Created 10 April 2013 17:04

Are academic governance mechanisms up to the challenge of the 21st century? How can we protect academic quality while being responsive to societal and economic needs? Have senates become mere ‘rubber stamps’ for senior administration decisions? What are the options for governance reform?

These are the questions the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of BC (CUFA BC) explored at its March 2012 conference, Academic Governance 3.0. The papers delivered at that conference, with introductory and concluding essays by the conference organizers, have been assembled into a new e-book, Academic Governance 3.0 – What is it? How do we get there?, edited by Richard Kool.

The book features papers from Glen Jones (U of Toronto OISE), Claire Polster (U of Regina), John M. Usher (U of Lethbridge), Robert F. Clift (CUFA BC) and other Canadian academics. The book offers not only a vigorous critique of academic governance in Canada, but also suggests possible avenues for reform that recognize that the contemporary university is a much different institution than when the seminal work on university governance in Canada, the Duff / Berdahl report, was released in 1966.

The e-book is available for download, free of charge, from: https://cufa.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Academic-Governance-3.0.pdf