The power of the professoriate and the lemonade stand

When a summer heat wave moves across Canada you will likely see small roadside tables set up in residential communities, attended by local children selling lemonade. In a country with few street vendors these childhood enterprises are a historic symbol of entrepreneurship and community: the winter is over, people have emerged from their homes and the community needs refreshment.

Recently, this summer icon was used for a different purpose at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, OISE, at the University of Toronto. The newly appointed academic leadership team placed a lemonade stand in the hallway adjoining their offices, inviting students, staff and faculty to join them for free food and beverages.

This gesture was a peace offering.

Like many institutions, OISE’s academic community is pressed between the traditional collegiate values of collective decision-making and the new push for market-responsive business management. In a broader provincial context that is pushing the latter, it will take more than a lemonade stand to restore trust amongst the community.

Academic unrest

In 2013, the Ontario government drastically reduced the number of students that education faculties could admit to their teacher training programmes. This change has meant a significant revenue drought for certain institutions, testing the fiscal management abilities of academic leaders.

At OISE, the financial crunch has sparked strong resistance from professors. The main target of their unrest this year was Dean Julia O’Sullivan, a charismatic career administrator with a strong rhetoric of pursuing excellence and financial accountability. Her term involved a series of ‘blue-sky’ planning sessions aimed at developing OISE’s vision for the next decade.

Departments and programmes were restructured and graduate student enrolment increased – a necessary step to weather the provincial cuts. Unfortunately, related job losses among OISE’s support staff were also part of the process.

The situation reached a climax in March 2015 when 53 of OISE’s tenured professors called on the University of Toronto vice-president and provost to remove O’Sullivan from her post immediately. Although the university did not release O’Sullivan before the end of her term in June, enough damage was perceived to send both parties to the media.

As of 1 July an interim team took over and its members are faced with a challenging task as they attempt to change the tone of leadership at the institution. Hence, the lemonade stand.

Managerialism versus collegiality

In many ways OISE’s story is not unique. Since the 1990s, scholars have noted the changing nature of university administration.

Decision-makers have increasingly taken a ‘managerial’ approach, borrowing organisational strategies and an ethos of efficiency from the business sector. This is frequently seen in public universities where funding comes from the tax base and institutions are expected to publicly account for their actions and expenses.

The United Kingdom and Australia have become particularly notable for turning higher education over to the market. Yet unlike the business sector, public higher education can never be a fully market-responsive operation: the government will always be involved.

In Ontario, the divide between the market and government is clearly seen at the faculties of education. Left to the market, the number of students graduating from teacher-training programmes grew steadily over the past decades and institutions expanded their programmes accordingly.

By 2010, however, there were 9,000 teacher graduates competing for only 4,500 jobs. The lack of jobs was no secret, but students were still free to enrol in teacher training. The government mandate in 2013 required faculties of education to cut their admissions in half.

The government has balanced supply and demand, but the faculty administrators are now faced with balancing the budgets.

Challenging the norm

For many of us who started our careers as academics in the last decade, this is our norm. We have been socialised into an academy where money is the bottom line. The top researchers are identified by their ability to attain large grants, increased student enrolment means increased revenue and all of this must be accounted for in yearly reviews.

But the recent events at OISE hearken to a time when the professoriate made the rules and enforced them collectively – a time fewer and fewer of us have actually seen.

This attempt to remove the current authority – not through public demonstrations but a unified vote – is an act of faith in the power of the professoriate and hinges on a belief that they will be listened to.

Of course, it is easy to question how much influence the professoriate still has. After all, money matters. Sound business models can hardly be avoided: staff salaries and electric bills must be paid.

But the symbolic act of the lemonade stand is a hopeful one, a political statement that the academy is a community and authority should be accessible.

Grace Karram Stephenson is a doctoral candidate in higher and international education in the department of leadership, higher and adult education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, or OISE, University of Toronto, Canada.