Seats of Learning/Centres of Conflict:

Contradictory Expectations for Northern Universities

by

Amanda Graham, Yukon College

 

Introduction  Seats of Learning -- Centres of Conflict  Conclusion  Notes  Reference List  Copyright Information

Introduction

Universities, more so, possibly, than other major social institutions, have the capacity to improve society. This notion is widely accepted and confirmed by their global use as tools of regional development. As with other tools of development, however, the underlying agenda can become a cause of conflict with regional interests and may even cause the institution to overlook or misdiagnose regional desires and needs in the face of government-mandated development imperatives or internal, institutional, goals. A northern university is not free to grow in purely self- and regionally-determined directions; it must remain conscious of the deeper motives that led to its establishment and will, therefore, also play a political and economic role in the region that may be greater than that played by similar institutions in the more populated areas. 

There is a fairly accepted view (see Weller, 1987) that almost all northern universities have been created for one of two reasons: either as deliberate tools of regional development or as a response to local agitation for university-level programming.¹ I would like to suggest, however, that both reasons are, in fact, merely the two sides of the same coin. The impetus for their founding has, in most instances, come from government. But whether or not governments have chosen to create centres of higher education in northern regions as elements of policy or as responses to local demand, the basic purpose remains: to improve the region and the lives of people its residents. Yet who defines improvement? Whose standards are used to measure it? Might there be differences between the universities' and the regions' conception of improvement? 

My strategy for exploring this issue is straightforward: I looked at the roles the universities perceive themselves playing in the regional development process and then asked to what extent regional desires are compatible or coinciding. One would expect that universities established to meet local demand for university-level programming would be most likely to satisfy those demands; after all, those demands are the primary cause for and justification of the expense and effort of founding a university. The regions' requirements are likely to be well understood and clearly stated. My own reading, research and experience, however, suggests this is not the case. 

 There are often deep gulfs between the two. This paper first introduces three main functions claimed and undertaken by universities and then sketches potential regional perspectives on and perceptions of those functions, to show that northern universities are often sites of diverging expectations. I then propose that the underlying cause of the conflicting expectations is a desire among residents in remote regions for control (governance) of their own development that is combined with and exacerbated by a near-mythical perception that most development schemes are inherently colonial and ought to regarded with suspicion if not actively opposed. 

Seats of Learning -- Centres of Conflict

The northern universities are no different in this regard. The roles outlined by presenters at the several conferences devoted to the issues of northern universities include (but are not limited to) the following: 1) providing opportunities for academic study; 2) improving the level of professional qualifications in the regions' populations; 3) bringing new intellectual capacity to the regions; 4) reinforcing the economic and cultural foundation of the regions; 5) making the regional 'voice' heard at the national level; 6) creating better intellectual and material circumstances for the regions' populations; 7) increasing quality and quantity of regional research to solve regional, national and international problems; 8) helping regions develop a sense of place; 9) conducting research into and promoting protection of the environment; and 10) enhancing the well-being of the regions' Aboriginal inhabitants (compiled from Sherstone, 1991; Lich, 1991; Riepula, 1991; and Riepula, 1992). These ten roles fall into three broad categories of functions: access, research and service, though some roles could be classified under more than one function. The following sections elaborate on the three broad categories. 

Universities "increase opportunities for area youth for academic study," and "raise the professional qualifications of the populations of the regions" (Riepula, 1991: 15-16; Riepula, 1992: 26-31). These goals are fundamentals of the northern universities' development programmes for their regions. The reasons are obvious. In most remote regions, the lack of post-secondary education opportunities have required residents to move away to pursue their studies. In many cases, those students did not return to the region as employment opportunities were perceived to be (and often were) limited. An additional component of this "brain drain" was that many of those students qualified to continue their education past high school were most often the offspring of imported and highly transient workers. These young people did not see their education as a way of improving their quality of life in the remote region but as an escape from it and a path to employment elsewhere. Regional universities allow more regional residents to undertake post-secondary studies by reducing the financial and emotional costs associated with travel to unfamiliar and distant centres. The underlying principle is that the committed northern residents (long-term non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal inhabitants), given the chance to study at a local institution, will be most likely to remain and to contribute their new expertise to the benefit of the region. This has been proven. Recent assessments of the northern universities' achievements show that expanded local educational opportunities do, indeed, promote development of a broader, and in some cases considerably expanded, economic base and provide solid, long-term employment for many graduates. 

