Premier Campbell’s university-making magic wand

I also completed a bachelor’s in music (jazz studies) at Capilano College and was equally surprised when rumours started circulating that the bachelor’s degree I was working towards may not be considered a degree by some universities. Capilano had long been offering music degrees in partnership with the Open Learning Institute (now Thompson Rivers University), which was the degree I (and Cryderman) expected to earn when I enroled at Capilano in the first place. But then, in my fourth year, the game plan changed when they announced Capilano would be granting its own degrees.

When students started demanding information about the rumours, we were told that although these were real bachelor’s degrees, we couldn’t expect to use them to get into post-graduate programs that we weren’t qualified for. In other words, you can’t use a music degree to get into medical school. While this seems reasonable, you should be able to use a bachelor’s of music from Capilano (considering that they have an education stream) to get into teacher’s college.

I don’t regret choosing Capilano College. It has one of the best music programs in the country taught by some of the best jazz musicians around, and that was the reason I went there. But prospective students need to be given accurate information in order to make good decisions. One way to do that is to call institutions what they are. If Capilano College bachelor’s degrees are (while surely valuable in many ways) viewed as a lesser credential than a bachelor’s degree from a university, the province and Capilano needs to be clear about that. Now that Capilano will be called a university, prospective students who are not familiar with the history will assume that a undergraduate degree from Capilano is the same as one from any other university in B.C.

As the editor of the student paper the Capilano Courier at the time, I asked a number of Capilano College administrators (including president Dr. Greg Lee) who should have been responsible for ensuring that the degrees would be recognized. The answers ranged from shrugging to finger pointing. The province and the college seemed to have overlooked this detail.

So, this time around, what’s to say that a change in name will be recognized? President Lee is confident that the new designation will be the end of the problem, he told Maclean’s in an interview last week. I’m not so sure.

Canada has no national accreditation system. Instead, many universities use membership in the university lobby group the Association of Universities and Colleges Canada as de facto accreditation. Malaspina, Emily Carr, and University College of the Fraser Valley are already members. Kwantlen is in the process.

Capilano, on the other hand, does not currently hold a membership in the organization and Lee isn’t sure if they will pursue it. “The criteria for AUCC membership involves a stronger research mandate than we see actually being given to us by the provincial government, and it is certainly not our direction to be a research institution,” he said.

Without AUCC membership, the name change might not solve Capilano’s problems.

One of Geoff Plant’s reasons for his recommendations in the Campus 2020 report to clarify the term “university-college” and strip colleges of degree-granting status was to avoid “mandate creep.” With the five new universities, Campbell hasn’t avoided “mandate creep” — he has guaranteed it.