Exploring the role of corporations and governments in Alberta’s universities

Dr. Adkin and her research assistants reconstructed a picture of the funding flows to the Universities of Alberta and Calgary over a period of 20 years.

As part of her team’s research, they honed in on funding to the domains of energy and environmental research and categorized research projects in relation to their contributions to ecologically sustainable developments.

“Universities are embedded in regional, political economies, like Alberta’s or any other province in the country. They’re embedded in national and global political economies whose dominant actors and, we could say, the structure of the economy in general, tend to exert pressures on universities to serve their ends,” said Dr. Adkin.

“Publicly funded post-secondary institutions are, to a substantial degree, policy-takers. They are subject to the ideological discourses and developmental priorities of governments.”

She noted that governments, in turn, typically set goals related to university-based research and development, “in accordance with the interest of the economic actors who have the most structural power and political influence”.

“So, the innovation funding priorities of provincial and federal funding agencies…these priorities reflect the interests of these economic actors and in that sense, we can say that their priorities are primarily market driven. They’re not entirely market driven, there are other factors which shape innovation policy and funding priorities as well,” she said.

Dr. Adkin said post-secondary schools in Alberta are embedded in a political economy primarily dependent on the extraction and export of fossil fuels.

Therefore, many institutions have been shaped to accommodate the interest of that economic sector.

“In recent years, the discourse of university administrators has shifted somewhat to mention not only hydrocarbons research but also to speak about clean energy and energy innovation. These are the kind of new buzzwords that we see a lot in the speech of university administrators when they talk about what kinds of research their institutions are doing.”

“Research on low carbon sources of energy is highlighted alongside the traditional strengths of our universities in fossil fuels-related energy research.”

She said that shift in thinking is requiring university administrators to acknowledge that the global climate crisis has been primarily driven by greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

This has put a spotlight on research exploring clean sources of energy.

ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Dr. Adkin asked if clean energy research truly advance a ‘post-carbon transmission’ into a more eco-friendly, sustainable future in Alberta and across Canada and the world.

“Or, does it serve the slow down this transition effectively by allowing politicians and corporations to claim that fossil fuel extraction is ecologically sustainable?”

“We aimed to map what I call the political ecology of knowledge production that has resulted from government funding priorities over the past 15 to 20 years.”

She said universities play an important role to develop citizens that can help create a sustainable future for all.

“I think it’s really important that we look at the kinds of knowledge that universities are producing in the context of the global climate crisis.”

Dr. Adkin’s presentation to SACPA can be viewed below.

(Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs on YouTube)

by Justin Goulet

Exploring the role of corporations and governments in Alberta’s universities

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