1 My associates Sharon Sutherland and Allan Tupper have done me the honour of taking seriously the ideas presented here, encouraging me to express them more clearly and challenging me to respond .to objections and consider alternatives. Although they bear no direct responsibility for this essay, Don Carmichael and Greg Pyrcz have been my principal teachers for the past 25 years, so there are undoubtedly many signs of their influence here.

2 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 40Google Scholar. Since it is preposterous to maintain that Plato's Republic is not at all a political work, I take this to be one of Rousseau's ways of making the point that education and politics are deeply interrelated.

3 This view was first expressed bluntly by Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham in Power and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), xii:Google Scholar “We conceive of political science as one of the policy sciences—that which studies influence and power.” Similarly, Robert A. Dahl recommended that we “Boldly define a political system as any persistent pattern of human relationships that involves, to a significant extent, control, influence, power or authority” (Dahl, Robert A., Modern Political Analysis [5th ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1991], 4).Google Scholar

4 The same is true in the United States. There, as in Canada, most studies of universities are the work of professors of history, literature and sociology (with a few exceptions, the less said about the work of specialized professors of higher education the better.) Economists also play a large role in the US literature, in part because so many of them are university politicians, and many US university officials, unlike most of their Canadian counterparts, speak out on issues relating to higher education. One of the most stimulating American books on universities, Kerr's, ClarkThe Uses of the University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963)Google Scholar (and several subsequent editions) was written by an economist-university president, and one of the smuggest, Rosovsky's, HenryThe University: An Owner's Manual (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990)Google Scholar by an economist-dean.

5 This impression is conveyed even more forcefully by thoughtful books like Bromwich, David, Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992);Google ScholarEmberley, Peter C., Zero Tolerance: Hot Button Politics in Canada's Universities (Toronto: Penguin, 1996)Google Scholar; and Reading, Bill, The University in Ruins (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, than by bad ones like Bercuson, David, Bothwell, Robert and Granatstein, J. L., Petrified Campus: The Crisis in Canadian Universities (Toronto: Random House, 1997)Google Scholar and Nelson, Cary, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (New York: New York University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

6 I do not mean to suggest that all books written about universities suffer from excessive attention to the liberal arts. This is decidedly not true of the best book I have read about universities: Jencks, Christopher and Riesman, David, The Academic Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968)Google Scholar. It is also not true of the works of two exceptionally perceptive political scientists, one American and one Canadian. See Anderson, Charles W., Prescribing the Life of the Mind (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Corry, J. A., Universities and Governments (Toronto: Gage, 1969)Google Scholar; and Bonneau, Louis-Philippe and Corry, J. A., Quest for the Optimum: Research Policy in the Universities of Canada (Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1972)Google Scholar. This essay is deeply influenced by Corry's thoughts about universities.

7 Those with a taste for high moral tone should note that I have not said an envious word about the salaries of professors of medicine and engineering or the fancy digs commonly allocated to schools of business and law.

8 I am counting psychology, which relies heavily on the assessment techniques common in the sciences, as part of science rather than part of arts. Most academic psychologists regard themselves as scientists, and psychology departments are often located wholly or partly in faculties of science. “Objective” assessment techniques are also used extensively in economics and sociology and, to some extent, even in anthropology and political science. But these practices are still regarded as dubious by a declining majority of arts professors.

9 For example, in 1996–1997 scholars at the University of Alberta received $16.8 million from MRC, $25.3 million from NSERC, and $4.1 million from SSHRC. See Office of the Vice-President (Research and External Affairs), Research Works (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1997), 4.

10 In 1996–1997 funds for sponsored research at the University of Alberta went 43 per cent to the Faculty of Medicine, 23 per cent to Science and 2 per cent to Arts (Edmontonians, March 1997, 5).

11 Canadian universities with such an office include British Columbia, Simon Fraser, Northern British Columbia, Alberta, Calgary, Regina, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Toronto, Queen's Western, Waterloo, Guelph, Lakehead, Carleton, McMaster, Ottawa, Montréal, Laval, Concordia, McGill, Québec à Montréal, Dalhousie and Memorial.

12 This sketch is derived from interviews I conducted with a nonrandom group of scientists at a nonrandom group of Canadian universities.

13 The most striking contrast is between arts and medicine. In the academic year 1996–1997, the faculties of arts and medicine at the University of Alberta each had about 350 full-time academic staff members. There were close to 5,100 undergraduate students in Arts and 425 in the M.D. programme of the Faculty of Medicine.

