The Financialization of Universities: Institutional Transparency and Accountability in the Age of "The Art of the Deal"

Ethics at Noon, Critical Ethics

MV invertUniversity governance, at U of T as at other institutions, has been called into question on a regular but sporadic basis (at U of T, when the arrangements relating to setting up the Munk School were revealed, or more recently by the campaign to divest from fossil fuels). What we collectively lack, however, is a good picture of everyday governance processes. I have been conducting research on just one aspect of university activities, namely decision-making concerning capital projects.

To critically analyze the capital-project and related financing decisions, in universities as in the rest of the Ontario public sector, simply waving the flag of “transparency” is insufficient. U of T and similar broader public sector entities do make public a great number of documents. But neither the content nor the format of the documents that are publicly available, many of which I have closely studied, help to understand who decides what and when, and what evidence is used to make important decisions that, among other things, commit the university to continually increase both tuition fees and ancillary fees.

Presenter:
Mariana Valverde, Professor, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto

Free and open to the public.
Eventbrite - The Financialization of Universities in the Age of "The Art of the Deal"

Wed, Mar 8, 2017
12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place