Forget about sissy things like hospital closures, welfare cutbacks, privatization of civil service jobs, and universal wage rollbacks.
The government of Alberta has just escalated the anti-deficit war to new heights, attacking a previously untouchable area. Alberta has ordered its universities to begin dismantling their tenure systems.
“Tenure,” loosely translated, is a sacred academic principle that means a tenured professor cannot be dismissed for anything short of scandalous criminal behavior.
Unfortunately for that holy principle, the government of Alberta has decided that it cannot afford to keep giving universities a blank cheque to keep employing professors at high salaries, regardless of the universities’ financial circumstances.
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That may be welcome news to many farm families, who in the past few years have had to implement cutbacks undreamt of in the sheltered world of academics. While many farm families have had to cut expenses to the bone and work extra hours in search of diversified income sources, those on the public payroll have been largely untouched. To be sure, many have had to accept years of zero pay increases, but few have had to endure reductions in their pay, and fewer have had to live with layoffs.
So, at first glance, the latest Alberta cost-cutting initiative should be something that financially-strained farm families should welcome. After all, it is directed at a particularly comfortable type of bureaucrat, ensconsced in an ivory tower far removed from the day-to-day harsh reality of people who have to produce to earn their living.
But, having said all that, there remains a sense of loss. No matter what its faults, the academic principle of tenure was meant to give bright, inquiring minds the freedom to investigate subjects without fear of having to pass a bureaucratic cost-justification review. Their mission was to boldly go where no minds had gone before.
What has that meant for farm families? It means that there have been inquiring minds probing into alternative farm practices and new technology, challenging the comfortable assumptions that many follow.
It has also meant exciting new ideas in history, literature, art and many other subjects that are not a part of the standard agrologist’s curriculum but that are also important for members of farm families.
The Alberta government has a duty to cut costs wherever it can, but for the sake of the students of today and tomorrow, it should tread cautiously in the universities. It should prune carefully, trying not to disturb academic freedom or universities’ role in helping social and economic change.
