Traditional Governance Structures - Current Policy Pressures: The Academic Senate and Canadian Universities.

The objective of this paper is to identify current policy pressures in Canadian higher education and explore their implications for academic decision‐making bodies based on data we obtained in our national study on university senates. We describe two inter‐related sets of public policy pressures that have emerged in recent years in Canada including on‐going financial restraint and a renewed interest in university research. We conclude by reviewing a number of important implications for Canadian university governance in the context of contemporary policy pressures.