Uncollegial governance and the restructuring of the University of Alberta

Abstract

This article provides an account of the undermining of collegial governance at the University of Alberta in relation to the restructuring of the university in 2020 by the senior administration and board on advice provided by the Australian consultancy firm, the Nous Group. The current president of the university has publicly promoted the restructuring in venues including the Times Higher Education supplement as a model for other universities. The model, a disastrous one for collegial governance, demands widespread attention along with the means by which it was achieved. As Bill Readings declared in his 1997 book The University in Ruins, “the changing institutional form of the university is something that intellectuals cannot afford to ignore.” At the University of Alberta, that changing form is being determined by fossil-fuelled academic capitalism. The account of what has happened is provided by a professor who has served on the university’s senior academic body, the General Faculties Council, for almost a decade. It concludes with several concrete recommendations for bolstering collegial governance at universities in Alberta, elsewhere in Canada, and possibly worldwide—wherever collegial governance is being undermined by restructuring, the corporatization of the academy, academic capitalism, or the disrespect of university boards for the authority of faculty and the academic mission.