Message to Indira on Colloquy

I have posted the following comment (subject to approval) on Colloquy in response to our President's expansion of her Edmonton Journal interview:

Madam President,
Thank-you for these clarifications of your Edmonton Journal interview comments — they certainly expand on the edited highlights reported in the Journal. Similarly, my Edmonton AM interview last week was necessarily brief, but I do seem to recall suggesting leasing some of the University's landholdings as an alternative to selling. Regardless, the intent of my main point was to argue that, as with personal finances, investments (either monetary or material) should be made to work for us as much in the present as in the future. They should help us ride out the tough times, and then be replenished when the good times return (which they surely will). We need resources now to maintain standards and quality, and so this would be a good time to realize the value of some of those investments and holdings.

And when the good times return, let's not spend every last penny on unbridled growth on campus — a big university is not necessarily a better one. My experience of the last 6%-grant period was not of improved ability to teach, but rather of increased class sizes, an increased number of reduced-teaching research chairs, forced obsolescence of perfectly good classroom technologies, continued attrition of support staff, and a general deterioration in workload/worklife conditions.

So this would be a good time to strike a new deal with the Government of Alberta, and the People of Alberta, whereby we undertake to provide a rising quality of education for Albertans in exchange for realistic and steady funding that at a minimum matches inflation and population growth. If the University is not allowed to set up a rainy day fund for itself, then let the government do it so it can honour its side of the bargain. There is a precedent for this in its heritage funds.

Otherwise this situation will repeat itself with every cycle of the economy, with such waste of resources, effort, and goodwill on each downswing.