Increasing the professional qualifications of the regions' population, is both a traditional service of universities and a response to the historically precarious and fluctuating supply of professionals, trained outside the region, willing to serve in remote regions. One example will illustrate the problem: In northern Finland in 1960, before the University of Oulu was established, there were approximately three physicians per 10,000 inhabitants of the two northern counties. Thirty years and about 24,000 final examinations later, there were twenty-three physicians per 10,000 residents. This improvement is attributed directly to the medical school at Oulu (Korhonen, 1991: 2). Similar successes reported by other northern universities underscore the importance of the second role. Education of local residents as dentists, nurses, teachers and social workers, to enumerate only a few of the professionals most difficult to attract to remote regions, have resulted in comparable improvements in the numbers of such practising in all remote regions with universities. 

Providing access to academic study and professional training is thus a critical mission for northern universities and an area in which they have had considerable success. In so doing, they have contributed to the intellectual and economic growth of their respective regions. They have also increased the level of commitment to the regions of those who might otherwise have moved away. A university in remote regions reduces the magnitude of one of the major causes of transiency: lack of higher-education opportunities and of continuing and advanced professional training. 

Yet, from a regional perspective, this role could well raise serious concerns because the notion of access encompasses not only the region's opportunity to take advantage of the university's services but also the university's ability to act as gatekeeper to the region. 

Northern residents are extremely sensitive to external control and direction and often imagine it even when it is not actually at work. The suspicion that such control is present, however, may be sufficient to undermine regional confidence in the northern universities. It is very easy to create the perception that the universities are acting as agents for the region, on the one hand, and, at the same time, as agents of the southern academic establishment on the other. 

The institution, with its academic requirements for admission, necessarily restricts entry of those who do not meet them, which creates the impression of exclusivity. First Nations people, especially, are alert to actions that seem, to them, to perpetuate the paternalism and disregard of government. The fact that, in Canada at least, the primary and secondary education system has left First Nations people less able to meet university entrance standards does not serve to explain the exclusion of many Native students but reinforces their perception that the system is against them. The university, then, may be seen as limiting access to further education and the economic benefits that can accrue to individuals who complete their studies. An associated First Nations concern is that the universities are also agents functioning to uphold the longstanding dominant-society goal of assimilation. For First Nations people to succeed at university, they must adapt to or adopt the Western cultural assumptions about knowledge, reason, and inquiry. First Nations people see this as cultural imperialism. 

The damage or distrust caused by the perception that the northern university is a gatekeeper extends to the other traditional university functions, particularly to research. Despite the best intentions of the university, resentment is likely to occur simply because the university is the point at which certain aspects of the dominant society intersect with the region. As federal governments approach the region through territorial, county, or provincial governments and business through contacts with local chambers of trade or commerce, so, too, the academics and researchers must make their connections with the region through the universities. It is not a nefarious plot but a necessity. To accomplish anything, the outside interests need to communicate with those in the region who speak the same language and who share the same goals. From the regional perspective, quick to imagine imperialistic conspiracies, this can only mean that someone else's agenda is being followed. The university, then, may be perceived by the region's residents to usurp the role of regional voice, by being the repository of expert knowledge about it and guardian of specific types of academic access to it. The university becomes a curator. 

