Education by Audit

Education by Audit Fordecades, it would seem, undergraduate teaching has been taken for granted in Canadian universities. What is called "the teaching-research equilibrium" has been regularly and heavily tipped toward research - the pursuit by academics of their particular scholarly interests and the related training ofthose graduate students who help them with and will carry on that important work. Research is what academics aretrained to respect; it is what they do well. Teaching undergraduates is something they also have to do, at least until such time as they can effectively free themselves from thoseobligations by meansofwinning research grantsorattaining somespecial institutional status or taking early retirement. Within most Canadian universities the reward systems in place for faculty for the most part recognize researchachievement rather than teaching. Thus, the needs ofundergraduates are stinted; what they get are very large lectures and classes, teachers drawn mostly from part-time or graduate ranks, and very little individual attention. Thegraduate sectorofunjversity departments is typically in the saddle. So argues the "Report" ofthe Commission oflnquiry on Canadian University Education" (the publications office, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1991), chaired by Stuart L. Smith. From the Commission's point of view - one that is regrettably freighted with the language ofauditors - things must be done to improve "quality control" of undergraduate education: "performance indicators" and "accountability measures" must be put formally in place within institutions and across the country to ensure better teaching within our universities. "Teaching is seriously undervalued at Canadian universities and nothing less than a total re-commitmentto it is required"(63). Such re-commitment is but a "reasonable expectation" of those who pay the bills. The scenario the Commission paints is depressing both in its findings and in its proposed solutions. Notwithstanding its own conclusion that thingsaren't really so bad in undergraduate teaching as the report might seem to suggest, there is a sad sense ofnarrowness and band-aid thinking that accompanies the "improvement"-by-audit logic the report adopts. The bald fact is that funding needs to be increased to the universities; inevitably when cutbacks are forced upon universities it is the undergraduate operation - a university's largest obligation - that is most affected. The legacy ofnearly two decades ofunderfunding has led to increasingly larger lectures and classes. Well aware of the financial problems, the Commission recommends several kinds ofdollar injections. Thatpartofthe report is likely to be ignored, though it is surely its most important finding. But beyond chronic underfunding (ofboth institutions and student-aid needs), universities are facing many pressures that follow from their own cultural selfconsciousness and internal politicization as well as from their position as the ultimate accreditor ofeducational and other kinds ofcultural achievement. Larger questions lie behind the issues dealt with by the Commission than it alludes to, though it is rightly sensitive about policy issues regarding thP. needs of native Canadians and the disabled for instance. Improved teaching is not sim'.JlY a matter ofretraining old dogs Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 26. No. 3 (A111011111e /'}9/ Fall) 3 to do new classroom tricks or forcing universities to bepublicly accountable for keeping those same old dogs in the undergraduate seminar room. In ourevolving and increasingly troubled society we need to remember what universities are supposed to do even as they are asked to serve new roles. Universities ought not to be seen as consumer-sensitive assembly lines, however much a utilitarian public might wish this to be the case; they are, at their purest and best, rich environments for learning, places whereknowledge is respected and treasured, and is madeavailable in a variety ofways to those interested in its pursuit. This is not something that politicians and the general public necessarily recognizeand it iscertainly not something that public data about something as difficult to access as teaching can clarify in any helpful way. The Commission suggests that a university education should producea graduate who has skills in critical thinking, leadership and self-teaching; who has respect for others, a sense of good citizenship, a range of basic knowledge and reasonable numeracy. To assure us as a society that thesegoals are being achieved such measures as rates ofgraduation statistics, graduate satisfaction and employer satisfaction are to be put in...