This book contributes to critical university studies by examining the corporatization of higher education at the University of Alberta, placing this experience in a broad comparative context, and drawing attention to aspects of the politics of knowledge that have often been overlooked in this genre.
The chapters in this collection provide a detailed account of the restructuring of higher education by successive neo-liberal governments in Alberta, Canada, with a focus on developments at the University of Alberta since 2019. They explain how a corporate model of executive management has been imposed which disempowers faculty and students while facilitating the indirect control of post-secondary institutions by right-wing governments. Elements of this story will be familiar to scholars of the “corporatization” of higher education in other contexts, but the book’s authors go beyond this analytical framework, highlighting the colonial and fossil capitalist drivers of post-secondary restructuring in the Alberta context and asking readers to consider what a university that was committed to decolonization and climate justice might look like and what obstacles must be overcome to realize such a vision. They argue that these obstacles lie not only in the power relationships that shape state regulation of post-secondary education, but also in the weaknesses of faculty and student collective action and in the patriarchal, Eurocentric, and extractivist perspectives that are deeply embedded in the knowledge systems of universities situated in settler-colonial states.
The Contested Future of Higher Education: Lessons from Alberta is an invaluable resource for anyone invested in the future of education in settler-colonial societies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
Table of Contents:
Foreword 1. Introduction – Cracking foundations, contested futures: post-secondary education in Alberta at the end of the Holocene 2. The academic governance body: what’s its role and who decides? 3. Uncollegial governance and the restructuring of the University of Alberta 4. ‘Nousferatu’: are corporate consultants extracting the lifeblood from universities? 5. Beyond public/private: instituting transformations in the plastic university
About the Author :
Laurie E. Adkin is Professor Emerita of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, where she taught and researched in the fields of comparative politics, environmental studies, and gender studies.
Review :
This collection is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how the internal effects of budget constraints, privatization, and corporatization are undermining the very existence of the public university.
- Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Comparative Indigenous Feminist Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta
This new compilation of essays is a valuable contribution to the study of higher education transformation in Canada, focusing on the under-studied case of Alberta. Through detailed analysis of governance shifts, under-funding, and corporatization, the essays in this book detail the undermining of Alberta’s higher education system and the subsequent impact on institutions, students, and faculty. The book is relevant to scholars in Canada and around the world who are concerned about the undermining of university autonomy and authority.
- Elizabeth Buckner, Associate Professor, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education
The chapters in this book illuminate the practices through which neoliberalism on steroids undermines public institutions of postsecondary education, weakening core requisites for a democratic way of life – including not only academic freedom but the formation of a public sphere whose citizenry are able to participate knowledgeably in political life. Adkin and her colleagues document how the confluence of draconian austerity, corporate boosterism favouring Alberta’s outsized fossil-capital sector and ongoing colonization have created the perfect storm – a deep crisis in which higher education is reconfigured to serve the needs of a colonial petro-state. An incisive collection, and a wake-up call to academics, educators and citizens concerned about the causes and consequences of democratic decline.
- William K. Carroll, Professor of Sociology, University of Victoria, Canada
The Contested Future of Higher Education is a powerful and insightful collection of essays that critically examines the transformation of higher education under neoliberal and fossil fuel-friendly governance in Alberta. Critically addressing global concerns about the corporatization of universities, the authors go further, uncovering the colonial and fossil-fuel-driven foundations of these changes. They urge readers to envision a university committed to decolonization and planetary justice, while dismantling the entrenched power structures that obstruct this transformation. This collection is a brilliant, clear, and urgent read for anyone invested in the future of education in settler-colonial societies.
- Henry Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at the MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation, and Excellence in Teaching
Adkin and her colleagues deserve great credit for going well beyond the by now standard critical university studies that decry neoliberal policies applied to higher education. The University of Alberta case fits the general outlines of the neoliberal gutting of higher education, but by digging into the particulars, she and her colleagues reveal the unique historical and institutional path by which this took place. This work reminds us that these general phenomena always take place in local contexts. Consequently efforts to address this oppressive regime must always be strategized in those contexts. Generalities do not change institutions. Change will only come from comparative examinations of the specific contexts and their affordances. Reminiscent of Susan Wright and her colleague's work on Danish neoliberal university reforms, this is a highly valuable contribution to the effort to salvage higher education in an age of avowedly hostile university reform.
- Davydd James Greenwood, Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Cornell University
This is an important book. While it focuses on the specific case of post-secondary education (PSE) in Alberta, the authors’ analyses have wider applicability to PSE elsewhere, specifically: neo-liberal and corporatist efforts to privatize post-secondary teaching, research, and governance in the interests of a privileged economic elite. The authors detail how these efforts are harming students, faculty, and the community mission of PSE. Thankfully, however, the book does not end with this analysis but also provides a set of workable solutions that, if adopted, would transform PSE into a site of genuine democratic thought and action.
