Canadian universities are making multimillion-dollar research deals with business and private donors that raise "alarm bells" and fail to safeguard academic freedom, according to a report to be released Wednesday.

The University of Alberta has agreed to a $13-million oilsands research program that "will focus on areas of strategic interest to Imperial Oil," says the report by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents academics across the country.

A Quebec consortium for aerospace research raises the spectre of turning universities into "outlying branches of industry," while a $9-million deal at University of British Columbia has "bound" the university to the interests of the drug maker Pfizer Inc., says the report that examined the fine print in 12 collaborations at universities across Canada.

Ten of them get a failing grade as the "universities have agreed to various violations of their own academic integrity," the report says.

The deals allow outside partners to "co-opt" roles normally played by academics, it says. They have also permitted "direct and indirect restrictions on the creation and dissemination of knowledge."

The CAUT obtained most of the agreements, some of them redacted, through access to information. The association has not released the documents but cites them extensively in the 192-page report.

It says that 10 of the 12 agreements were made behind closed doors, without allowing the public or "their own university community" to have access to the terms of collaborative agreements.

"None of this stuff should be secret and almost all of them were," says James Turk, executive director of the CAUT and co-author of the report. "There should be complete transparency in any academic relationship a university enters in to."

The report says that seven of the 12 agreements "provide no specific protection for academic freedom;" five do not ensure the participating academics' unrestricted right to publish; and six of the agreements did not ensure that the universities retained "control of all academic matters affecting their students and faculty.""What many of these universities have done in these partnerships is absolutely unacceptable," says Turk. "It compromises the very things that make the university distinctive and gives it credibility in the public's eyes. It also compromises the independence of the researchers."

The CAUT report does applaud two collaborations for protecting academic freedom and encouraging "the unfettered practice of teaching and learning:" A $17-million partnership in mining engineering between the University of Toronto and Goldcorp Inc. and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, involving the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.

"It is possible to get it right," says Turk, who would encourage the universities to renegotiate the "offending portions" of the 10 other agreements.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Universities+including+opting+academic+freedom+report+says/9188289/story.html