This is the second in our series of posts featuring readers’ responses to the Principal’s Bicentennial Vision. While we might support many of the ideas and comments below, we want to be clear that they represent the views of members of the Queen’s community and are not the position of QCAA.
A big thanks to all those who have copied us on their correspondence and a reminder to keep sharing your answers by cutting and pasting them into this anonymous form.
Today, we are sharing two posts. The first highlights the growing administrative burden placed on faculty and the impact of staff cuts on the research and teaching mission of the university. Like our previous contributor, this author worries that the upper administration is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by making unsupported claims about the relative strength of the humanities and social sciences at Queen’s.
The second author places the Principal’s Vision in a broader context, emphasizing the neoliberal logic that underpins it and arguing that “we should fight with everything we have” to resist the further financialization of the university. “There are few places left where critical engagements with the meaning of freedom and equality are prioritized,” they write, “and it is our democratic responsibility to fight for their survival.”
How can Queen’s ensure its Bicentennial Vision advances its Mission, Vision, and Values while adapting to the challenges and opportunities of its third century?
It is imperative that Queen’s supports research excellence by FUNDING all manner of research at the university. Researchers cannot publish and earn grants at a rate that would grow Queen’s standing if they are constantly forced to spend their time doing administrative tasks that they have no training in (e.g., entering financial documents and/or managing startling amounts of student accommodation needs because slashes to funding have axed departmental support staff). They cannot attract the top graduate students when there are threats to cut graduate funding support (e.g., QGAs; all these top students are going to schools that will fund their training at a more reasonable level, i.e., McGill or U of Toronto – universities that are at the top of many rankings list). If you want your faculty to focus on growing research at Queen’s, it is imperative that their administrative duties be reduced and their capacity to engage in research be enhanced (e.g., more funding for research staff, undergraduate funding opportunities, graduate fellowship support to ensure top students come to Queen’s and don’t need to spend hours of their time earning salaries elsewhere instead of committing to their research). The current cuts to funding at the university have further restricted faculty’s capacity to fulfill their teaching and research responsibilities.
What measures should Queen’s take to remove barriers to education, enhance diversity and inclusion, and address the increasing non-academic needs of students, such as mental health support?
Here too, it is essential that Queen’s develop a structure to fund support staff (essential to delivering these services) OR a method of diverting students to community partners. These responsibilities cannot fall on your faculty and the remaining staff (after significant cuts have already been enacted).
What should be the optimal size of Queen’s student body by 2041, and how should enrolments be distributed across STEM and non-STEM fields to balance workforce demands, financial sustainability, and the university’s core values?
The Principal’s discussion paper fundamentally mischaracterizes the ways in which enrolment numbers are decided. A vague shift from other disciplines of study to “STEM” is also not supported by robust data (and rather cherry-picked from aggregate statistics that do not consider the specific situation at Queen’s). Queen’s prides itself on its smaller classrooms that allow for more exposure and contact with faculty (who have extensive expertise in the subjects they teach, in part due to their involvement in research and discovery in that area). Growing class sizes without appropriate administrative support presents a barrier to that student experience which is so prized by Queen’s students and alumni.
How can Queen’s strengthen its global connections and focus on mission-driven research to address real-world challenges and improve its position in rankings?
See response in the first response box. To improve its position in rankings, Queen’s must adequately FUND research across disciplines. The breadth of research at Queen’s is also part of what supports its reputation.
Moreover, the university should ensure that its senior administrators (e.g., Provost, Principal) do not create self-fulfilling prophecies by virtue of their statements to the public. For instance, Provost Matthews’ comments last fall set in motion a wariness re: attending Queen’s. I have heard our most promising undergraduate students explicitly say that they are no longer considering Queen’s for graduate school due to the uncertainty about graduate budgets, program availability, etc. This exodus of promising students is contributing to our fall in rankings – NOT an imagined shift from humanities to STEM.
What innovative strategies or alternative funding models can Queen’s adopt to address decreasing government funding, frozen tuition fees, and limits on international student enrolment?
The extensive group of Queen’s administrators should focus their energies on advocating for government changes in policies, rather than turning a prized and reputable institution into a polytech/online courses business. Part of the responsibility of senior administrators should be to protect the mission of universities: breadth of training in higher education, to prepare our students for participation in an increasingly interdisciplinary and diverse society. This is accomplished through training in critical thinking and the development of expertise, rather than simply experiential or professional experience.
What infrastructure and technological investments are essential to support Queen’s growth and adapt to advancements in teaching, research, and student services?
FUNDING for support staff. The mission of faculty is significantly curtailed when faculty members are unable to focus on their core missions of research and teaching due to increasing administrative loads and lack of support for research. This sets us apart from our competitors in the U15, and likely explains our decreased rankings compared to similar institutions.
Moreover, faculty are under constant threat recently of losing their critical research infrastructure (e.g., MRI scanner). Those critical pieces of infrastructure are often treated as deficient revenue generators, when they should instead be considered key technological needs for faculty to enact their world-class research programs. Faculty members should not have to spend time advocating at the administrative level to maintain the basic research equipment they need to continue their work.
Dear Principal Deane,
I read your Discussion Paper on Queen’s Bicentennial Vision with great interest as I prepared for a graduate seminar in which I had been assigned Wendy Brown’s book, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015).
In this book, Brown shares an impassioned critique of neoliberalism as “the financialization of everything,” which extends the logic of the market to all activities, including higher education. Brown foresees the erosion of democratic values and processes as a consequence of this market-driven reduction of humanistic education to professional training, which treats human beings as “human capital” or what Foucault called “entrepreneurs of the self.”
As human capital, we are encouraged to regard ourselves as investment opportunities. We network with one another to increase our market value and compete to secure our growth potential, all the while exposing ourselves to the risk that market forces might turn against us. More importantly, as Brown argues, we undermine the foundations of democratic citizenship: “we are no longer creatures of moral autonomy, freedom, or equality. We no longer choose our ends or the means to them… [H]uman capital leaves behind not only homo politicus, but humanism itself. (Brown 2015, 42)
This is why universities like Queen’s must fight with everything we have to resist the financialization of everything and continue to offer rigorous, critical, engaged programs for higher education in the humanities and social sciences.
A hallmark of neoliberalism is the repeated claim that there is no alternative. But as Queen’s Coalition Against Austerity has demonstrated, there are plenty of alternatives for interpreting and contextualizing data, analyzing budgets and financial reports, allocating resources, and acting in solidarity with other institutions of higher education to fight against the underfunding of colleges and universities in Ontario. We do not need to accept the ‘drift’ towards STEM as an inevitability, nor is it useful to frame a defense of the humanities and social sciences as “a squabble about territory and numbers.”
There are few places left where critical engagements with the meaning of freedom and equality are prioritized, and it is our democratic responsibility to fight for their survival.
Sincerely,
Queen’s Community Member
Queen's Coalition Against Austerity 