Theresa Shanahan

Shifting roles and approaches: government coordination of post‐secondary education in Canada, 1995–2006

This paper analyses changing approaches to system‐level governance in Canadian post‐secondary education from 1995–2006. A review of major policy initiatives reveals a shift in provincial and federal government roles in and approaches to the coordination of post‐secondary education. The federal government has strategically invested in post‐secondary education, increasing its direct and indirect support for research and development and, at the same time, retreating from other areas of support. Provincial governments have expanded post‐secondary systems and increased institutional diversity and the role of the market in post‐secondary education while simultaneously developing more mechanisms of coordination.

University Governance in Canadian Higher Education

In this paper we review the major historical developments in the evolution of Canadian university governance arrangements and synthesise data from two important national studies in order to provide an overview of university governance in Canadian higher education. We provide an analysis of university governance structures and arrangements, and conclude by reviewing a number of important contemporary issues.

Traditional Governance Structures - Current Policy Pressures: The Academic Senate and Canadian Universities.

The objective of this paper isto identify current policy pressures inCanadian higher education and explore theirimplications for academic decision-makingbodies based on data we obtained in ournational study on university senates. Wedescribe two inter-related sets of publicpolicy pressures that have emerged in recentyears in Canada including on-going financialrestraint and a renewed interest in universityresearch. We conclude by reviewing a number ofimportant implications for Canadian universitygovernance in the context of contemporarypolicy pressures.

The Politics of Policy Making in Postsecondary Education in Canada and in the Province of Ontario: Implications for Governance *

Governance in higher education is, in some crucial senses, about the management of universities. This chapter probes not the management of universities so much as decision making in government and its impact on university governance. Drawing on a larger study of postsecondary policy making in the federal and Ontario provincial jurisdictions, and relying on primary documents and interviews with individuals directly involved in policy making, this chapter illustrates how certain Canadian PSE policies were made and executed.

Creeping Capitalism and Academic Culture at a Canadian Law School

This paper considers the influence of academic restructuring associated with neo-liberal postsecondary policies on the culture of law schools and legal scholarship in Canada. It offers empirical data from a case study of the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia. This paper examines the impact of the changing Canadian political economy on the scholarship and culture at the law school and explores the implications for professional autonomy and academic freedom. The findings suggest that, at the time of data collection (2002-2004), the changing political economy had not (yet) affected the law school at the University of British Columbia in the same manner as other jurisdictions and disciplines described in the literature. The data shows that law professors who participated in the study experienced increasing pressures associated with corporatization, commodification and marketization in the larger university, however they consistently described high levels of academic freedom and professional autonomy over their work and scholarship. While there is some evidence of the transformation of academic culture associated with economic restructuring there is also evidence that law professors at this school have maintained control over the direction of their intellectual scholarship.