- Trevor Harrison, Professor of Sociology, University of Lethbridge, Alberta
This book offers a set of remarkable critical undertakings in educational research, demonstrating how neoliberalism as an economic, political, philosophical, and sociological theory and practice is reshaping the work culture, governance, and purpose of higher education in Canada. The essays are of particular importance given the slippery slope toward corporatization and commodification on which public higher education finds itself, not only in Canada, but globally.
- Melanie Lawrence, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Western University, Canada
This compelling collection of essays meticulously maps and lucidly critiques the transformation of higher education by corporate-style management and its alignment with corporate and extractive priorities. Research programs, governance, curriculum and teaching, as well as the organisational culture and the very psyche of universities are increasingly subjected to this logic. The influence of petro-colonial capitalism on the shaping of the University of Alberta is highly relevant to academics in other extractivist settler colonial contexts, including Canada, Australia and the United States. However, in charting the possibilities for reimagining the University of Alberta, the authors provide hope that academics elsewhere, who are grappling with neoliberal governments as well as entanglements with extractive industries, may find pathways to ensure their institutions’ relevance and responsiveness in the face of our current planetary crisis.
- Kristen Lyons, Professor, School of Social Science, and Director of Indigenous Engagement, University of Queensland, Australia; co-author of Transforming Universities in the Midst of a Global Crisis (Routledge, 2022)
Universities in Alberta are in trouble, and the impressive contributions to this book explain why. Successive provincial governments and compliant administrators have imposed new regimes of managerial authority, commercialism, and privatization upon a system that is reaching a breaking point. This timely book is essential reading not only for those seeking to understand how these pressures are undermining teaching and research, but also to imagine a pathway for reclaiming higher education for the public good.
- David Robinson, Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers
This collection of essays expertly unravels the complex dynamics of corporatization, top-down governance, and neoliberal restructuring that are reshaping universities. It is an essential read for anyone invested in understanding the challenges facing the post-secondary education sector today, both in Alberta and beyond.
- Larry Savage, Professor in the Department of Labour Studies, Brock University, Canada
Commodification, corporatisation and managerialism are rife in universities globally, but as Adkin and her colleagues show, these processes have particular salience in Alberta, a fossil-fuelled petro-state dominated by a right-wing populist government. Drawing on case-studies and personal stories, the authors illustrate how a new era of academic capitalism is emerging, one framed around the capture of universities by ‘change managers’ and predatory consultancy firms. But the destruction of collegial governance is not inevitable. The book is essential reading for those who worry about the future of public higher education, and even more essential for those who do not.
- Cris Shore, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths University of London, and co-editor of Death of the Public University? Uncertain Futures for Universities in the Knowledge Economy (Oxford, 2017)
This collection is a must read for anyone interested in the health of Alberta’s and Canada’s universities. Each chapter provides incisive analysis while documenting profound changes at a watershed moment in this bellwether province’s higher education reprogramming. Neoliberal governments are shortsightedly transforming Canada’s postsecondary institutions, refashioning them as the handmaidens to industry & the labour market— all at the expense of the public interest and our collective future. What makes this book refreshing and a vital resource is the manner in which the authors go beyond critique by suggesting corrective reforms and concrete avenues for positive change.
- Marc Spooner, Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Canada and co-editor of Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (University of Regina, 2018).
These essays comprise an invaluable account of the hollowing out of our universities and what can be done about it. What is happening in Alberta universities highlights the challenges to academic integrity that we are seeing at universities across Canada and internationally. This book is highly recommended for anyone concerned about the future of post-secondary education.
- James L. Turk, Director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitican University and former president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers
The articles in this collection offer clear-eyed accounts of struggles for the soul of public post-secondary education in Alberta, and especially the University of Alberta, which has landed squarely in the crosshairs of provincial austerity and restructuring. The authors carefully document strategies designed to engineer crises and foster insecurity of various forms in post-secondary institutions, opening them to a set of management “solutions” that reorient and erode their academic mission, undermine collegial governance, and weaken their potential to contribute to the vital work of decolonization, social justice, and livable futures. The Albertan context matters, marked as it is by extractivism and longstanding intimacy between government and industry. But this collection offers cautionary tales as well as positive guidance for any of us committed to education for the common good across Canada and beyond.
- Robin Whitaker, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and Vice President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers
This very interesting collection is a valuable resource to policy makers and researchers working in the area of policy reforms in higher education globally.
- Joseph Zajda, Associate Professor in the School of Education, Australian Catholic University, and co-editor of Discourses of Globalisation and Higher Education Reforms (Springer, 2022)
