The UC way
Could California be a model for Canadian research policy?
What would a Canadian version of California’s master plan look like? The largest universities would become research-intensive UCs, and the rest would fill the role of Cal State. Colleges would remain colleges. Such a plan, in which everyone knew their place, would likely satisfy the main complaint of the Big Five regarding research. Look, for instance, at the percentage of graduate students on campus, which is frequently seen as a measure of a university’s research intensity. The University of Alberta student body has 18 per cent grad students; at the University of Toronto, it’s 25 per cent. By comparison, Berkeley has 30 per cent and UCLA 31 per cent. (Harvard has 61 per cent graduate students.)
The problem for most other Canadian university presidents, however, is this: no California school has ever moved categories since the system was put in place. And even short of adopting the rigidity of California’s system, any plan that funnels research dollars and graduate students toward a few institutions will inevitably limit upward mobility, since new research is the primary means by which schools seek to raise their status. Larger research budgets allow schools to attract higher-profile faculty and better students, and to improve their rankings among peer schools.
“Research is the way for universities to raise their flag,” says George Iwama, the newly installed president of the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. Last year, UNBC was ranked second in research at small universities in Canada, and Iwama sees this as a key selling point for his out-of-the-way school. “You can’t mandate innovation,” he warns. “Research can happen anywhere.”
The current system, in which all schools compete amongst themselves for research and students, has the obvious merit of encouraging innovation wherever it may occur, avoiding the pitfalls of a centrally planned system. Nonetheless, as more and more schools attempt to move up the ladder in prestige, they inevitably seek a bigger slice of the $3 billion Ottawa spends annually on university research. And, as the Big Five complain, there isn’t enough to go around now as it is. This allocation problem is something California avoids.
It might be that the only real solution, beyond dramatically increasing government funding, is to foster a greater appreciation for excellence in areas other than research.
David Marshall is president of Calgary’s Mount Royal University, known until September as Mount Royal College. Perhaps unique among university presidents, Marshall has no quibbles with the Big Five plan. “We need world-class universities in Canada and I support them having more resources to do what they do best,” he says. Marshall is content for his school to fulfill the Cal State function. “We don’t want to be another University of Alberta,” he says, putting his ambition in check. “We want to provide a world-class undergraduate experience.” He figures the desire of larger universities to focus on research leaves a substantial niche for his school.
Surveys such as those in Maclean’s annual student issue (“Students grade their universities,” Feb. 19, 2009) back up Marshall’s contention that undergraduates at smaller schools report a more rewarding experience. If more schools pursued this sort of differentiation on their own, there would be no call to limit research funding to larger schools. For such a move to catch on, however, good teaching would have to garner the same sort of prestige as good research.
Unfortunately, it’s rare to find a university administrator in Canada entirely satisfied with simply pursuing teaching excellence. Research funding, and the higher status it entails, remains a strong temptation. For most schools in Canada, solving the university research funding crunch will require more perspiration in the classroom and less aspiration in the lab.
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You should know however that the Master Plan (which promised affordability, access and diversity in California universities) is all but dead at this point with the approx. 1 billion $ budget cuts that were applied both to the CSU and the UC systems.
Did this really get reported without a mention of the wage cuts, furloughs, layoffs, and financial (mis)management that lead to mass walk out of faculty, staff and students at UC just this last week??
In addition, graduate tuition at UC just skyrocketted between 17 and 67% (with undergrad raised 30%)!
Seriously: Was this written last winter and just put aside for a time when they needed to fill webspace or did the author only contact the office of the UC president and not bother to read a newspaper?
I offer two suggestions that would allow Canada’s post-secondary education system to evolve into a differentiated system that puts students first.
1. Funding of students, researchers and universities.
Leave the federal system of research funding alone – it works fine, with lots of stiff competition between individuals and institutions.
Provinces should split the funding currently provided to universities as follows:
40% directly to all qualified students, to be paid by them to the institutions that they choose to attend, as opposed to the current system where institutions get the money first.
40% to institutions for research; this would allow the universities to differentiate themselves by their choices of how they spend it and what they spend it on. One may become highly focused; another may choose the status quo. They could also make strategic decisions to reinforce federally-funded research, thereby strengthening the differentiation proposed by the Big Five presidents.
20% for service; this would allow the universities to differentiate themselves by their impact on their communities.
2. Who should be entitled to a university education in Canada?
All smart and motivated students, typically with a 65% or better highschool grade average.
Increasingly, as our students, institutions, businesses and our country compete on a global scale, Canadian Universities surely have an opportunity if not an obligation to demonstrate leadership by creating access to higher learning for more students.
Dr. David Strong, PhD, DSc, LLD, FRSC, President and Vice Chancellor University Canada West
“Everyone knows their place” ?
Ew. This made me cringe.
If the five big universities want a large concentration of research funding in one place, why don’t four of them give all their research funding to the other one. Then they would get the large concentration research funding that they want in one university, without screwing up all the other smaller universities.
Its all politics,
in the case where say provinces need more money you don’t see them dipping into their own wages (in fact they give themselves raises) instead money comes from others, preferably those without as much power to complain.