Helen ZhangNormally, we start the new year off with a celebration. However, thanks to the misguided actions of administration over the past several months, the University of Alberta community starts off 2021 with a symbolic funeral — a final farewell to our collegial governance structure.
The values of collaboration, mutual respect, and meaningful consultation, which served the University well over the past 112 years, lay dead at the hands of our Board of Governors (BoG). By rejecting the General Faculties Council’s (GFC’s) recommendation on academic restructuring on December 11, 2020, BoG committed an unprecedented extermination of our democratic values, an act our entire campus community will pay dearly for.
Of course, words cannot fully capture the importance of our collegial governance system. The unique governing structure arises from a vision of post-secondary education as a community of knowledge, where students, non-academic staff, and professors come together to lead the university into the future.
To protect the ideal of collegial governance, universities and colleges created structures which spread decisions across multiple bodies, ensuring feedback and careful deliberation from our community.
At the University of Alberta, we have two primary bodies responsible for this task: the General Faculties Council (GFC) and the Board of Governors (BoG). While BoG, our top body, is primarily responsible for financial decisions, GFC is responsible for academic matters. Comprised of student, staff, and union representatives, GFC is the peak of campus democracy. By convention, GFC’s decisions on academic matters are upheld as the will of campus and BoG is expected to respect their collective wisdom.
However, in their last meeting, BoG’s actions made it clear that they do not seriously care about the input of their students and faculties. Breaking convention and dismissing GFC’s clear mandate over academic issues, BoG rejected GFC’s recommended scenario on academic restructuring.
Undertaken in response to historic budget cuts, academic restructuring promises to massively change the composition and leadership of our academic structures in ways which will carry long-term consequences. From amalgamating faculties and creating new leadership positions, there is little doubt that academics and students should’ve led the decision-making process on restructuring.
Instead, BoG hastily rejected the wisdom of GFC, deciding that the perspectives of 13 appointed board members trump the concerns of academics and students who will live with the consequences of these actions. The decision took GFC’s mandate — the entire purpose for its existence — and put it through the shredder.
Let me be clear — BoG could have avoided this outcome. GFC’s innovative academic restructuring model gave them another way forward.
Their proposal, which student and staff representatives created through collaboration, attempted to preserve the academic autonomy of faculties while still achieving considerable cost savings. The model grouped faculties into “colleges,” new academic units which would share administrative services.
Instead of having these models led by executive deans, which was administration’s preference, GFC decided to have a council of faculty deans lead colleges, in collaboration with a service manager. In the eyes of GFC representatives, costly executive deans only served to expand administration while simultaneously cutting the most vulnerable staff below them — a tone-deaf, inappropriate decision the campus community clearly opposed.
Overall, calling GFC’s recommendation good would be an understatement. It was an exemplary demonstration of collegial governance in action, where representatives across faculties came together to deliberate over the university’s future. I have no doubt that their proposal was the best possible plan for the University of Alberta, not simply because it addressed the university’s fiscal issues, but because it came from the most engaged students and staff.
Rather than respect the wishes of our campus, however, BoG decided they knew best for the university and chose to create the executive dean positions, simply with a renamed title — college deans. While the position reports to a Council of Deans, the roles and responsibilities are the same as the executive dean. BoG will additionally determine the metrics that these deans work towards, likely ensuring they’re responsible to the goals of the board first and foremost.
This decision itself was almost as insulting as some of BoG’s comments about existing academic leaders. Many BoG members seemed to imply that their experience working in the private sector gave them better knowledge on restructuring than those who taught in university classrooms. One comment, from Charlene Butler, asserted faculty deans who supported GFC’s recommendation had only considered how the model impacted their own faculty rather than the collective university. The worst remark came from Daniel Eggert, who spread rumours that faculty deans planned to purposefully not work with executive deans if they were created.
Beyond being factually questionable, these comments were a blatant attack on the professionalism of academics on campus. Whereas GFC hoped administration would listen to their feedback, remarks at BoG too often portrayed academic leaders as self-serving and unknowledgeable on the broader needs of the university. Fortunately, some board members voiced their disagreement with these statements. However, they still proceeded to support the creation of the executive dean position despite GFC’s opposition.
Looking at these proceedings, it is clear to me who was considering the broader needs of our campus and who was not.
Between the decision to reject GFC’s proposed leadership structure and BoG’s paternalistic attitude on academic restructuring, what happened on December 11 was not a meeting. For our campus, it was a live execution carried out by 13 board members. It was the death of collegial governance.
BoG set a dangerous precedent in their actions, one in which the views of students, non-academic staff, and professors can be disregarded. Instead, a small cadre of elites, many of whom have never even served as academics, are expected to lead the university on academic matters.
Throughout the process of academic restructuring, many critics — myself included — believed the empty consultation process ensured the initiative would fail. Ultimately, it was not sham consultation but sham leadership which doomed restructuring. After months of consultations, BoG chose to invest in extra administration rather than in the students and staff they are supposed to serve.
The primary consequence from this decision is that administration cannot be trusted to listen, in good faith, to the perspectives of our campus community. Even if they undertake months of consultation, we can reasonably expect that BoG will simply toss our concerns in the wastebin. Who knows, if you’re the president, maybe you can even have a good chuckle while doing so.
In the end, the death of collegial governance ensures our university now works for administration instead of students and staff. Looking back at the times where campus collaboration and democratic deliberation reigned supreme, I only have one thing to say — you will be missed. Rest in peace.
