Funds not meeting U of A’s needs

I am responding to several articles and letters published over the last two weeks regarding the budget crisis at the University of Alberta.

As we listen to faculty members, chairs, deans, the provost and the president present different aspects of the situation, it becomes increasingly difficult to make sense of it all. There are really three questions: (1) Is provincial funding for the U of A sufficient to provide the postsecondary education we have been promised and expect for ourselves and our children?

(2) Is university management handling the distribution of funding within the university in the best way possible to achieve that result?

(3) Is the Faculty of Arts management handling the financial deficit situation in the best way possible to respect the needs of faculty, support staff and students alike?

The answers to these questions are certainly interrelated but to conflate them is to create confusion.

Almost everyone within the university community would agree that provincial funding is not meeting its needs. This is not a new problem. It is one that has been collectively ad- dressed several times over the past 25 years.

There is an infrastructure in place that facilitates negotiations between administration, faculty and support staff and then allows the university to speak with one voice to our provincial bankers.

The second question is more problematic. The differences between the financial needs of, and the financial opportunities available to, members of the university community are bound to be significant.

While it is easy to let these issues of internal differences spill over into the current public discussion of the U of A, I would argue they should not. The internal infrastructure allows the university to deal effectively (if not always efficiently) with its in-house concerns.

The third question, related specifically to the Faculty of Arts and its internal management, belongs to the Faculty of Arts. It should not engage its Edmonton community partners, of whom there are many.

The current dean of the Faculty of Arts has put in place a process by which ways to make the faculty more sustainable can be determined.

All members of this community have been welcomed into the process; updates on progress are provided regularly. The process is transparent. The approach is not just one of how to do as much with less, but rather, how to reconfigure how we do what we do, better.

University members need to be clearer about just what it is we want when we invoke notions of a public institution and public responsibility.

Perhaps a good place to begin is by acknowledging that the U of A, as a community, is employing its own mechanisms and processes to resolve this particular budget crisis, just as it has done on more than one occasion in the past.

But what does the U of A mean to Edmonton and to Alberta, to its citizens and to their children, today and tomorrow? How much is it worth in terms of provincial dollars?

The answers to these questions do indeed lie in the public domain and require public discussion, not only in answer to a crisis.

E. Ann Mcdougall, professor, depar tment of hi s tor y and clas s ics , Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta