Naylor has a vision. The rest of us don’t

David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto, told The Globe and Mail this week that he wants to decrease the number of undergraduates at the main campus of the U of T.

Naylor is pushing to change his university from being just a large university to be a graduate-intensive large university. Along the way, he hopes to change the provincial funding model that his institution relies on. Presently, the province funds universities primarily based on the number of students attending the university. Naylor wants the province to continue giving the University of Toronto its current funding amount — but have less undergraduate students.

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Coming from another university president, I would have responded to his ideas by referring to it as a form of academic snobbery. I’m not the only one who wonders if universities could figure a way to operate and survive without undergraduates, whether they would stop accepting students.

However, this time, I think Naylor hits it on the head. The University of Toronto needs to be more graduate focused.

First off: Canada needs more Ph.D holders. The University of Toronto has the ability to produce those graduates.

Naylor is not looking to reinvent the wheel, one only needs to look to the United States to see public university systems which are addressing the need for more doctoral holders. The flagship campuses in the state university systems have stronger graduate focuses than their non-flagship cousins. The University of Toronto, in the context of Ontario, is the flagship public university in the province. Graduate students make up a larger percent of the student body at these universities than at the University of Toronto.

This brings us to what I see as the biggest problem with Naylor’s idea; it is hinged on other institutions increasing their undergraduate enrolment to replace the undergraduate spaces he is cutting.