Comments on: The Funding of the University: Shaping the Conditions for Higher Education http://zeroanthropology.net/2009/06/07/the-funding-of-the-university-shaping-the-conditions-for-higher-education/ Turning and turning in the widening gyre | The falcon cannot hear the falconer | Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold | Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world | The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere | The ceremony of innocence is drowned | The best lack all conviction, while the worst | Are full of passionate intensity. -- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming Sat, 03 Sep 2011 17:31:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Maximilian Forte http://zeroanthropology.net/2009/06/07/the-funding-of-the-university-shaping-the-conditions-for-higher-education/#comment-5697 Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:56:32 +0000 http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=6204#comment-5697 Thanks very much for your visit Louise. I too would have liked to know more about the Stats Can data, it is very intriguing and more people need to know much more about it, especially at a time when the “business” angle is touted as a form of salvation for universities, when instead if we believe Gagné it is more of a budgetary undoing of universities. Our university certainly does expend a great many resources in appealing to business, and in hiring overpaid members of the private sector, and the net result seems to be very little change for the university as a whole, apart from the loss of capital. Whatever happens next, it will require both faculty and students to become much more active, because there does not seem to be anyone else who will to retain the public university as a public good, and we can’t just be silent parties to a grand heist.

]]> By: Louise http://zeroanthropology.net/2009/06/07/the-funding-of-the-university-shaping-the-conditions-for-higher-education/#comment-5689 Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:40:15 +0000 http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=6204#comment-5689 Thanks for your post, it really helped jog my memory regarding that talk.

What I found unique about Gagné’s talk and email response was that he mentioned that this restructuring was not ‘justifiable’ as a cost-cutting measure – I would be interested to find the Stats Can research he was referring to.

Also, while he discusses these different forms of corruption, he nonetheless seems to suggest that the ideals of a liberal education are still not completely lost; that they are more a matter of institutional or systematic tension among university administrators, faculty members and federal granting agencies.

Given his claim that the reorganization of funding and faculty structure is not economically sound for the university, I changed my mind about his theory – at first I thought it was about a one-way street, but in actuality he hints that Quebec universities today are in a ‘moment of truth’ in which they might maintain their grasp on an idealistic approach to knowledge/education.

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