Research, as has been noted above, is a traditional component of any university's mandate. The university's position in society is maintained, in part, by the requirement that, as a seat of learning and education, it investigate and study the world around it and disseminate and share that knowledge. Depending on the kind of research undertaken, the results may be used to enhance the material presented in courses, to contribute to the development of new techniques, products and services, to expand local business and industrial possibilities, or to endow the public and the nation, its civil servants, politicians and entrepreneurs with a greater understanding of the social, environmental, ethical and other issues of the region. All universities share this mandate but regional universities are charged with principally focusing on regional problems and coming up with suitable solutions. 

Research in northern and remote regions has long been a source of dismay for the residents of those regions. In Canada and, I assume, in other circumpolar countries, what investigations that were carried out (in general until the 1960s) were conducted by researchers from universities based outside those regions.² In the early 1970s, a group of prominent business, Aboriginal and interested people attempted to found The University of Canada North with campuses in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. One of the main reasons for wanting to create the university was to permit and encourage greater regional contribution to and control of northern research. Research by non-residents was (and, to a large degree, remains) an important issue in the Canadian North, which still does not have its own university.³ Until the creation of universities (in most cases in the 60s and later) in various parts of the circumpolar region, research was generally limited to subjects of national (resource potential, sovereignty assertion or taxation) or disciplinary (anthropologists investigating hunter-gatherer societies) concern or of interest to individual researchers. In northern Canada the perception is that this remains much the case. This, of course, is not true in the least but perceptions are nearly as real as the truth in the public mind. 

The northern universities now offer the opportunity for researchers in many disciplines to study their respective regions and to contribute to a greater understanding of the regions' history, development, problems and concerns. In the larger scheme of things, it is not possible to develop a broad understanding of the world and global problems (and their potential solutions) while omitting study of some of the component and ecologically important regions. All of the material presented at the various conferences on the role of the circumpolar universities included a great deal about many of the research projects being undertaken and the benefits being derived from that research. The Russian universities presented their visions of their roles in their respective regions almost exclusively in terms of the research they were conducting to improve both the quality of human life (to reduce extremely high levels of worker turn-over) and the efficiency of resource extraction in their regions (see, among others: Ivandaev, 1991; Andreyev, 1991; Roginsky, 1991; Ilyina, 1991; Zakharov and Ryabykh, 1991; Selin, 1992; and Layavdansky, 1992). Other presenters explained how their research benefits both the community and the university by improving the delivery of courses and overcoming social and distance obstacles to student access (see, e.g.: Boone and Diem, 1991; Lawson and Anderson, 1991; and Young, 1991). 

Research at the northern universities is one of the primary benefits. Research conducted at these universities attracts new scholars to the region, which increases social stability and broadens tax bases,⁴ and improves local conditions by offering solutions to regional problems, be they social, political, environmental or some other. As the representative from Baylor University, Glen E. Lich, pointed out to delegates to the first circumpolar universities conference: "Universities can help to record, define, develop, and impart a sense of place, or even to make a place out of what is not generally perceived to be a region. Universities can help to articulate the shared in shared interests, find the common in common agendas, and foster the dialogic and the co-operative in regional solutions. Universities are also repositories of interdisciplinary depth of knowledge and also of experience in analysis, interpretation, and programming--all of which can be focused on regional issues" (Lich, 1991: 91; emphasis in original). 

Awareness of the importance of the research function can make the northern universities prominent players in their regions' development and life. Regional research can enhance the regions' commitment to and interest in the universities. Ultimately, the research function connects the region to the wider world as those in the various disciplines taught in the university connect with their colleagues and there is international discussion and dissemination of results. The research carried out at the northern universities can lead to national and international recognition and consideration of the various regions. 

