budgets, health reform, a New Saskatchewan: transformative ideas from Saskatchewan 2012 Academic Address page 16 grads. Currently three Canadian premiers are U of S graduates, including the leaders of Alberta and the Yukon. First Nations and Métis communities have been developing leadership and role models from within, often with the help of universities like our own. Annie McKay was the first Métis graduate of our university, in 1915, and went on to a long career as a librarian. Freda Ahenakew made an enormous contribution to Cree language, culture, and history. And in 2010 Donald Worme of Kawacotoose First Nation received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in law and justice for his work in criminal law, treaty litigation, public policy, and human rights. Generations of First Nations and Métis leaders out of the U of S, with profound impacts on culture, people, and communities. Our graduates have contributed international leadership, such as Sharon Capeling-­‐
Alakija, who was director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women; and Elizabeth Dowdeswell who was Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and under-­‐secretary-­‐general to Dr Boutras-­‐Boutras Ghali. Other U of S women contributed to communities close to home, including Helen Frances Morrison who oversaw the construction of Saskatoon’s downtown library, and Savella Stechishin whose work for Ukrainian culture was instrumental to the development of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada. I could go on, but these examples from health care, business, politics, Aboriginal leadership, international affairs, and community development surely make the point. University education not only prepares people for jobs and careers; it prepares them to transform communities using their skills, knowledge, and personal effectiveness. We can calculate the benefits to incomes, health, and economies; but it is in people, tens of thousands of them distributed across Saskatchewan and beyond, that we truly see the difference universities make. 2012 Academic Address page 17 Society has extraordinary expectations of us. A sense of vast responsibilities needs to inform our individual choices about how we spend our time and energy, as well as our mutual choices about curricula, plans, and budgets — and we have decisions to make in the weeks and months ahead. The grandeur of a university provides the context for our actions. We should listen attentively to skeptics and critics, but not simply accept their prescriptions. We have the responsibility together to decide what being a university means in today’s context. It is up to us to know and reflect upon our time-­‐honoured values, neither abandoning them nor letting them become excuses to resist change. Most of all, we need to remember that universities make an enormous difference, in every way we can measure. Our university makes an enormous difference. Faculty and graduates decisively shape the Province of Saskatchewan, provide its leaders, improve its communities and services, drive its economy with innovations and with educated talent, as well as contributing to the wide world beyond. In an age when knowledge, more than ever, is power, we should not shrink from our mission both to create knowledge and to democratize it. I like books and studies about universities. I read or re-­‐read many in preparation for this talk. I want to acknowledge the continuing influence of one of the best books on the subject, George Fallis’s Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). I also want to thank the six individuals who read and commented on early drafts of this speech and who helped me sharpen my thinking and ideas. 1
In previous academic addresses, I have shared my thoughts about our university’s mission and its implications. In my first academic address, I argued that our university exists to serve the wide public interest. In my second, I considered how serving the public interest requires us to pursue innovation in what we do. Last year, I looked at how we organize and prioritize for innovation through our planning process. See www.usask.ca/vpacademic/office/speeches.php. 2012 Academic Address page 18 2
On enrolment, see http://www.usask.ca/isa/statistics/students/headcount-­‐
demographics.php2009.php; on faculty composition, see the latest draft of our faculty complement foundational document at http://www.usask.ca/ip/inst_planning/foundational_docs/index.php. 3
See the Accessibility and Affordability Report 2011 at http://www.usask.ca/ip/assessment/surveys/accessibility-­‐and-­‐affordability.php . 4
Henry Steck, “Corporatization of the University: Seeking Conceptual Clarity” (The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2003, pp. 585-­‐66, here, p. 74): “the corporatized university is defined as an institution that is characterized by processes, decisional criteria, expectations, organizational culture, and operating practices that are taken from, and have their origins in, the modern business corporation. The academic culture is still present…. But the corporate culture has become commonplace if not yet pervasive, and corporate-­‐style priorities, decisions, activities, and structures are very much in evidence.” 5
Information provided by Office of the Vice-­‐President Research and Financial Services Division, February 2012. 6
Tom Pocklington and Allan Tupper. No Place to Learn: Why Universities Aren’t Working. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002, p. 6. 7
See The Revitalization of Undergraduate Education in Canada: A report on the AUCC workshop on undergraduate education in Halifax, March 6-­‐8, 2011 (www.aucc.ca as accessed 21 January 2012). 8
See the analysis by Alex Usher, http://higheredstrategy.com/blog/ (11, 12, and 13 January 2012). 9
These and following examples are drawn from the website of the Vice-­‐President Research (http://www.usask.ca/vpresearch/) and at http://www.usask.ca/research/100yrsinnovation/firsts.php. 10
Young Innovators web page: http://www.usask.ca/research/student/young-­‐
innovators.php as accessed 6 February 2012. 11
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, The Value of A Degree, www.aucc.ca/ as accessed 21 January 2012. 12
AUCC, The Value of A Degree. 13
Robert J. Barro and Jong-­‐Wha Lee. “A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950-­‐2010. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 15902, April 2010 (http://www.nber.org/papers/w15902 as accessed 21 January 2012).