This article is based on a pilot study that examines the effects of recent organizational and public policy changes on Canadian academics' work practices and academic culture. It explores the differences between the use of online technologies by women and male academics in managing these effects. It interprets the complex and often contradictory findings of the study through the lens of time theorization, and speculates about the broader cultural implications of academics' changing work practices, including the possibility of a gestalt shift in the identity of the university, less as a site of research and reflection on society and increasingly as a productive and efficient part of the economy.

This article first outlines political, economic and cultural changes that underlie the prevailing conception of college and university students as consumers of educational services. It describes several implications of this conception for classroom teaching, particularly for the practices of critical pedagogues. It argues that while the consumerist orientations of students help to anchor the model of student as consumer, the model itself also provides students with a basis for critiquing the services that they receive from educational institutions. It then raises the question of how this model of student can be disrupted. Drawing from the author’s own teaching experiences, it describes ways that faculty members can encourage critical reflection among their students about their consumerist orientations and awaken and nourish their sense of political entitlement based on their membership in an intellectual community.

This article reports on a study of how Canadian academics use on-line technologies to deal with increasing demands and time pressures. The results suggest that, in struggling to manage conflicting organizational and temporal priorities, academics are adopting practices to manage these conflicts which adversely affect the quality and content of their teaching and research. Moreover, these changes in practice are integral to reconstituting the temporal and organizational order of universities so they can function as nodes in the wired global economy. Academics are urged to vigorously champion temporal practices which allow time for reflection and the ‘deep presence’ required for creative intellectual work

In the early 1980s, following a decade of financial retrenchment in Canadian higher education, government policy statements and various scientific and research funding organizations began to articulate a new direction for universities. This new direction, referred to in this paper as 'the corporate agenda', heralds a new era of cooperation between universities and the corporate sector which, its proponents argue, will be mutually beneficial to both.These growing linkages between corporations and universities in Canada are transforming the structure and the mission of the university system. This paper focuses on economic, political and institutional changes that have affected the universities as public institutions. The development of this new agenda is influenced by what we refer to as third party networks, groups which are neither universities nor businesses. Our paper explores the process and discusses its effects on the organization of academic work, research and the emerging image of the university as a corporation.

Recently, Canadian university campuses have begun to display signs of increasing corporate influence in their affairs. In spite of the recent appearance of these signs, the foundation was laid in the early 1980s for this increasing corporate influence through the shift in government policies and the political effectiveness of groups like the Corporate-Higher Education Forum, the Business Council on National Issues, and the Canadian Manufacturer's Association. However, universities themselves have neither been passive nor helpless in relation to these external pressures. They have been active agents in a process of self-transformation in which budget-based rationalization and corporate linking have been their means of institutional survival. As a consequence, universities are now functioning less as institutions whose essence derives from their educational and scholarly commitments and more as businesses that deliver educational services and produce knowledge-based products. Résumé: Récemment, les campus universitaires canadiens ont commencé à manifester dans leurs affaires les signes d'une influence commerciale croissante. Bien que ces signes soient récents, les bases de cette influence commerciale croissante furent jetées au début des années quatre-vingt en conséquence d'une modification dans les politiques gouvernementales et de l'efficacité politique de groupes comme le "Corporate-Higher Education Forum" ("Forum entreprises-universités"), le "Business Council on National Issues" ("Conseil d'affaires sur les questions nationales") et l'Association des manufacturiers canadiens. Cependant, les universités elles-même n'ont été ni passives ni impuissantes face à ces pressions externes. En effet, elles ont joué le rôle d'agents actifs dans un processus d'auto-transformation dans lequel la rationalisation des budgets et les alliances commerciales ont été leur moyen de survie institutionnelle. En conséquence, les universités sont en train de fonctionner moins comme des institutions dont l'essence provient de leurs engagements éducatifs et savants que comme des entreprises qui livrent des services éducatifs et transforment le savoir en biens commercialisables.