Why are we relying on think tanks to do the thinking in this country?
Last week, the federal Conservative government told the Canadian Council on Learning it would stop funding the organization.
If the CCL, which produces reports on the state of lifelong learning in Canada, cannot continue its work, Canada would have one less body issuing reports about post-secondary education and one less body funding research in the field.
Professors and education stakeholders were upset by the funding cut, with more than a few taking to Twitter to ask "What happened to #cdnpse research? No more CMSF, CPRN , CCL .... StatCan only 1 left?"
Translated out of Twitter speak, they are lamenting that only Statistics Canada is left to publish information about post-secondary education trends in this country. With the demise of the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation, Canadian Policy Research Network, and the Canada Council for Learning this year, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned.
No one is asking the bigger questions: Why do we need think tanks to do research, and why are these think tanks wholly reliant on the government to fund their operations?
Isn't this why we fund faculties of education stuffed with professors?
Considering that most tenured professors are earning well into the six-figures within many of these institutions, why are they not producing the high quality research into the public policy issues related to post-secondary education? Isn't the dissemination of knowledge and quality research part of their mandate?
As for the other question - why Canadian think tanks are overly reliant on government funding for their operations - truly independent research into public policy needs to be removed as much as possible from the mechanisms of government. With tenure and the structures of universities, independence is better ensured than it can ever be within a think tank that relies on the government for 95 per cent of its funding.
If there is value to the functions of the CCL as a think tank, there is nothing stopping private individuals and foundations from funding its operations. There is also nothing stopping the provinces that supposedly find the CCL valuable from funding it themselves.
If, as Gary Mason argues, the government shut down the CCL because it didn't like what the CCL was saying, this points to another reason why faculties of education need to step up.
It's nearly impossible for the government of Canada to fire professors or shut down universities. This is why professors have tenure and universities have endowments; it guarantees their ability to speak out.
In the end, there appears to be a lack of will to do more than huff and puff about the demise of yet another source of higher education knowledge.
It's especially frustrating to observe some well-paid professors of higher education studies complain that other people are not tackling the big issues in education.
As for the government's decision, it was wrong, but we all share the blame for allowing the higher education information void in Canada to continue to exist. We should be demanding greater accountability and transparency from both government and universities.
(You may also be interested in Eye on Higher Ed: Alex Usher argues CCL has always been Dead Man Walking.)
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JOEY COLEMAN
Comments
You've misrepresented think tanks as a group. Many of them do not rely on government funding; in fact many reject it outright. You can;t build any case against think tanks using the CCL as your only example.
Also, if you're going to place that burden on university faculty, you're responsible for addressing the issue that observers consistently have with the decline in faculty teaching quality in favour of more research activity. I hope you haven't made that argument in the past.
I shouldn't be talking to a student and editing/submitting to a blog at the same time....
Should read...."defined as 'at the post-secondary level' (as is obvious from their website), as the blog seems to imply,"
Mr. Coleman implies that CCL was about post-secondary. I was pointing out that CCL provided insights into learning from pre-K to D ("death"), not just post-secondary.
As an overburdened taxpayer, I am glad that Harper is starting to eliminate useless bureaucratic carpetbaggers from sucking on the public teat. The CCL is admittedly small potatoes, but it's the thought that counts. Maybe they can get out into the real world and find productive work for a change.
Although I often find Mr. Coleman's blog thought-provoking, there are times I wished he researched his topic a bit more thoroughly. For instance, CCL is not just about "lifelong learning" defined as 'at the post-secondary level', as the blog seems to imply (as is obvious from their website), but about learning across all age levels (see http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/AboutCCL/WhatWeDo/?Language=EN).
And us "well-paid" professors of education are happy to research....all of which costs money (graduate students, supplies, travel, transcription costs, photocopying, stamps, etc)...and CCL was part of that funding regime (I've never directly received money from them myself). SSHRC is also part of that, which is why the cuts to CCL on the back of SSHRC reductions (and "redirection" of some of the money it has to broader purposes) is so problematic.
As for why CCL was an interesting player, it wasn't beholden to the traditional power interests (as one might view the people providing funding through SSHRC) and represented a somewhat different approach to selecting research/projects for funding than SSHRC does. As such, it arguably contributed to providing a broader viewpoint on education in Canada, and thus served an important role.
And G&M;'s blogging/commenting system is screwing up. Clearly my "6:40 AM" post above was posted AFTER my "7:36 AM". Of course, who knows where THIS post will show up.
Unfortunately for you professors also have this wonderful think called rights in their contracts which allows them to research what they want. They are not public servants to be pointed in a direction and told go. They only research what they want to research with good reason. And if we did want to force them to research what the government told them to we would have a lot less quality professors in our country.
Nice pipe dream though.
Exactly.
For more of this argument, see Margaret Wente's column of 07Jan10 on government funding for NGOs.
In our current economic climate, it appears to me that the most prudent approach for the college faculty is to wlk into thenegotiations, shake the adminiistration's hands and say "We're just fine e for now! See you in 3 years And then take a firm stance in 3 years when the economy is(hopefully more stable It makes no sense to challenge the province with costly demands at a time when the province is desperately cutting costs wherever possible to remain fiscally atable.Pick your battles and remember "Timingis everything!"
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