Research is of vital concern to northern regions. As I have explained above (and others have noted), northern residents, particularly First Nations people, have come to resent the "migratory habits of southern academics" (Coates and Morrison, 1991: 175). I have also explained how the northern universities might appear to control access to the region and assume the role of its most valid expert. The issue of research, however, is much larger. The debate surrounding the abortive attempt to establish the University of Canada North illustrates that. At issue, again, is control and direction. "Input" is the key. Inhabitants of remote regions want to be able to contribute to research and influence or even determine the questions and designs at the earliest stages of the project. They do not want to be thought of as museum pieces, on display for whomever wishes to look or study them. They want to be considered as the researchers would wish to be considered: as members of a community with rights to dignity and fair treatment and with local problems and concerns that should be examined and addressed. 

There is another difficult aspect of regional desires to be involved with the research that is conducted. It is connected to the educational difficulties and insufficiencies experienced by the predominately First Nations residents of tiny communities throughout much of the Circumpolar world. It is the gap between the desire to be involved, to conduct or assist others in doing research, and having the necessary skills to do so. Until recently, First Nations people were excluded from the research process because they viewed the world from a different cultural perspective and tended to speak a non-standard version of the dominant society's language and so had limited success in primary and secondary schooling. Thus they were unable or unwilling to enter university and learn and practise the methods and techniques of doing research. Researchers from southern universities typically did not have the time or the inclination to train local residents as field assistants. Some were necessary to function as anthropological informants and translators but were traditionally not considered to be researchers in the same way as the visiting anthropologists were. There are several instances in the UCN files of Native directors insisting that the university founders must ensure that researchers not merely arrive, observe and depart to write what they saw as great, fat, (sometimes incorrect) tenure-securing monographs. 

Today there is still concern about whose agendas are being served in the prosecution of regional research. Land claims in northern Canada have begun a process of major change in this area, as the First Nations undertake "what may be the largest research enterprise in Canada's North: the attempt to document as fully as possible all aspects of traditional life" but suspicion continues to linger (Senkpiel and Easton, 1988: 10). Non-Native residents may perceive, too, that First Nations interests are being more consistently researched. This may well cause feelings of jealousy. At the northern universities, limited financial resources, limited scholarly interest and the need to place regional studies in both a disciplinary and a global context may well cause conflict between what residents and academics see as important questions for research. 

Education and research are inseparable components of the university's mandate whether it is located in a populous urban centre or in a remote region. Universities, however, have another function that coincides and, to some degree, overlaps these two. Universities are expected to provide various services to the society that supports it. They are looked to for leadership and social criticism or commentary. They are expected to employ their right of academic freedom to voice concerns about the ways society is handling its problems and to offer solutions, even if unpleasant, to those problems. Leadership can be a difficult mandate to prosecute but it is critical. The university must be seen to offer its knowledge, wisdom and expertise to all people, not merely to those who are studying at or otherwise affiliated with the university. It must acknowledge, on some level, that it has a debt to the society in which it operates. It may begin to discharge that debt by commenting on issues, offering policy suggestions and being seen to be vitally concerned with the region in which it operates. Some universities have often considered the leadership and service functions more as spin-offs of or adjuncts to their other two main functions (Lajeunesse and Davidson, 1992). Global change in the information age has begun to alter that attitude. Regional universities, often as the only such institution in the region, are particularly needed to involve themselves in the community and in its economy. 

Individual professors are also expected to take their learning into the community, to provide, in their proper persons, a tangible link between the community and the university. Some of this function may be accomplished by public lectures on research being conducted. In other instances, it may be to comment on or clarify background or implications of current events. At Luleå University, staff are enjoined to "take part in debates within the mass media and in such a way bring about a cultural awareness within the region" (Cullblom, 1992: 32). Connecting the university with the community can range from volunteering services to non-profit organizations to providing its facilities for community events. 

