The report of the so-called Expert Panel on Post-Secondary Institution Funding and Alberta’s Competitiveness released last week calls for the government to stop telling universities, colleges and technical institutes how to do their jobs. Then it proceeds to explain how the province should require the same institutions to do their jobs.
What’s with this apparent contradiction in this murky report from a panel supposedly set up last fall to advise the government how Alberta’s post-secondary institutions should be funded, but then dives into how to respond to MAGA obsessions dear to the hearts of Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party (UCP) base?
It helps if one understands the bugbears of the Wild Rose MAGA movement, which believes most of the same things as the MAGA movement south of the Medicine Line whence the UCP gets so much of its inspiration, only seen through an anti-Canadian filter.
One key to unravelling this puzzle, then, is simply to understand that when the report says “the government,” it is almost always talking about the federal government, historically a significant funder of Alberta university research despite the fact the institutions themselves come under provincial jurisdiction.
At the same time, the report tacitly assumes the Government of Alberta – at least as long as it is in the hands of Premier Smith and the UCP – has a God-given right to interfere in the operations of post-secondary institutions for ideological and political reasons. The authors seem to have had no problem recommending how to go about doing that.
Unsurprisingly, the report glosses over the impact of the massive cuts to post-secondary institutions after the UCP took power in 2019.
“In 2018/19, Alberta government’s funding as a share of total spending was higher than most other provinces,” it recalls mildly. “That changed significantly over the next four years due to the province’s financial situation and to bring provincial funding for post-secondary institutions more in line with funding provided in other provinces.” (Emphasis added. It was a political choice, driven in no small part, it is said here, by former UCP premier Jason Kenney’s hostility to the University of Alberta in particular.)
Meanwhile, some of that federal funding supports research into topics the Smith Government would prefer not to be examined too closely – global climate change, COVID-19, and the corporate structure of the Canadian fossil fuel industry, to suggest a few. In addition, federal funding often comes with ethical as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) requirements.
This undoubtedly explains why, in addition to recommendations pertaining to the panel’s original mandate when it was announced on November 7 last year, the report sets out why panel members think the government should end most DEI initiatives (with a carve-out for Indigenous students) and stymie popular efforts to encourage ethical investment of institutional funds.
Remember, this panel was set up by a government that last year proposed legislation requiring universities to get provincial approval before entering into research funding agreements with Ottawa and accused federal research agencies of financing “biased research.” They later backed off some of the worst aspects of that legislation after fierce lobbying by universities.
It also helps to know something about some of the authors of the report, chaired by University of Calgary economist Jack Mintz, a frequent contributor to the far-right National Post and one of the Canadian right’s favourite economists.
Panel members handpicked by Dr. Mintz include lawyer Joan Hertz, chair of ATB Financial and a former secretary of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, and former University of Saskatchewan President Peter MacKinnon, controversial for his campaign against that university’s DEI policies. Dr. MacKinnon is also husband of Janice MacKinnon, the former Saskatchewan finance minister chosen by Kenney to lead his 2019 “Blue Ribbon Panel,” which was intended justify austerity and cuts to public sector salaries.
“The Panel’s concern is that our institutions are losing the public’s support in the area of DEI and when post-secondary institutions take political positions on controversial issues,” the report claims. One wonders, of course, when universities have ever not taken political positions on controversial issues. That’s always been OK in Alberta, with the caveat nowadays that those positions must not be at odds with the government.
So the panel reached back almost 60 years to the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, written to justify ignoring demands that universities take a position on the significant moral issues of that time – which in 1967 included the Vietnam War, and today includes global climate change and the destruction of Gaza.
In service of this cause, the panel also obediently trotted out the Chicago Statement on Free Expression, an enduring enthusiasm of former advanced education minister Demetrios Nicolaides. (The current minister Myles McDougall, a charter member of the UCP’s MAGA caucus.)
As I have argued here before, the Chicago Statement is an ingenious manifesto that uses “free speech” as code for the right of the privileged and powerful to shout down everyone else. It was adopted by the University of Chicago in 2014 under pressure from campus conservatives who wanted to push back against popular opposition to racist speakers on campus, university prohibitions of racist, sexist and homophobic attacks on students, and demands to change the names of buildings and remove statues celebrating historic figures known for their racism or cruelty.
The Mintz Panel apparently believes appointments and acceptance into programs should be based “strictly on merit,” a quality that presumably includes a substantial bank account to accommodate the regular tuition increases they recommend allowing post-secondary institutions to introduce without much oversight from the province.
Indeed, probably the most potentially harmful recommendation is the panel’s call to permit institutions to raise tuition as they please without annual caps, as long as there are limits on annual increases for students once they have enrolled in a multi-year program. It wouldn’t take long, of course, for this to make the student debt crisis even worse.
As we have come to expect from such reports in a variety of neoliberal jurisdictions, post-secondary education is all about training square pegs to smoothly fit into industry’s square holes, with barely a thought for critical thinking, the arts or culture.
“Alberta’s world-class post-secondary system will equip Albertans with the skills, knowledge and competencies they need to succeed in their lifelong pursuits,” says an introductory passage of the report. “The system will be highly responsive to labour market needs and, through innovative programming and excellence in research, contribute to the betterment of an innovative and prosperous Alberta.”
“A highly successful and competitive economy demands a post-secondary system that fuels the economy and our society with highly skilled, talented and entrepreneurial young Albertans.”
And poets? The liberal arts? Critical thinking? Forget about ’em! They have no advocates on the panel and garner barely a mention, despite their significant economic contribution.
This is a 93-page document about how the (provincial) government should be allowed to dictate what post-secondary education looks like, and what debate and discourse should be permitted on campus.
Nothing here is a surprise. The UCP has been signalling its distaste for what even the Kalven Report described as “full freedom of dissent” since Kenney’s unsuccessful campaign to deny David Suzuki the honorary degree the University of Alberta had already promised him.
Such panels are literally a waste of money. Their purpose is to create social license for policies the government has already decided to implement. Expect legislation ending tuition caps and most DEI programs soon.
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