Ugly battles bury good news
If there is good news for any sector in our society during a recession, it should be in post-secondary education. During modern economic recessions Canadians tend to flock to publicly-funded colleges and universities. This makes very good sense.
Choosing to upgrade one's education sure beats sitting around waiting for a job. For those who have been laid off, a good strategy is re-training or getting a post-secondary education that will enable a career change. Most young people know that getting a post-secondary degree, diploma or skills training is mandatory if they want to secure decent jobs these days.
The leaders of our colleges and universities have a strong case to make to government for more public investment in higher education during recessionary times rather than less. But while many education leaders are doing extraordinary jobs of branding their schools as good places to invest, others are not.
Colleges and especially universities often bungle their labour relations and allow extremists to use the campus as bully a pulpit, drawing unfortunate media attention. York University in Toronto is a prime example.
Just when the media should be reporting the good news that enrollment in colleges and universities is on the rise, much of the its attention since last fall has been on York's labour troubles and ugly battles between extremist groups at York's main campus in north Toronto.
York's self-inflicted wounds on the labour front and its apparent tolerance of politicly-correct intolerance hurt the reputation of all universities.
It shouldn't surprise us that York University, with its reputation as a hotbed for 1960s-driven political correctness, suffers from outdated labour activism and the type of elitism and intolerance that tars too many higher education institutions in Canada.
The university has some very fine programs, most notably its law school (Osgoode Hall) and its business school (Schulich School of Business). But York seems to be making all the wrong moves lately. Last fall, 3,400 contract employees, including graduate and teaching assistants, went on strike and basically shut down the university for three months.
Sure, York uses part-time professors and teachers' assistants to keep costs down (tenured professors are expensive and impossible to get rid of). And the part-timers and TAs might have had a case for their job action.
But try telling the worker on the auto assembly line who is seeing his job vanish that these glorified teachers have it hard. Tell the recent grad who can't get her first job that her professors and TAs are downtrodden.
More disruption
After shooting itself in one foot in the labour dispute, York then got mired in a controversy over a racist campaign by anti-Israeli activists called "Israeli Apartheid Week." The campaign's attempt to liken Israel's control over Palestinian land to the previously state-sanctioned racial segregation in South Africa is poorly veiled anti-Semitism.
That York and other universities allow this type of hate on campus is bad enough, but allowing extremists on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to disrupt classes and exams at York is outrageous.
It's no surprise Israeli Apartheid Week campaigners chose to focus on York: the university has a large Jewish population. By not saying "no" to this form of hate (I doubt the university would allow student groups to "discuss" how many Arab governments oppress advocates of democracy, religious liberty and equality of the sexes) York's leaders showed that they too cower before political correctness.
Suspending and fining four student groups for disrupting the academic activities of the university is too little, too late.
Sadly, York's troubles will have a devastating impact on its reputation. My bright, 16-year-old daughter has a sweet, untainted outlook on a bright future for herself and her country that inspires and astonishes me. She has already declared that she'd rather chew glass than go to York.
Universities and colleges have an obligation to manage their affairs well, stimulate thoughtful debate, inspire and challenge our future leaders and offer hope in times of trouble. Here's to hoping some of them grow up and stop shooting themselves in both feet.
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