Government, coercive power and the perceived legitimacy of Canadian post-secondary institutions

In contrast, a government regulatory action that did affect public perceptions of post- secondary institutions' legitimacy occurred when the Alberta government permitted Grant McEwan College and Mount Royal College, two non-university degree-granting in- stitutions, to use the name "univer...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian journal of higher education (1975) 2013-01, Vol.43 (2), p.149
Main Authors: McQuarrie, Fiona A E, Kondra, Alex Z, Lamertz, Kai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alberta
Beliefs
British Columbia
Canada
Canadians
College Administration
Colleges
Educational Finance
Educational Legislation
Educational Policy
Federal Legislation
Foreign Countries
Government (Administrative Body)
Government Role
Government School Relationship
Legislation
Ontario
Organizational Theories
Postsecondary Education
Power
Power Structure
Pragmatics
Public Policy
Secondary Education
Semiotics
Universities
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In contrast, a government regulatory action that did affect public perceptions of post- secondary institutions' legitimacy occurred when the Alberta government permitted Grant McEwan College and Mount Royal College, two non-university degree-granting in- stitutions, to use the name "university" ([Alex Z. Kondra], Lamertz, & McQuarrie, 2010). The name changes for these two institutions were not accompanied by any change in mandate or official government status, but this small yet highly visible and symbolic change appeared to confer more external legitimacy on these institutions than any larger change in post- secondary education policy. We argue that this shows yet again that government's social coercion can affect the legitimacy of post-secondary institutions only indirectly because legitimacy is not conferred by government but by the public. Government legislation can only influence judgments of legitimacy through social coercion to the extent that legisla- tion builds on widely institutionalized boundary standards, such as the symbolic mean- ings of an institutional name that includes the term "university" (Glynn & Abzug, 2002). We suggest, as others have previously (e.g., [Sonpar], Pazzaglia, & Kornijenjo, 2010), that different stakeholders hold different perceptions of a post-secondary institution's legiti- macy, and that those perceptions evolve. In the case of government as a stakeholder, once post-secondary institutions respond to the government's regulatory coercion, the legiti- macy perceptions of non-governmental stakeholders become much more meaningful to the institutions even if government makes further attempts to control legitimacy through social coercion. Thus, we see that post-secondary institutions are far more responsive to symbolic le- gitimation, such as awarding the right to use a seal or to use the name "university," than to legitimation through comprehensive government policy and legal frameworks. The amount of attention given to university rankings such as those published by Maclean's magazine and the Globe and Mail newspaper, which target broader, societally defined boundaries that signal status differences (Wedlin, 2006), similarly suggests that legiti- macy perceptions of the general public are of critical concern to universities. Searches of the Canadian Newsstand database and of Google for discussions of Alberta's six sec- tor model and the EQA mechanism reveals very little discussion about either initiative, beyond the initia
ISSN:0316-1218
2293-6602