A parliamentary committee has asked the Auditor General of Ontario to investigate what happened at Laurentian University in Sudbury. In her preliminary report published on April 13, auditor Bonnie Lysyk examines the situations that led the University to seek shelter from its creditors under a law designed to regulate and remedy the insolvency of commercial enterprises. . She explains how the management strategically planned its decision to resort to this law which neutralizes the normal mechanisms of functioning of the University.
The maneuver led to the elimination of 72 programs, including 29 in French, and the dismissal of dozens of teachers. In deciding to place itself under the protection of the Creditors Arrangement Act, the University appealed to a procedure designed as a last resort for commercial enterprises. In other words, the financial bankruptcy of the University was organized to neutralize the requirements of collegiality inherent in a public university.
The auditor explains that, faced with the catastrophic nature of its financial situation, the managers of the university did not see fit to follow well-established practices in the matter and to request assistance from the ministry. On the advice of outside consultants, they instead persisted in defending, with elected officials and their staff, the use of the Creditors Arrangement Act. The auditor notes that, had she sought to work earlier and in a transparent manner and accepted financial assistance from the province, Laurentian University would have had sufficient time to review its financial situation and to put in place a forward-looking plan.
In short, by behaving as if it were running a shopping mall, the management forgot that this university is a public service. Rather than mobilizing the community, it opted to sideline faculty, staff and students, and waste funds on hiring outside “consultants”. In addition, the University has embarked on major construction expenditures and has increased expenditures related to senior management. Above all, it has multiplied expenditure in order to strategically pursue the “restructuring” process.
The report explains that the University’s senior management refused to honor a clause in the professors’ collective agreement designed to deal with a dire financial situation. The triggering of this mechanism would have forced senior management to share financial information with faculty representatives in order to find concerted solutions to the impasses caused by erratic management. Instead of seeking cooperation with the architects of the University, senior management stubbornly resorted to the Creditors Arrangement Act. All while maintaining an opacity that left professors and students without meaningful information about the true state of the University.
Lessons
Laurentian management behaved in such a way as to render inoperative the mechanisms that protect academic freedom. This illustrates how essential it is to ensure that teachers have effective powers over management decisions. There is no real academic freedom when managers can arbitrarily cut programs and fire professors and researchers by the bandwagon.
This scandal is emblematic of the dangers that threaten university institutions when they are left in the hands of managers who are indifferent to their public service mission. It is difficult to find a better illustration of the need to guarantee solid internal mechanisms by which professors and all those who contribute to the achievement of the University’s missions are able to know the state of its finances and to act on them. . This aspect of academic freedom is the most important, because it conditions all the others. What’s the point of having the right to say a word in a course if managers have the freedom to abolish the course or the entire program?
We will be told that Laurentian University is an extreme case. But this case is part of a strong trend. In recent decades, the boards of many universities have been filled with administrators more concerned with replicating current business practices than promoting the institutions’ critical mission.
Too often, these tips work in secret. The information available to members to make decisions comes almost exclusively from managers who have no obligation to report to people in the field. We certainly tolerate that a few individuals from the staff sit on these decision-making bodies. But they are often muzzled, forced, by virtue of “governance” rules imported from commercial usage, to undertake to keep practically everything that takes place in decision-making places confidential.
There is something mind-blowing about the Laurentian University saga. It illustrates what happens when a university’s artisans are excluded from its meaningful decision-making processes. When policy makers are free to plan course and program cuts, there is no academic freedom. This is a reminder that the real guarantee of this freedom depends on the strengthening of democratic and inclusive governance of universities by those who work there.