Week of national concern
CAUT, the provincial and local faculty associations have declared the week of March 24th to 31st as a week of national concern on the underfunding of universities and the decline of quality education. Faculty Associations across the country will be participating in local, provincial and national events, and CAUT will be organizing a press conference, developing a position paper and orchestrating a mass lobby on Parliament Hill on March 24 and 25th.
In this special issue of the CAUT Bulletin, provincial organizations across Canada were asked to describe the effects of underfunding in their province. Across the country in the past 20 years, provincial spending on universities as a percentage of provincial budgets has almost everywhere followed the same pattern — an increase in the first ten years followed by steady decrease until the percentage in most provinces is at the same level as in 1960. Federal research funding suffered a long decline through the 1970s and is only now beginning to hold its own in terms of inflation.
We also see an attack on what should be one of the enduring political decisions of the sixties, that universities should not be simply the finishing school for the children of the rich but should be open to all those with the talent to come. It is true that this vision has never been fully realized. We still fail to reach a significant number of the children of the working class or of our native population.
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To read the full article that appeared in the CAUT Bulletin Special Edition 1982 issue visit www-archive.caut.ca.