The Canadian Union of Students (CUS) was Canada's national postsecondary student
organisation from its founding in September 1963 as the successor to the National Federation of
Canadian University Students (NFCUS), until its dissolution in October 1969. This thesis
recounts the political history of CUS by tracing the development of CUS policies on access to
higher education and on student involvement in the governance of postsecondary institutions.
The central argument of this thesis is that over time CUS policies and activities became
increasingly "left wing," causing CUS to become ever more isolated from the mainstream
students who constituted its membership. The loss of confidence by the members resulted in
campus student associations withdrawing support from the organisation, leading to the
dissolution of CUS in October 1969.
This thesis is not strictly an historical policy analysis, although such an analysis appears
throughout. This thesis also offers comparative discussions, recounting developments in the
Quebec student movement, in the Canadian anti-nuclear and social justice movements, and in
the American civil rights and student movements. To a lesser extent, this thesis also contains
elements of social history, collective biography and organisational history. This variety of
approaches helps in more fully explaining CUS's changing politics.
As demonstrated by the developments in policies on access to higher education and
institutional governance, CUS was not content with merely treating the symptoms of
educational inequity, but increasingly sought to identify the causes of such inequity and
eliminate them. This put the organisation in conflict with prevailing social, political and
economic arrangements and divided the CUS leadership from its membership. Although a
significant minority of disaffected youth and students challenged the norms of the day, they
were unable to bring large numbers of people to their cause and thus unable to sustain pressure
for change. The CUS leadership's attempt to reverse the course of the organisation to save it
from collapse was unsuccessful and CUS folded under the weight of a rapidly declining
membership. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/12426 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Clift, Robert Fredrick |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 9970416 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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