University’s Autonomy in Regard of Institutional Policies in Quebec
Traditionally, the relationship between the State and Quebec universities has been established based on the latter’s autonomy, a principle recognized by the Royal Commission on Education in the Province of Quebec (Parent Commission) in 1964. Considering a framework for analyzing the implementation of educational policies, incorporating socio-cognitive approaches (Lessard et al. 2008; Lessard and Carpentier, 2015), we propose the idea that institutional autonomy appears as a sectoral referential that gives meaning to the actions of members of the university community and crystallizes their vision of their role and place in society (Muller, 1995). Despite this autonomy, university as an institution remains, for some, subject to various pressures due to the action of the State that questions its autonomy. These pressures are either circumstantial (e.g., health crises such as COVID-19) or part of more global political or social developments (e.g., democratization of education, neoliberalism, etc.). Through the analysis of three targeted state interventions: (i) the University of Quebec Act and the creation of the Council of Universities (1968), (ii) the University Policy (2000) and (iii) the ministerial directives related to the COVID-19 health crisis (2020-2021), we will try to prove that these pressures result from a tension between the institutional autonomy as a sectoral referential, and the dominant global ones.