Cast in a different way, northern universities are expected to act as the link between the region's voice and national and international discourses on issues and topics of concern and interest. They are expected to foster dialogue on local and regional problems and undertake research to solve them. They are charged with improving the general intellectual, cultural and social climate of their regions. They are expected to support the political and social agendas of the region's Aboriginal inhabitants and enhance their well-being. All of these activities are expected to generate economic and social benefits that will improve the quality of life in the region. The regional university cannot be an ivory tower. It must, as L. Kalevi Korhonen said, "go to market." It must, too, not be a strictly regional institution:, "it should serve the whole nation, and it should search for new solutions to the problems that face the whole of mankind" (Korhonen, 1991: 1, 4) and it should be eager to undertake this mission. 

Leadership and service to the regional community are expected of northern universities. The UCN founders were certain these features were needed to ensure the university fostered social maturity.⁵ Conflict may arise, however, when the university's definition of leadership and service do not coincide with that of the region. It is easy to see how they might differ. If, as I have speculated above, the institution is perceived to be an agent of external forces, then the directions in which it might lead are very likely to be at odds with regional desires. Many of the university representatives described this function using "helping" words. They spoke of "shaping the future," "aiding," "providing," and "stimulating." These seem to be "outside" words; they suggest a benevolent interest assisting local residents to do something they otherwise are unable to do. I realize that the presenters hardly intended to give this impression but to northern residents, who expect to find such an attitude in most of their relations with the "Outside" and will find it in the most unlikely places, it is nettling. 

What northern residents want from their university is to feel that it, indeed, is their university. They want to be able to trust its institutional motives and thus be proud of the leadership it provides. It must serve to empower the region, not simply represent it or operate in it. Region residents must feel they have a stake in the university and that their confidence in it as their institution will not be betrayed. This, though, may be the most difficult area of potential conflict to avoid. As long as people feel they are being unjustly excluded from its benefits, uninformed about its work and not in control of its direction, they will not trust it. They will not follow its leadership and they will not endorse its vision. In Canada, at least, northern residents, more so than others it seems, want to be consulted; they will withhold support or actively oppose measures that they believe have not been discussed with them and where their approval was not solicited. This attitude, which may prevail elsewhere in the circumpolar North, bodes ill for a university that does not realize this or is not willing or able to comply. 

The problem of convincing the region's inhabitants that it is not just another agent of colonial rule is perhaps the thorniest and the most important. Northern residents who, in late 1971, attended a special conference on the "concept" of the University of Canada North, made this point again and again to the representatives of government, the universities, industry and business. For the northerners it was the critical issue. The university had to be founded by them so they could be sure it would respond to their concerns and their needs. Native representatives were willing to withdraw all support and have nothing further to do with the planning if they thought it would be controlled by "Whites" and serve only White aspirations. Most of the difficulties experienced by the founders came from trying to rationalize and accommodate the diverse and opposing visions for their university. It is a lesson best remembered. 

It should be apparent now that northern universities undertake all the classic functions of the universities in more populous regions: educating students, conducting research and performing community service. In addition, however, they have a variety of functions that extend from and beyond those classic functions. They are conceived to be seats of learning and thought, research and teaching that are institutionally mandated to ensure that their activities contribute substantially to their region's social, economic and political improvement. In Sweden, in the Luleå University strategic plan, we can read that "the University's activities are also a part of regional policy and will be carried forward so as to stimulate development in the region" and "the University will put special weight on the task of bringing about the renewal of the industrial structure and on investments which have long term importance for the region" (Cullblom, 1992: 31). 

The northern universities are different. They are more because they are expected to be and to do more. Regional development means starting at the beginning, with its people. The northern universities are encouraged to consider people as a region's most important resource. "Every university's aim," says E. Cullblom, must be to strengthen people's sense of self-esteem in the region in which it is based and, . . . through education all people should develop a cultural base as the keynote to their identity (Cullblom, 1992: 31). 

The general consensus appears to be that the newer (since 1960) northern universities have so far accomplished their missions successfully and must continue to contribute to the improvement of their respective regions. In northern Finland, the universities are accomplishing their underlying regional development goal with "no new disadvantages." Indeed, claims Rector Esko Riepula of University of Lapland, the universities have "helped these regions catch up with the rest of the country" (Riepula, 1992: 26). 

