1.16: University Governance in Canada: Navigating Complexity

Alex Usher (AU): As the title of this podcast implies, this show is meant to cover as broad a swathe of higher education across the Globe. To make room for all that, we mostly stay away from Canadian topics (you get enough of that on the blog anyway). But today we’re going to change things up a bit in order to talk about one of my favorite books of 2022.

Last fall, a quartet of Canadian higher education scholars – Julia Eastman, Olivier Bégin-Caouette Glen Jones, and Claude René Trottier, published a book with McGill-Queen’s Press entitled University Governance in Canada: Navigating Complexity. Joining on the World of Higher Education Podcast today is one of those four authors, Julia Eastman.

I started by asking questions about how university governance has changed over time. Julia usefully started her answer by explaining in patient detail that governance in Canada has never been “one thing” and has always looked different in different parts of the country. That goes both for relations with external stakeholders – in particular governments – as well as internal one. We spent a lot of time exploring many variations of internal governance mechanisms and in particular the difference between uni-, bi- and tricameral governance across the country, how these arrangements came to be, and their relative efficacy.

Julia asked me to stress that what she says in this interview are her views and not those of her co-authors. And with that in mind, let's have a listen.

Alex Usher (AU): Julia, welcome to the show.

Julia Eastman (JE): Delighted to be here.

AU: Let me start with the discussion of internal and external governance and the distinction that you made between those two in the book. Some people hear the term external governance and they think about university-government relations, but you have a much more expansive view of external governance, which includes all those bodies that exert some kind of influence on an institution. So, beyond governments, who else do you include in external governance?

JE: So, external governance is about the macro level of authority in a system and the role that not only governments but other external stakeholders play, and there are a host of them. Some of them exercise authority, that would include accreditation bodies, the courts. Then there are a host of standard setting and regulatory bodies: accounting, safety, animal care. Religious institutions continue to be involved in the governance of a few institutions, and there are a bunch of other stakeholders that don't have authority, but potentially, as you say, exercise influence. That would include lenders, bond rating agencies, donors, foundations, ranking organizations, business, labor, policy, advocacy, interest organizations, consultancies even.

AU: Which ones were you thinking of?

JE: Lots, but, recent reports on Laurentian highlighted that as well. There's a lot to learn about the roles of all those actors in university governance.

AU: Focusing now on the issue of university-government relations. What, if anything, has changed over the last couple of decades? My impression is that in most of the big provinces there's actually a general respect for institutional autonomy and that Canadian institutions, in general, have much more autonomy than in most parts of the world. But there's also an increasing desire on the part of governments to micromanage certain aspects of university operations. And certainly, if they, involve cultural issues. I'm thinking, just last week someone put forward a motion in the House of Assembly in Newfoundland to force Memorial University to play “Ode to Newfoundland” at every graduation which is just an interesting example of where governments want to intrude on autonomy. But what's your perspective on this? What are the big things that have changed over the last few years in Canada?

JE: The landscape has changed greatly over the past couple of decades, but first I want to say that I think the landscape was never uniform. And it's a product of history, right? So, the older institutions in the East were initially associated with churches and were largely private, whereas the major universities in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC were first established as explicitly public non-sectarian institutions. That history continues to inform the present. So, we found that university government relations vary significantly across the five provinces. There were differences in foundational legislation, whether universities had individual acts or operated under omnibus legislation; Whether they were in the government reporting entity or outside of it, which affected their financial autonomy in areas like borrowing; and also that the tenor and the flavor of university government relations varied a lot. So, having worked with and in universities both on the east coast and the west, I think that the tenor of the relationship between universities and governments tends to be quite different in the east and in the west. There's a lot of variation in university-government relations.

That said the trend over the last 20 years has been greatly increased regulation. I listened to your recent podcast with Enora Bennetot-Pruvot from the European University Association on their great scorecard. And when I'm talking with board chairs or presidents or university secretaries, I often suggest that they take a look at their own university's jurisdiction through the lens of that scorecard. And if possible, go back in time. And I think if you had a portrait of the autonomy of Canadian universities based on that scorecard from 2000 to now by individual university or even by province and territory. You would find that there's been very significant reduction in university autonomy, especially in the financial realm, borrowing, setting of fees, disposition of assets, staffing, executive compensation, even the capacity of boards to negotiate and sign collective agreements has been significantly constrained in some provinces. Also, in the organizational realm, freedom of speech, sexualized violence prevention and response. There have been lots of areas in which universities are now more constrained in their decision making than they were previously. And I think it's a worry for a number of reasons.

AU: Let me turn now to internal governance. The norm here is what we call bicameralism. Like on a high level of generality, there's a mainly externally appointed board which handles finances and a campus-wide top academic body called a Senate or a General Faculty's Council or some other name like that, which handles the academic side of the house. How did that come to be standard in Canada?

