WHO NEEDS ACADEMIC FREEDOM?....... like really?

I just got back from listening to DR. Howard Woodhouse give a speach titled "Who Needs Academic Freedom?" and was pleasently surprised and much to my peers dismay I was totally engauged without the use of my Laptop. The speach centered on post secondary academic freedom from a philosophy standpoint and was geared very much toward informing the public on just exactly our university is doing in regards to our education with their own coporate agenda.
One key point of the speech and question period that fallowed centered on the Canadian Light source Synchrotron and how is has cost us 450 million not including operating budgets. The one fact that was brought up that struck close to home for me was that the companies using our technology to create thing for the corporate agenda actually end up costing us twice as much, for example the drug companies, use the facility that we payed for to make medicine and drugs for us, we then pay for those drugs? please stop me for thinking in Communist ideologies but does this not seem wrong? should we not either benefit from those drugs derived from our facility or at very least allow that drug company to pay their taxes and allow us to benefit in some other way?
Another reason this idea struck me close to home is that the university operates in very much the same manner, we pay incredible amounts to get an education which is funding by the public purse due to major cuts by government during the educational student movements in the 70's. We pay taxes that used to pay for our education and then pay again when we graduated to fund private corporate agenda ventures like the light source synchrotron? Woodhouse mentioned that upon graduation of his Doctorate he had a debt of 0$ thats right ZERO, lets just think about that? on average we could say one degree and bachelor's mind you, would cost on average roughly 50 grand, and not only are we thrown into debt and forced to feed the corporate agenda machine but the fact that this makes us work through school hurts our quality of education and also allows no time for political movements on the part of students. It has been said that the cuts to education was a direct result of the uprising to the students movements in the 70's and i would say that the plan worked.
If we look at some western European countries like Scandinavia, we would see all post secondary schooling paid for and we would also see a much higher standard of education and living among others. I realize they pay higher taxes but is that not a good trade off? lets allow our students to go to school for free and when their out we will have a much larger smarter tax base, and i think not making people pay over and over for the same result may be a smarter model.

It seems to me that the highest for of accountability we have in university is the personal integrity of our staff, go figure?

well here is to changing the system one blog at a time

live life, love, laugh and design unlikely futures.