Completely under the radar, Alberta’s Department of Advanced Education and Technology released its Roles and Mandates framework document yesterday.
In the early months of 2007, in my role as Chair of the Council of Alberta University Students, I was part of the original consultations for this framework. Though I’m not that they were really ‘consultations,’ as no one seemed very clear as to what ‘Roles and Responsibilities‘ (as it was then known) was supposed to accomplish, only that the Minister wanted to define them.
At the time, the new framework looked suspiciously like a makework/legacy building framework project from new-Minister Doug Horner (Roles and Mandates followed a string of Advanced Education frameworks, including from Dave Hancock’s A Learning Alberta and short-term-disaster of a Minster Denis Herard’s *weak* Affordability Framework).
As unsexy as ‘Roles and Mandates‘ sounds (and probably is), I’ve been a little disappointed at how low under the radar the entire process has flown. If the framework is as important as CAUS’ latest media release gushes, it’s too bad that groups like CAUS and Public Interest Alberta’s PSE Taskforce weren’t more aggressive in bringing this to the media and Albertans attention (especially with a provincial election around the corner).
