Taking Public Universities Seriously (review)

The title of this profound, evidence-based, and timely collection of essays can be read in multiple ways. The superb chapters do, indeed, take public universities seriously by examining them critically and constructively from multi-disciplinary perspectives embedded in pan-Canadian and international contexts. But the chapters also trumpet the need for greater understanding of how public universities are 'central pillars of successful societies.' In other words, the book's title emphasizes the extent to which public universities are not being taken seriously in public discussion and policy debate in many countries. The central conclusion is that, if current trends continue, the prospects for successful societies in the coming decades are poor.

Recent developments in Ontario inspired the editors to focus both on the question of public support for universities and on current research findings about how public universities underpin societal health and individual quality of life. As academic leaders of the University of Toronto during the major review (led by Bob Rae) of Ontario's post-secondary education, Frank Iacobucci and Carolyn Tuohy experienced first-hand the challenge of articulating arguments that would dull the scissors of declining resources and increasing demand in an unsupportive province. In this context, the University's Munk Centre for International Studies hosted a symposium in early December, 2004, where major figures in current scholarly debate contributed serious ideas, evidence, and analyses that are now available in this substantial volume composed of six sections: 'The Challenges Confronting Public Universities'; 'The Case for the Public University: Rationales for and Modes of Public Intervention'; 'Responding to the Challenges: Performance-Based Government Operating and Capital Support; Building Excellence: Graduate and Research Support'; 'Governing the System: New Modes for Promoting Accountability, Transparency, and Responsiveness'; and 'Enhancing Accessibility: Normative Foundations for Income-Contingent Grant and Loan Programs.' In addition, the editors offer a thoughtful introduction, while the comments made by discussants at the symposium have been made available on the University of Toronto president's webpage.

Taken together, the thirty-one chapters represent a kind of self-study in which critical but supportive eyes survey past experience, current conditions, and potential futures for public universities across various jurisdictions, mostly in North America (especially Ontario), with comparative evidence from Australia, China, and certain other countries. This approach reveals that the questions being raised about public universities and government educational policies are remarkably similar across diverse geopolitical boundaries: who should pay? who benefits? how should performance be evaluated? how should the tension between institutional autonomy and system co-ordination be reconciled? how should public universities be governed?

At the same time, the authors offer quite consistent evidence of the value of public universities to both individuals and societies, thereby emphasizing that all the answers involve decisions about balance. The difficulty is in developing a scale that does justice to the complex ways in which universities connect both to individual lives and societal patterns. Whether examining tuition rates or performance indicators, governance structures or research funding, public opinion or public policy, the chapters offer consistently thoughtful evidence-based analyses of the private-public intersections that will enrich the thinking of parents, students, educators, employers, community leaders, and public policymakers. These analyses make clear that by investing in public universities, we are investing in ourselves, our children, and their children. Details about the long-term rates of return will be unpredictable and complex, but what other investment is more promising?