CAUT has been invited to join a meeting of ministers of education from OECD countries in Athens later this month to discuss how to promote quality, equity and efficiency in higher education.

“In recent decades, higher education systems have grown and diversified in all OECD countries and must now address broad objectives of growth, full employment and social cohesion,” said Angel Gurría, the OECD’s secretary-general.

This year’s meeting of OECD education ministers is the first to focus on higher education, and will be preceded by a forum on the future of higher education that will look at how four major forces — technology, globalization, demography and new approaches to university and college governance — might affect higher education.

“The OECD has become increasingly active in the field of higher education policy,” CAUT associate executive director David Robinson said. “To date, much of this work has largely ignored the concerns of academic staff, and yet many governments, including those here in Canada, are using OECD recommendations as a blueprint for change.”

He said the OECD has been promoting a series of “commercial and businesslike reforms” that would make institutions more dependent on tuition fees and private sources of revenue, and would jeopardize the autonomy and integrity of universities and colleges.

“Almost no attention has been paid to the impact of these reforms on academic freedom, collegial governance, or the terms and conditions of employment of staff,” Robinson said. “We need to make the case very forcefully to ministers that a talented and committed professoriate, protected by academic freedom and directly involved in the decision-making processes of the institution, is at the heart of higher education.”

Canada will be officially represented at the ministerial meeting by Chris Bentley, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Joan Burke, Minister of Education for Newfoundland and Labrador and Jean-Marc Fournier, Quebec’s Minister of Education, Recreation and Sports.

Prior to the official opening of the ministerial meeting, the OECD is hosting a two-day “experts” seminar in Istanbul on higher education reform. An invitation-only program, Education International, the global federation representing more than 29 million teachers and education workers in 166 countries from preschool to university, has invited CAUT to join the seminar.