Canadian scholars have written several thoughtful books in the last decade that deal with the tension between academic freedom and market forces. These include Michiel Horn’s Academic Freedom in Canada: A History, Paul Axelrod’s Values in Conflict: The University, the Marketplace and the Trials of Liberal Education, Thomas Pocklington and Allan Tupper’s No Place to Learn: Why Universities Aren’t Working and George Fallis’s Multiversities, Ideas and Democracy. What could another author add to this subject?
What Howard Woodhouse, professor of educational foundations at the University of Saskatchewan, adds are detailed he-said-she-said case studies with clear identification of who the bad guys are. The villains include some of Canada’s most celebrated university leaders who, according to the author, have “acclaimed the corporate market as the ruling principle governing the university’s every activity.” The case studies of acrimonious...
Ian D. Clark is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. He is co-author of Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009) with Greg Moran, Michael Skolnik and David Trick. He is former president of the Council of Ontario Universities.
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