This paper is concerned with long term strategic planning in higher education and focuses on Ontario's strategic mandate agreement (SMA) sector planning framework. In 2012, the province initiated its new SMA planning process by requiring all higher education institutions to propose their own strategies for their academic visions, missions, and…

This case explores experiences of practicing care-centered leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. The case narrative is the author's anonymized account of responding with care ethics to specific challenges encountered during the pandemic and the complexities of transitioning into a new leadership role in 2020. The teaching notes and activities…

This article is a case study describing the University College of the North's (UCN) response to the COVID-19 pandemic, outlining pandemic planning and management processes at UCN from March 11, 2020, to September 30, 2021. UCN's planning processes evolved from a top-down approach led by administration to an approach that saw greater shared…

Higher education has seen a shift that means its leaders are no longer only being recruited and perceived as senior academics who lead teaching and research. Leaders are now sometimes recruited and viewed as managers who oversee the operation of their institution, college, faculty, or school. This paper analyses the initial findings of an…

This exploratory study investigates the expertise of committee members tasked with constructing sexual violence policies within a post-secondary institution (PSI) and the constraints under which they complete this work. Our findings indicate that allocated committees prioritize institutional risk management, normalize confusion, and most members…

A significant emerging body of research examines the conditions and impacts of neoliberalism on academic institutions, particularly how the rise of the 'marketized' university has shifted the way in which academics are expected to engage in research and teaching. Validating academic's experiences, we highlight their emotional responses to the…

This paper presents a case narrative of a university dean who is charged with instituting change within her faculty in order to resolve the faculty's financial issues. The case narrative explores academic conceptualizations of entrepreneurship and describes the dean's context in terms of: her executive leadership team, the financial issues she was…

Using discourse analysis, the author identifies contradictions in privatization discourse in order to highlight how state-based educational reform has used a normative language of student interests to fundamentally redefine the nature of the university's mission and its faculty based governance structures. The author proposes a counter-discourse…

This study examines how international education programs in British Columbia have been discursively framed by government and media sources. Over the past two decades, international education programs have expanded in number and scale in the province, a phenomenon that has been interpreted by some education researchers and media sources as…

The last 3 decades have witnessed the rise of reforms aimed at conjoining Canadian universities to the economic system. Critics have pointed out how reforms have emphasized economic utility in universities to the detriment of their sociocultural mission, producing negative effects. One curricular innovation that has spread in tandem with reforms…

This paper reviews neoliberalism as an ideology that has influenced higher education generally and Ontario higher education in particular. It includes a discourse analysis of "Strengthening Ontario's Centres of Creativity, Innovation and Knowledge" (Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, 2012), a government discussion…

This paper outlines a preliminary document analysis of the intersection of two prominent discourses in the Western public academy: equity and internationalization. Particular dilemmas arise for people who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). These dilemmas, I propose, exemplify impacts of the neoliberal compulsion to let…

Canadian post-secondary institutions are seeking enhanced efficiencies due to ongoing funding shortfalls and expanding teaching, research, and service mandates. These institutions have considered or enacted Lean methodology based on results reported by public service and healthcare organizations worldwide. Lean requires a high level of…

Adopting a post-structuralist and critical perspective, the author situates The Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Act, 2002, often referred to as the New College Charter, and its developing Ministerial bodies regarding curricula at the colleges, in discourses of standardization, neoliberalism and globalization. Of concern is the…

Interviews with professors, students, and practicing administrators, and participation in lectures, seminars, and assessment procedures provided the basis for this investigation of educational administration programs at 12 prominent Canadian universities. (Author/IRT)