SCENT’s winter 2017 theme extends the fall theme of “what” is university for, but now asks whom it is for, and what are the consequences of how that question is answered.

Are universities for faculty primarily? If so, which faculty? Are they primarily a place for tenured and tenure-stream scholars to conduct their research and be supported in those endeavours? Are they also for the low-paid contingent faculty who now do nearly 50% of the teaching?

Are universities primarily for students, and hence a place to focus on teaching and learning outside as well as inside of faculty specializations? If the latter, what do we mean by “students”: future workers, producers, professionals? Future citizens, participants in civil society? Humans who value knowledge, discovery, creativity, vision?

To what extent and in what ways do universities exist to serve off-campus communities – local, regional, national, international – and who decides? Indeed, who decides whom universities serve?

This semester’s theme aims to provoke more thinking about this question, and about the implications of universities’ focus(es). At a time of a rapidly changing context for universities generally, as well as massive changes in the student body—with increased calls to make universities "relevant” in a number of ways to those students – how can we (at UPEI, and more generally) respond? How do we want to respond? This semester’s blog picks up these issues and others.

Please click here to read and comment on our provocative first article of the term: “In Defense of the ‘White’ Curriculum.”