The northern universities have wrought great good in the thirty or so years since the first of them was founded. The regions in which they have been established have benefitted greatly from their presence. Material, social and economic conditions have improved and there is a marked increase in the number of locally-trained individuals remaining in the region to practice their professions and apply their knowledge and expertise. There seems to be little doubt that universities established for improving remote northern regions have achieved their founders' expectations. Today, many of the original imported faculty has been replaced by long-term northern residents and the research and service functions of the institutions are being undertaken with enthusiasm. The universities throughout the circumpolar world are making international connections with each other, exchanging results, students and ideas in a fashion that was probably inconceivable only thirty years ago. Their presence has indeed increased the visibility and the viability of northern regions nationally and internationally. There appears to have been only minor or modest drawbacks to their presence. 

Northern universities, however, are required, as I have suggested, to represent (and thus offer) much more than their southern counterparts. In addition to their classic and their self-determined regional functions, they must be and be seen to be the major intellectual, educational and cultural institution in their respective regions. This places an enormous burden on the northern university for, to be all those things and to respond to all demands, it must offer a wide variety of courses, a broad selection of programmes, an almost infinite research capacity, the ability to operate and promote understanding in a cross- or multi-cultural context, and must have the flexibility to respond instantly to regional requirements. It is patently obvious that, in a northern or remote region (or anywhere, for that matter), no one institution can possibly be and do all these things; yet, the northern universities, as the only institutions of the kind in their regions, may well be judged on how well they live up to such exaggerated and often impossible expectations or be deemed deficient. 

In my research into the unsuccessful attempt to establish a university in the Canadian North (see Graham, 1994a), I realised that the founders--among whom were First Nations, non-Native new and long-term residents, business people and professionals--wanted the university because of what they thought a university represented to society and to its citizens (for a fuller discussion see Graham, 1994b). Most fundamentally, they believed that the university would, by its very existence, confer a certain cachet and an important measure of respectability on northern society. They felt that, by founding the university themselves and without government assistance, they would be creating an institution that would be sensitive and responsive to regional needs and desires. A regionally created and directed institution, they believed, would empower all northern residents. They were also convinced their university would contribute to the economic and social improvement of the territories by attracting researchers, faculty and students to the region. 

The dream of a northern Canadian university is a somewhat elderly one, dating at least to the early 1960s. There have been a number of proponents of a northern university, to be located in various communities across the Canadian North, in Dawson City, Whitehorse, Inuvik, Yellowknife, Fort Smith, Iqaluit or Churchill. Most of the proposals that preceded the University of Canada North (UCN) attempt, which spanned the period between 1970 and 1985, were for northern career-training institutions rather than for comprehensive universities of the kind that now exist in the circumpolar North. What made the UCN idea different was that it was to be (at least initially, the vision was altered several times) a classic (i.e., teaching, research and service) university. As such it would be a symbol for what the founders perceived as northern society's coming-of-age. They believed that society in the Canadian North had achieved a level of maturity that could not be advanced further except by the conscious study of itself. The university would signal that maturity to the nation and to the world. In this sense, then, the UCN would be a symbol that would proclaim that the North felt itself an important region of Canada and was willing to undertake the work both to forge greater connections with the rest of the nation and to assume responsibility for its own intellectual and social development. 

The founders believed that, by creating the UCN themselves, they would place its control and direction in the hands of northerners. This, they thought, would allow the institution to be all things to all people. They wanted a university that could alleviate First Nations concerns about exclusive admission standards and culturally insensitive curricula. They wanted the UCN to offer higher education to anyone who wanted it. They also wanted the UCN to be a bona fide university that could offer service to the community, conduct quality regional research and educate their children at the same level they would be at an established southern university. They wanted the UCN to be an institution that was, on the one hand, a true university with community college features and, on the other, a northern First Nations cultural centre. They wanted it to be an institution of the North, for the North and by the North. It was an impossible dream. 

