Collective Autonomy: A History of the Council of Ontario Universities, 1962-2000

Preface

After a forty-year professional career in the university world, first as an academic professing the discipline of philosophy and then as a university administrator, the leisure afforded by retirement has provided me with an opportunity to write the history of an association with which I was involved for half of my professional career and for about half of the association’s lifetime to date. The Council of Ontario Universities (cou) is a voluntary association that represents the publicly funded universities of Ontario. Established in 1962 as the Committee of Presidents of the Universities of Ontario (cpou), it has been (and continues to be) a major player on the Ontario university scene and beyond in Canada. My involvement began in 1971, when I served for a year as the executive assistant to John Deutsch, principal of Queen’s University. Dr. Deutsch was a principal architect of the Ontario university system and at that time was serving as a member of the Wright Commission on Post-secondary Education in Ontario. My involvement continued during my six-year tenure as president of Laurentian University of Sudbury, when I served as a member of council representing that institution. In 1977, I accepted the position of executive director of cou and served in that capacity for almost fifteen years, until retirement in 1991. This history, the first full-length account of cou to be written, is intended to supplement the growing body of literature on the history of higher education in Canada. An “insider’s” account, it offers a picture of the activities on an association that, while seldom achieving a high profile , has acted continuously and quietly to serve the interests of the university community in this province and beyond. Other publications, including the growing number of excellent institutional histories, provide broader accounts of the development of higher education in a province or the country, comparative studies of universities in different provincial or national jurisdictions, analyses of public policy issues involving Canadian universities, or more detailed accounts of the history of parPreface vii ticular universities. This history fills a niche. It tells the story of an independent agency, one created by the universities themselves, whose mission is to serve as the voice of the collectivity of Ontario’s public universities in speaking both to government, which funds and regulates these essential institutions on behalf of society, and to the broader community in whose interests the universities are committed to act. My research has been made possible through the generous co-operation of cou staff. Dr. Ian Clark, the current president of cou, graciously approved access to council archives; senior members of the secretariat staff, many of them my former colleagues, have provided additional valuable information and comments. My predecessor as executive director , Dr. John B. Macdonald, and Edward Desrosiers, who served as the council’s director of research during my term of office, both of whom read an earlier draft, have provided many helpful comments and suggestions . Inaccuracies and imperfections that remain are my responsibility. As a former player, I do not claim to be a disinterested observer; and I accept that some of my analysis and conclusions are open to challenge. I have endeavoured, however, to provide a balanced, even-handed account. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through its Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am pleased to record my gratitude for this assistance. And finally I express my thanks to Dr. Brian Henderson, the director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and his staff, who with grace, good humour, and quiet competence have successfully led an aging academic through the prolix process of having a monograph published. Edward J. Monahan viii | preface ...