Viewpoint
University: a community of scholars?

November 14, 2008

The following is based on a speech U of S President Peter MacKinnon (Queen's Law ‘72) delivered Oct. 20 at Queen's University. Reprinted with permission of the Queen's Gazette.

For present purposes for discussion, the phrase, "communities of scholars," brings to mind an image of the university that is rather more simple–simpler in the sociological sense, of course, than our images of universities in the 21st century.

Early universities, or at least earlier universities, were smaller, more homogenous and more cohesive in terms of shared understanding of the nature of the academy. It is possible to imagine at these universities, an approximation of the ideal … of professors and students aligned in the scholarly pursuit of enlightenment. One does not have to be a romantic to see much that is attractive in this ideal – knowing one another, collaborative mission and shared academic values being reinforced in a sense of purpose, sense of place –if not among those scholarly inhabitants of those communities, at least among its observers who compare its features to the present-day academy.

Such a comparison of these imaginary, or real, or perhaps a bit of both, communities of scholars and the present-day academy would point to five features of the present-day academy that challenge the idea and ideal of a community of scholars.

The first is size. Our universities have become very large. The University of Toronto has more than 70,000 students, the University of Montreal has 58,000 (and) York and UBC are not far below those numbers. Queen's and the University of Saskatchewan are mid-size by Canadian standards, but we have about 20,000 students on an urban campus with more than 100 buildings on 2,000 acres. So, feature number one in this comparison between the early academy and the present academy is size.

The next is diversity of mission. You're familiar with the term 'multiversity.' The word refers to a university that has numerous constituents and affiliated institutions. It does not describe all modern universities, but it describes many of the most prominent ones. Such institutions have many missions, and their members may be as attached to the mission of their constituent part as they are to the whole.

Then there is the nature of management. Professional and bureaucratic management is a feature of all universities, particularly the large multiversities– financial services and accounting, ancillary services, human resources, a comprehensive regulatory environment, the care of plants and animals. The maintenance of buildings and grounds, relationships with external bodies, cumulatively all of these things … require a sizeable cohort of managers and professional employees whose work is essential to the operation.

Feature number four–this is a controversial one–is labour relations. Perhaps as a result of some of the features that I have already mentioned–size, diversity of mission and particularly nature of management–employees of universities have turned to models of employer-employee relations that are external to the idea of the collegial culture of the earlier universities.

Many of our communities of scholars have organized themselves into trade unions, thereby incorporating into the academy a bundle of laws, protocols and cultural behaviours that have powerful ramifications. When university employees organize themselves into unions, they import the laws that apply to trade union organizations in the province. These are a bundle of laws–I would argue protocols–and reinforcements of culture to a degree that are not, at least historically, part of the university involvement in the university vocation.

In some respects, it presents challenges to it (university vocation). Some would say those challenges are fine and the results are good. Others would say those challenges are troubling and the results are not so good. I don't think the implications of this are as fully recognized as they might be, particularly when you have an environment in which you have a large number of unions, as I do at the University of Saskatchewan.

The fifth feature in this comparison between the earlier academies and present-day ones is external stimuli and pressures. Perhaps there was a time when universities could have been realistically described as ivory towers or places apart, but not anymore. Universities are expected to be prominent in the communities in which they are situated. They are expected to take a direct and active role in addressing their problems. They must respond to a large number of external stimuli and pressures, which challenge their ingenuity, their resources and sometimes their independence.

…I think that it's important to maintain an historical perspective on these institutions. The first university, I believe, was an Iranian university founded 2,000 years ago; then came the classical universities of 1,000, or 800 years ago. Even for our older Canadian universities, these are still their early years. Our universities are still very much works in progress. It's always important to remind ourselves of that and to work at ways of making them better to the benefit of their constituents.