JE: That was in large part, the 1906 Flavelle Commission into the University of Toronto. So, the governance of UofT was in quite a mess at that time. There were a number of attempts to reform it which didn't work. So, the Flavelle Commission was appointed and several other universities had long been bicameral — Dalhousie, McGill, Queens. But it was really the Flavelle Commission that articulated the key principles underlying bicameralism, and that resulted in the wide adoption across the country. It really articulated three key principles. One was that the government's authority over the management of the university should be vested in a board of governors to avoid micromanagement and partisan interference. Two, that subject to the delegated authority of the board, academic control of the university should be vested in a Senate. Finally, that the President should be the CEO, and the board should make faculty appointments only on the recommendation of the President. Those principles were adopted in Ontario and subsequently Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC, and they continue to inform the way universities are governed across the country, even though of course, UofT is now unicameral.

AU: Your book is built around six case studies and the University of Toronto is one of them. And of course, it does deviate from the norm in Canada in that it is unicameral and it is fascinating that it's gone the other direction since 1906. This unicameral governing board functions as both Board and Senate in effect. I think that if you suggested to academics in most of the country, that non academics, outsiders, business people should be allowed on the supreme body that handles academic matters, they would be appalled. And equally, if you told governments that the top financial decision-making body would have an academic majority, they would be alarmed. But UofT's a pretty well-run institution, right? It's widely admired. It makes money hand-over-fist. How does UofT manage this? Should more institutions maybe give unicameralism a shot?

JE: Unicameralism at UofT is less alarming than it might appear at first glance because under the governing council, there are three boards: an academic board, a business board and a university affairs board. So, the academic board has about 123 members and I think almost 90 of them are academics, including academic administrators, 16 of them are students, and it functions more or less like a senate within that structure. So, there is an element of bicameralism or tricameralism within governance at UofT. People at UofT told us that, unicameralism had two major advantages. One is that it overcomes an artificial separation between academic and business matters and permits more effective integrated consideration of issues and proposals. The second advantage being that it brings those involved in academic governance into closer connection with those involved in business governance, if I can put it that way, and vice versa and reduces the sense that there's a them and an us. So, I think the model is worth consideration by other universities but I would also note that U of T has a distinctive culture and some distinctive features. For example, the fact that its faculty aren't unionized, and I think that means that unicameralism might play out differently at other institutions in the country.

AU: Right, the external context matters. You mentioned tricameralism there, and there is a model of tricameralism, which is an academic board, a business board, and a kind of an alumni/public relations function. We see that at places like the University of Alberta, Queens University has a variation on this, but one of the institutions in your case studies is different and if I understand correctly, it effectively has two bodies that do what, at other universities, are handled by Senate. Essentially one body deals with the nitpicky procedural stuff and the other deals with big policy issues. Does that work? Are there any lessons that Université de Montréal's experience has for the rest of the country?

JE: In my personal opinion, the major lesson from the Université de Montréal is about the possibility and the difficulty of governance reform. So, the process of reforming the charter and the statutes took at least two and a half years. It involved an immense amount of time, energy, controversy. Over the course of the process the reforms that were initially proposed were significantly modified, but at the end of the day, the charter and the statutes changed. So, the lesson I take from the Université de Montreal is that a strategic, thoughtful, deliberate approach to governance reform can succeed, at least for universities with their own legislation.

AU: Julia, Canadian higher education tends to follow American models more closely than it does other kinds of international models. But one thing that never really took off in Canada was the idea of provincial systems of education. The United States has a number of big ones: California, Wisconsin, Washington. We could go on. We really only have one that's used it extensively, and that's Quebec. New Brunswick, sort of, because they've got a provincial university with two campuses in New Brunswick. What are the benefits of that path of governance? Of system governance rather than individual institution governance? So, for example, at UQAM, which is another of the institutions in your case studies, how do you think Canadian institutions would be different today if more provinces had gone that route?

JE: I don't feel well equipped to answer that question, Alex because we only looked at one of the institutions within the University of Quebéc (UQ) and it was the UQAM which is in some respects the sort of the largest institution and the flagship. I think it's fair to say that we did see some disadvantages for L’UQAM of being within the UQ. One of the things, for example, was that the senior administrative salaries in the system were so constrained that it was difficult to attract people from outside the system, and also the structure of the UQ created some complexities and challenges for the UQAM board. So, it wasn't able to play the role that boards at some other institutions are able to play. But you know, if we had looked at other institutions within the system, we might have seen that there was corresponding advantages in terms of enabling member institutions to serve their communities and regions and avoid sort of mission creep that we would've seen if our study had included other types of institution.

