The Great Brain Robbery: Canada's Universities on the Road to Ruin

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

The key to this book lies in Chapter VIII (“What is to Be Done?”), which is the summary for the book. Here, the authors list defects in the Canadian university system (wasteful expenses in running the public school system; political interference; funding formulas that do not work; non-academics in administration; lowering of entrance standards; declining grading standards; a debased curriculum; students with too much say; complacent tenured faculty), followed by some potential solutions. While the authors devote about 150 pages to describing what is wrong with the university system (and in a shrill, often hysterical tone), they spend only three or so pages talking about solutions (find new methods of funding; reallocate the scholar-dollar; raise entrance standards; toss out the bureaucrats: get rid of teacher unions and tenure; financially encourage scholarly presses). More space needs to be devoted to justifying these changes. It is far easier to knock something than to rebuild it.

This is not to say that Bercuson et al. are wrong. I and many others in academia happen to agree with much of what they say. But not with the manner in which they said it. The journalistic breeziness and lack of index indict the book as a simplistic, “quick and dirty” sell to magazines and newspapers for serialization (as indeed happened). This kind of writing is best directed to the press, for the press is turned towards the masses. There is a distinct feeling that the authors are unsure of their audience: to whom is the book being directed?