The economic benefits of the UCN were acknowledged but not seriously discussed except in a formal manner in the application to the federal government for letters patent. The founders agreed that the presence of a university would allow the North to play a greater role in the development planned and endorsed by government and resource-extraction interests. Some of the founders pointed out that the university would attract new people to the North, which would improve the territorial economies. They generally took it for granted that the UCN would be good for the economy and did not belabour the subject further. The social benefits were also assumed but discussed at somewhat greater length by the founders. Most felt that having northerners direct, design and conduct research on themselves and their region, would bridge the great social chasm that then existed between the First Nations and the non-Natives. The UCN, however, did not become reality. It was neither able to secure government or public support nor funding to offer a single course and only towards the end of its life was it able to undertake any research. The scheme was too broad and the visions for the university were too divergent for it to have been possible. 

There may be some lessons, however, to be learned from the endeavour's failure. During its brief life, the UCN experience permitted an articulation of a variety of regional hopes and desires for a northern Canadian university. Given the similarity of regional experiences throughout the circumpolar North, I have used what I know of the discussion surrounding the UCN to propose how residents of other northern regions might disagree with the aims and functions of their established universities. 

Conclusion

I believe the source of potential conflict between the universities' understanding of their role in their respective regions and the desires of regional inhabitants lies in a struggle for power. I mean that the universities want the ability to carry out their mandates, whether their founders created them as a deliberate element of a broader policy of regional development or as limited universities whose main mission is to hand out transferable university credits in a narrow range of disciplines and professions. In either case, the universities want to control the inner workings of the institution to accomplish their goals and to have the respect and support of other more-established universities for their endeavours. Regional residents want that power too but for their own agendas and purposes. They want to empower themselves; I do not believe they accept that any one else can do it for them. That empowerment can only be achieved if the region has governance of, "input" into, the university. 

Development will surely follow empowerment. Development has certainly been the result of the northern university presence in remote regions; the presentations from Scandinavian university representatives are full of success stories. Is it, however, the kind of development that the region wants? Is it the kind of development that will satisfy the agendas of indigenous people and others at the same time? I do not think it is possible to answer these questions without further inquiry. I do know that the rhetoric surrounding the Canadian northern Native land claims is rife with the connection between settlement, i.e., empowerment, and social, cultural and economic development. It is not far-fetched to think the same must be true of the other northern regions' desires for their universities. 

The northern universities, then, face an awkward problem. How can they be, in essence and in reality, all things to all people? The answer, of course, is that they cannot. That was the lesson of the UCN experience. There was no way one institution could answer all the needs. The present northern universities must then decide how best to acknowledge their regions' concerns and to accommodate them. The way may lie in new institutional connections between regional cultural centres, colleges and other bodies but those may be difficult to arrange when the agendas of the regions are possibly at odds with those of the universities. There is no doubt that the northern universities are necessary. It may be impossible to overcome the inherent conflict their presence generates but it may be possible to work beyond it. University administrators, faculty, staff and students have their work cut out for them: to help their institution become a trusted seat of learning rather than a centre of conflict. 

Notes

2. I suspect this does not hold true for some of the northern regions in the former Soviet Union, where development imperatives and government control established universities much earlier than elsewhere in the Circumpolar North. Research, however, on its indigenous peoples may well have occasioned similar, though unacknowledged, concern. [back] 

3. It also appears that the problems northern residents have with researchers have, in some ways, hardened into a suspicious attitude that has very little to do with the actual research. I think the attitude has taken on a rather mythic quality, which is tinged with distrust and dislike. [back]

4. As new people arrive to take up positions with the university, there is a corresponding influx of other people in business, trades and services. [back]

5. The founders did not use the term "social maturity" but interviews with some of them revealed that fostering the region's social and intellectual development was to be a major role for The University of Canada North. [back]

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