WINNIPEG (CUP) – Some universities in Canada are trading their academic integrity for an increased number of corporate partnerships, according to a report released last month.
The study, conducted by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for the Ontario Faculty Association, examined the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Ontario’s universities. It claims that partnerships between the province’s universities and the private sector are adversely affecting everything from the quality of education to appropriate research practices.
The report also states that these partnerships privilege the science and technology disciplines over the liberal arts programs in which the majority of Ontario’s students are enrolled.
It suggests that the increasing reliance upon PPPs in Ontario means that programs not traditionally favoured by private sector investors are suffering from under-funding for classrooms and buildings.
Partnership programs in Ontario such as SuperBuild and the Ontario Innovation Trust, the report argues, also end up costing more for taxpayers.
Heather-Jane Robertson, one of the report’s authors, said Ontario’s university PPPs relinquish control of public money to private sector initiatives.
“The private dollars are leveraging public dollars to go into engineering and computer science and health sciences, and not into education or the arts, not where the students are, but where corporations want the dollars to go,” she said. “And it’s not just their dollars. They drag the public dollars with them.”
In 1999/2000, 51 per cent of SuperBuild’s overall funding went to engineering, computer science, and business, even though only 24 per cent of Ontario’s students are enrolled in those faculties.
Robertson also claimed the information surrounding PPPs is often kept secret, leading to decreased accountability.
“It’s proprietary corporate information, so by definition, the public can’t look at whether or not it’s getting a good deal,” she said. “It’s all under wraps. Any idea of transparency around how public dollars are spent is lost.”
Dr. Mark Gabbert, a history professor and president of the University of Manitoba Faculty Association, also said a loss of control over information is a drawback of PPPs.
“What comes out at the end of a privately funded process is all too often knowledge that is private property, so the knowledge only is released according to the interests of the person who owns it.”
Gabbert also suggested the U of M’s Strategic Initiatives Process, which can reallocate the baseline funding for vacant university positions to other faculties, has played a role in the loss of money from arts to programs that invite more private sector investment.
“There’s certainly reason to think that arts is, in fact, contributing to a redistribution of university resources in the direction of these fields that are perhaps more interesting to the private sector,” he said. “Science is the second biggest contributor to the Strategic Initiatives Process, and that just reminds us that not every field in science is equally interesting to the private sector.”
Gabbert also said arts is not the only faculty to suffer from the effects of a reliance on PPPs.
“It’s not so simple as to say that the sciences get everything and the social sciences and humanities get nothing,” he said. “The fact is that some of the sciences will get more, but maybe at the cost of their integrity, and both the sciences and the social sciences and humanities are, I think, adversely affected by a situation where too much emphasis is put on this kind of strategy for support.”
Dr. Digvir Jayas, U of M associate vice-resident, said corporate involvement in post-secondary institutions could also have its advantages.
“In my opinion, research-based projects bring a problem to be solved which cannot be solved by someone else,” he wrote.
The Ontario study concluded that an institution’s academic integrity can be compromised when corporate involvement becomes too pronounced.
“How can the university be an independent provider of knowledge if, in fact, its scientists are indentured to the private sector?” Gabbert said.
Robertson said, however, that despite the urgency of her warning, there has been little response to last month’s study from the media and academic institutions.
“We got one story in the Globe and Mail and in the International Harold Tribune,” she said. “It’s just going to get archived with all the other reports that tell us what we should not be doing that we persist in doing anyway.”