14 An indication of the depth of current disagreements in faculties of arts is found in “Rationality and Realism, What Is at Stake,” in Cole, Jonathan R., Barber, Elinor G. and Graubard, Stephen R., eds., The Research University in a Time of Discontent (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, chap. 3, where Searle, John R. attempts to defend traditional views about truth and objectivity. In contrast, in Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser ignore positions like Searle's as if they had been decisively refuted.

15 Bonneau and Corry, Universities and Governments

16 Ibid., 15.

17 Ibid., 20.

18 Ibid., 22.

19 Students in Grade 10 do “research” in an encyclopedia in preparation for a short report on Louis Riel, and gardeners do “research” on shrubs to ensure that they get ones that are hardy in their climate zone.

20 Holsti, K. J., “The Necrologists of International Relations,” this Journal 18 (1985), 675–695Google Scholar; Lemieux, Vincent, “The Scholar and the Expert,” this Journal 25 (1992), 651–660Google Scholar; and Jenson, Jane, “Fated to Live in Interesting Times: Canada's Changing Citizenship Regimes,” this Journal 30 (1997), 627–644.Google Scholar

21 Clokie, Hugh M., Canadian Government and Politics(rev. ed.; Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1950)Google Scholar; MacGregor Dawson, Robert, The Government of Canada, ed. by Ward, Norman (6th rev. ed.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Van Loon, Richard and Whittington, Michael S., The Canadian Political System (4th ed.; Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1987)Google Scholar; Mallory, James R., The Structure of Canadian Government (Toronto: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar; Jackson, Robert J. and Jackson, Doreen, Politics in Canada (4th ed; Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1998)Google Scholar; and Malcolmson, Patrick and Myers, Richard, The Canadian Regime (Peterborough: Broadview, 1996)Google Scholar.

22 Smiley, Donald V., Canada in Question (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980)Google Scholar; Cairns, Alan C., Charter Versus Federalism (2nd ed.; Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Simeon, Richard, Federal-Provincial Diplomacy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Stevenson, Garth, Unfulfilled Union (3rd ed.; Toronto: Gage, 1989)Google Scholar; Ryerson, Stanley B., Unequal Union: Roots of the Crisis in the Canadas, 1815–1873 (2nd ed.; Toronto: Progress Books, 1972)Google Scholar; and LaSelva, Samuel V., The Moral Foundations of Canadian Federalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

23 Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., Burke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., The Real World of Democracy (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1965)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, The Malaise of Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, Recognizing the Solitudes (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Grant, George P., Lament for a Nation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965)Google Scholar; Grant, George P., Technology and Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969)Google Scholar; Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles E., A Strategy of Decision (New York: Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Braybrooke, David, Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Braybrooke, David, Three Tests for Democracy (New York: Random House, 1968).Google Scholar

24 Better squared is bags of publications in ldquo;prestigious” refereed journals. But plenty of mediocre is better than a little bit of very good.

25 These figures include only essays identified as articles. Presidential addresses, rejoinders, notes and review articles are excluded.

26 At my university, a sizeable minority of social scientists favours special rewards not only for those who receive SSHRC grants, whether or not they put them to good use but also for those who apply for them, whether or not they receive them. This view has, as far as I can tell, no support in our Department of Political Science, but of course faculty policy could eliminate choice in the matter. Colleagues at other universities tell me that we are not unique.

27 Methods for finding this time all involve individual or collective reductions of teaching time, which always lead to larger classes elsewhere.

28 Remarkable among these is the essay by University of Guelph sociologist, Sid Gilbert: “Quality Education, Does Class Size Matter?”http://www.aucc.ca/english/publications/research/apr95. html.

29 Bercuson, Bothwell and Granatstein, Petrified Campus, 88.

30 The reference here, of course, is to Robert Dahl's seminal but flawed book, Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).

31 Dennis O'Brien, George, All the Essential Half-Truths about Higher Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

32 For what it's worth, Stephen M. Stigler begins his analysis of “Competition and the Research Universities” (in Cole, Barber and Braubard, The Research University in a Time of Discontent, 131–51 at 132) with the following assumption: “I shall take it is understood that the faculty own the university.”

33 It may not be amiss here to remind readers that no part of my argument asserts or suggests that professors are slackers (although a few are). My case, rather, is that we have our noses pressed too close to the grindstone and that we should spend more time in contemplation.

34 In light of my earlier judgment about the ascendancy of professors in university politics, this is one of the grounds of my pessimism.