A government reveals its thinking in multiple ways: in its speeches, in its laws, in the instructions and orders given to representatives of the State, but also (perhaps above all) in the expenditures it chooses to incur (or do not do). Thus it is through the University Funding Policy that is revealed, between the lines, what this or that government thinks of universities, what conception it has of them, of their role in society, of the missions that we must (or not) entrust them.
In this respect, the call for papers launched by the Minister of Higher Education last May shows a thought that could not be clearer, which submits the university to businesses and essentially expects from it sound economic spinoffs. and stumbling. According to this call, it is a matter of “improving the contribution of university establishments to labor issues in strategic sectors for the Quebec economy” and “strengthening the capacity of university establishments to promote, in terms of economy, research and innovation”.
In doing so, we reduce what should be a knowledge society to a knowledge economy, excluding any other kind of “value” than that of capital, and we transform the university into a subcontractor for companies, responsible for producing graduates to meet their labor needs, depending on job market fluctuations and government decisions regarding sectors deemed “strategic”. This is still only a call for papers and the process of overhauling the University Funding Policy is at the very beginning; there is therefore still some hope that opposition to this intention will lead the government to abandon it.
These two central axes of the announced overhaul are currently raising the greatest concerns. Reading them, one gets the impression that it is no longer just research and innovation that now comes under the Ministry of the Economy, Innovation and Energy, but the universities as a whole, the Ministry of Higher Education contenting themselves with applying directives from elsewhere in this area.
Contribute to the common good
This is not to deny the importance of universities and university graduates in the economy: it is ever larger and constantly branching out, in innumerable fields ranging from planning to aging, including bioengineering, communications, cybercrime, environment, ethics, forestry, artificial intelligence, public health, and many more. However, it is important to remember that this crucial role devolved today to knowledge created and transmitted by and in universities has been achieved thanks to their autonomy, without direct injunction to generate in the very short term and on demand diplomas, patents and products for the market.
It is important to remember that the fundamental missions of Quebec universities are precisely to contribute to the common good, by creating and transmitting knowledge, as well as by training free critical minds. These missions enjoin universities to pursue a civic objective, that of making knowledge accessible to the entire Quebec community, in all regions, regardless of social origin, and a humanist objective, that of allowing, through this accessibility “the cultural and spiritual development of individuals and the cultural promotion of communities”, to use the happy expression of the Angers report of 1979.
Far from insisting on the economic importance of universities, this report advised on the contrary not to let companies seize knowledge, in order to derive profits from it, enriching only a few individuals, to the detriment of the common good. I can only outbid, to say that Quebec universities must create and democratize knowledge, not privatize it. In a world where individuals are reduced to pure economic cogs, at work and in leisure, universities (like art and literature) can and should serve as a reminder that other ends exist, and that is possible to free oneself from the strict logic of profit.
This economic logic, in which the university is forced to become the “Research and development” department of large companies, also motivates other government policies. Indeed, it is found on every page of the Quebec Strategy for Research and Investment in Innovation (SQRI2) published in the summer of 2022, integrated into a conception of innovation limited to this dimension alone, while the transformation of practices, thanks to new knowledge, creates multiple forms of cultural, environmental and social innovations.
A one-dimensional ambition
However, to face the challenges that have appeared on the horizon, Quebec society will need all kinds of knowledge, not just graduates from the few sectors elected by government offices, according to the interests of the party in power, its ministers and deputies. This Quebec strategy for research and investment in innovation also fails to promote as the ultimate model of innovation and the wealth of making Quebec a copy of Ontario. This indeed seems for the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy as for the government in general, starting with the Prime Minister, the pinnacle of human happiness. This ambition is very limited, very “provincial”, in addition to being one-dimensional.
Rethinking the University Funding Policy based on labor needs is a short-sighted strategy that will always be out of step with the fluctuations of the economy, due to the time required for the training of students, especially in the case of jobs requiring master’s or doctoral degrees. This gap will be all the greater as the creation of new knowledge and new technologies resulting from it constantly generates jobs that did not exist just a few years ago, when the students who had just obtained their diplomas began their university studies.
Faced with this threat of economic instrumentalization of universities, this threat against the achievement of their fundamental missions, it is important that all the groups forming the Quebec university community rise up and express their refusal: students, professors, lecturers, support staff, facility managers. Let us hope that the latter will not sell their autonomy and the historic role of their establishments against the pot of lentils of better financing.
That an increase in university funding is necessary, everyone will agree and most of the briefs submitted following the call will show why universities need it to maintain accessibility, guarantee better supervision of students, increase the rate of graduation, reduce precariousness, diversify research and creation, reduce serious mental health problems, ensure the vitality of science in French and of French-speaking universities, etc. However, increasing funding alone does not make it better, if its objectives sabotage the very principles of universities. On the contrary, this refinancing must allow universities to devote themselves fully to their fundamental role, serving Quebec society as a whole, not just businesses.