AU: It's always frustrating when you can't do infinite numbers of case studies to cover every section, right? Can I ask you something a little bit about the role of presidencies in Canadian universities? On the one hand, Canadian presidents, I would say by and large are less powerful than those in the United States or maybe most of the rest of the anglosphere. But they are powerful compared to most of continental Europe. What is your sense of the trends of the role of the presidency within the whole structure of universities?

JE: This is very much my personal opinion, but I think the presidency is a very tough job. What's expected of presidents, especially by external stakeholders and the public, but sometimes also by boards far exceeds their actual authority which makes things very difficult for them. As you probably know, the current estimate is that close to 30% of presidents don't complete their first terms. I think you were involved in a study about a decade ago on senior administrative hiring that found that candidate pools were shrinking. I wonder about the state of those candidate pools now. Is a university presidency an attractive job these days? And what about the job of provost? I recently took a look at the 2010 Data that Dave Turpin and Lugard de Decker pulled together with respect to presidential time in office and just based on information on the web, updated to February of this year, the data on presidential years of experience looked like it's actually increased a bit since 2010 and has gotten back up to about four and a half years. But I also looked at provosts, and what I discovered was that as of the end of February, fully one-third of the 50 universities that are ranked by Maclean’s had acting or interim provosts. One third.

AU: COVID did a number on those ranks, is my impression.

JE: Yeah and the, average years of experience for provost was much less than Presidents. So, was it covid? Are there other factors? Don't know, but maybe it's time to take a look at the attractiveness and the sheer viability of those senior jobs. I think there are lots of aspects to that question.

In the study you were involved in senior administrative hiring, you paid some attention to compensation. Now more provincial governments are regulating executive compensation, so I think that merits a look, but it goes far beyond the financial. I don't believe for a moment that many, if any, presidents or provosts are serving for the money. In my experience, they do it because they want a further success of the universities and the people within them. So, I think the real question is what does it take, what does it mean to support them in that? The board obviously has a huge role. It really needs to understand what the President does and what the President can do, what's needed to fulfill the job, what it's realistic to expect. The board needs to understand its own role and be diligent in fulfilling that, good guidance, good mentorship, good support to the president. It means ensuring the board has the competencies it needs to guide and oversee the administration and to prevent it from making mistakes. And it also means making sure the board is diverse in its own composition and is really practicing equity and inclusion. But I'd say it's far more, about far more than the board. What about the Senate or the GFC? I'm going to go on a limb here and say that one of the major responsibilities of a Senate is to guide, advise, and support the president, provost, and Deans in their leadership at the university.

AU: That's not the way that relationship is usually characterized, is it?

JE: No, and I don't think it's just a question for board and Senate members. Henry Mintzberg wrote about professional bureaucracy and at universities leadership tends to be tolerated, not appreciated. And I think that worked in the past, but I think it is just hugely risky now. I would welcome your views on this, but if I look around the world at universities, it seems to me there are three basic models: the president is either a state functionary, a business person, or an academic administrative leader. And I think we're fortunate in Canada that we've got academics at the head of most universities.

AU: This notion of change is something that I want to follow up on because 20 years ago Simon Marginson described how governance in Australian universities changed as institutions became more entrepreneurial. In Canada our universities now derive over half their income from non-government sources, and yet we still have the same, I'll call it stayed governing institutions that we had when universities were 80% government funded. The system is much riskier than it used to be, but we haven't changed our systems to catch up. I'm not sure governance in Canada is fit for purpose anymore. Do we need to change our governance systems to reflect these new realities?

JE: I think we do. And I think the question is how they're going to change, not whether they're going to change. What happened in Australia could well happen here. It might even be likely, and I can see it happening in two ways. One is that the way universities are governed and run just becomes gradually more corporate. But the other is that some institutions experience significant revenue shortfalls, and that leads to cutbacks and layoffs, and that gives rise to tension, strikes, unrest, and that at some point, one or more provincial governments decides they're going to fix universities and that could be unfortunate. I think that is one change scenario. But I don't think it's inevitable. I think that the existing model can work and can really enable universities to thrive and contribute to the max but it requires attention on the part of boards and senates and university leaders to the ABCs of good governance, it requires an integrated approach, like we talked about and it requires greater emphasis on collective responsibility and deliverables at all levels and also strong alumni involvement. But with that, I think the existing model can work. I don't see a silver bullet. What I'd like to see is universities enact their existing models as well as possible, identify the strengths and weaknesses of their governance, and build on the former and correct the latter over time. I think that will be a more effective way of achieving the changes that are needed.

AU: Julia Eastman, thanks so much for being on the program today.

JE: It's been a pleasure.

AU: It just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, and of course, you, the listener for tuning in. If you have any comments or ideas about the podcast, please let us know at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Join us next week when our guest will be the University of Padua, Italy's Dr. Annalisa Pavan who will be joining us to talk about recent policy shifts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Bye for now.