Thread by @LaurieAdkin

Why should Albertans care about what the UCP govt is doing to post-secondary education institutions, including the @UAlberta? #Alberta #abpoli #abspe #StopPSEcuts #UAlberta @ryanjespersen @660NEWS @edmontonjournal @GlobalEdmonton @CAUS @cafaab @The_Gateway #Yeg @davideggenAB

2/ UAlberta wasn’t created overnight; it was built into a top 5 Canadian university by decades of public investment. It is the people’s university, and the people have every right to the best educational opportunities available.

3/ I’m not going to sugar-coat it: @UAlberta is being dismantled. A whole lot of parts are being taken out and tossed away.

4/ When it is put back together, it will be a smaller, more specialized institution whose research has been further privatized, offers fewer opportunities for education, and is less affordable for students. It is highly unlikely that it will remain a “top five” university.

5/ You don’t take away 41% of any institution’s funding and expect it to be able to do all the things it did before. Imagine that your income is reduced, over four years, by 40%. You would likely have to sell your house and forget about sending your kids to university.

6/ The UCP’s defunding of PSE is causing loss of programs, faculty, and affordability. A brain-drain of highly skilled personnel and academics now adds to the exodus of medical doctors and other professionals.

7/ An institution that contributes 5% to the province’s GDP is eliminating more than 1,000 positions; all those people contributed to our communities and to Edmonton’s economy. #yegcc

Are academics leaving because they refuse to work for less than “top five” salaries? Maybe a small number are chasing higher salaries. But for most, it’s about seeing the conditions for their research and teaching deteriorate continually under PC govts, and now dramatically.

9/ What do I mean by deteriorating conditions? The loss of colleagues who worked in technology, teaching, learning, librairies, and other research support services, or who handled data management, grant accounts, student advising, the maintenance of labs, and much else.

10/ I mean not being able offer students the best education possible because of growing class sizes, loss of courses and programs, tailoring of degrees to maximize enrolments instead of providing the most rigorous education in a subject, and disappearing teaching support.

11/ I mean the undervaluing of public interest-oriented research in comparison to research that attracts private, corporate funding. “Commercialization” of knowledge is not the primary role of a university-- regardless of what university presidents and politicians believe.

12/ Professors don’t spend 12 or more years in post-secondary education training to work for private industry. We trained to do research and to hand on our knowledge to the next generation. We chose to work in public universities.

13/ Neoliberal govts like the UCP want to turn us into R&D branches for private industry; we want to produce knowledge guided by our own understanding of the public interest.

14/ We’ve done a pretty good job of this, governed by our professional norms and practices. Neoliberals want to replace these with their own, market-driven metrics.

15/ So, we resist, in all the ways available to us. And if prospects for improvement seem dim, those who can find positions elsewhere, where working conditions are better and govts are less hostile to PSE, will move.

16/ With those highly qualified support staff and academics go irreplaceable knowledge. Curricula are left with big gaps. Workloads increase for everyone else. Morale plummets.

17/ Was any of this necessary? Was it necessary for the UCP govt to cut PSE funding? Will Albertans benefit as a result? In my view, it was not necessary. These decisions were ideologically driven--

18/ -- with a large pinch of contempt for educated people and vindictiveness toward the public intellectuals who sometimes criticize neoliberal and socially conservative policies.

19/ And no, Albertans will certainly not benefit. The community colleges are losing programs and staff, too. We should all be very worried about the future educational opportunities for our children.

20/ Lastly, if you think other Albertans should hear these views, please help me reach them by retweeting this thread.

Check out PIA's campaign site for post-secondary education. You can order a lawn sign here. stoppsecuts.ca/action