Academic freedoms called into question

CAUT wonders if the University College of the North is truly strong and free

Tessa Vanderhart, Staff

The University College of the North (UCN) is facing possible censure over its policies regarding academic freedoms, but administrators maintain there is no cause for concern.

According to the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the post-secondary institute serving Northern Manitoba does not grant tenure, does not maintain adequate autonomy from the provincial government, and does not provide a voice for academics in its senior governing council.

James Turk, the executive director of the CAUT, said that without providing tenure for professors, the university college has little chance of gaining a reputation that will attract faculty and students.

Turk said that the university college, despite its name, should be subject to the same standards as other universities — particularly when academic freedoms are the concern.

“It struck us as really odd that they’re designing this new institution with no academic freedom, no tenure, and no proper academic governance — because at every university, there is a senate . . . where the academic staff have a predominant voice in setting up academic policy,” he said. “So they’ve set up this new institution with none of those things.”

As a result, CAUT may move to censure the institution — recommending that professors and students not attend UCN because of these policies. This retribution, which would advise people not to attend conferences or accept employment at the institution, has not been enforced by CAUT since 1974, but Turk said that it is necessary, given that he sees UCN as a “second-rate institution . . . for third-rate citizens.”

He was disappointed with the results of his meetings with provincial Advanced Education Minister Diane McGifford, saying that the province is not sufficiently distanced from academic programming at UCN.

“They just don’t seem to understand that you can’t build a good post-secondary institution without these kinds of rights,” he said.

Anthony Ros, president of UCN, maintained that the institution does, in fact, provide tenure for professors, and that this censure is unwarranted, as the interim council of the university college is in negotiations to improve the UCN Act. The Act contains the policies of the university college, which opened its doors in July 2004.

He added that UCN was intended to provide a service to Northern Manitoba that would otherwise be impossible and should be commended for its efforts, rather than censured.

The format of a university college allows both college and university programs to be administered centrally, but does come with different requirements than a university.

While most universities have two independent boards — one of governance and another for academic issues — when the UCN Act comes into full effect in July 2006, the decision-making power will be concentrated in only one board, the governing council.

Furthermore, the governing council is subject to the issue of directives and review by the minister of advanced education, clauses that appear benign but allow for different interpretations — posing another source of conflict.

McGifford said that CAUT is “picking on Manitoba,” although she is not sure why.

She said that the variance from other university acts does not concentrate power in the provincial government — and that there are more provisions for academic freedom at UCN than university colleges in other provinces.

She denied that censure is warranted and, in fact, that there are any problems with the UCN Act, as all three university presidents have endorsed the institution.

“This is not a university, it’s a university college, and as a university college, we need to be responsive to the labour market,” said McGifford. “I have every confidence in our Act; I think it’s an important experiment. I’m proud of the institution, all northerners are proud of the institution, and some of them wish that southerners would just go away and let them go on with their educational experiment.”