University Affairs

Like two end-of-term papers, two interesting reports were released this week by Canada’s competing national student groups, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and the Canadian Federation of Students. I applaud their efforts.

CASA released its report on Monday (Mar. 8), entitled the Canadian Student Survey: Summer Work and Paying for Post-Secondary Education. The report is based on a survey commissioned by CASA and conducted on university campuses across the country in the fall term of the current academic year. The report, says CASA, “examines the strain of high youth unemployment rates, how students fund their education and how cash limitations affect their ability to pursue an education.”

The report notes that, despite their desire for a full-time summer job, nearly one-third of students surveyed reported they were able to find only part-time employment last summer. As a result, students managed to earn a median of just $3,200 from May to August, and were able to save less than half of that total.

The report also noted that having fewer funds can have a particularly negative affect on student persistence; students from low-income backgrounds reported that they were more likely to either leave full-time studies for lower-cost part-time options or leave postsecondary education altogether if costs increased. A second report based on the survey will be released later.

The CFS report, meanwhile, released by the group’s Ontario chapter yesterday and titled The Racialised Impact of Tuition Fees, found that rising tuition fees and student debt disproportionately affect visible minority students.

The report compares average incomes, rates of poverty, postgraduate earnings and debt repayment between what it calls “racialised” and “non-racialised” students to evaluate the additional burden of tuition fees and student debt on visible minorities. The report found that tuition fees eat up between 15 and 21 percent of the average earnings of visible minority people, four percent more than it does for non-visible minorities. It also found that higher student debt levels and lower postgraduate earnings “conspire to mean that racialised people pay more, on average, for their education than do non-racialised people.”

I think the report is a good reminder that, while tuition is not a barrier for most students, it certainly can be for some disadvantaged groups, and that debt-based student assistance only exacerbates the problem for these groups. The report is light on specific prescriptions, except for the blanket solution of most student groups: a new funding framework that “progressively reduces tuition fees.” I’m not sure how giving a tuition break to the better-off white kids will help, but maybe the CFS can explain that in their next term paper.

There will obviously be lots of analysis in the coming days of the federal budget, delivered yesterday. One of the things that immediately caught my eye was Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s pledge to conduct a “comprehensive review of all federal support for R&D to improve its contribution to innovation and to economic opportunities for business.”

Depending on one’s point of the view, this could be timely and welcome … or ominous.

But, in general, considering it was billed as a tight budget for tight times, there were a number of positive items for higher education and research. Paul Davidson, president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, said in a press release, “It shows that the government recognizes the vital role universities play in creating opportunities for Canadians in the new economy.”

But that sentiment wasn’t shared by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which called the budget a “major disappointment” for postsecondary education. James Turk, CAUT president, also took umbrage at the budget initiatives aimed at promoting the commercialization of postsecondary research: “This threatens the integrity of research and the independence and quality of education, and in the long term this will also work against real innovation.”

Here are the main highlights, taken directly from the budget documents:

The research granting councils

Budget 2010 increases the annual budgets of the three granting councils by an additional $32 million per year, starting in 2010–11. This new funding will enable the councils to sustain their overall support for research. The new resources for the councils will be allocated as follows:

• $16 million for CIHR;
• $13 million for NSERC including $8 million  per year to strengthen its support for advanced research, and $5 million per year to foster closer research collaborations between academic institutions and the private sector through NSERC’s Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation;
• $3 million per year to support world-leading research in the social sciences and humanities.

Indirect Costs Program

Budget 2010 also provides an additional $8 million per year to the Indirect Costs of Research Program. This enhanced funding will help institutions support the additional research activities enabled by the new resources provided to the federal granting councils through Budget 2010.

Post-doctoral Fellowship Program

Budget 2010 provides $45 million over five years to the granting councils to establish a new and prestigious post-doctoral fellowships program to attract top-level talent to Canada. The proposed new post-doctoral fellowship program will be designed to be internationally competitive. These fellowships will be valued at $70,000 each per year for two years. The first fellowships will be awarded in 2010–11. At maturity, the new program will fund 140 fellowships annually.

Genome Canada

Budget 2010 provides Genome Canada with an additional $75 million in 2009–10 to launch a new targeted research competition focused on forestry and the environment and sustain funding for the regional genomics innovation centres.

Canadian High Arctic Research Station

Canada’s Economic Action Plan laid the groundwork for delivering on the Government’s commitment to build a world-class Canadian High Arctic Research Station by providing $2 million over two years for a feasibility study for the proposed facility. Budget 2010 is taking a further step by providing $18 million over five years to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to commence the pre-construction design phase for the station.

TRIUMF

Budget 2010 provides $126 million over five years to strengthen the world-leading research taking place at TRIUMF. In combination with $96 million to be provided from existing resources of the National Research Council Canada, federal support for TRIUMF’s core operations will total $222 million over the next five years.

Rick Hansen Foundation

Budget 2010 provides $9 million over two years to support the Rick Hansen Foundation, including the 25th anniversary of the Man in Motion Tour and the new Rick Hansen Institute. This funding will contribute to advancing knowledge and research that will improve the lives of people suffering from spinal cord injuries in Canada and abroad.

National Research Council Canada Regional Innovation Clusters

The National Research Council regional innovation clusters program supports 11 technology clusters across all 10 provinces. These cluster initiatives support the development of dynamic Canadian firms, generate jobs and transform local economies. Budget 2010 provides $135 million over the next two years ($68 million in 2010-11 and $67 million in 2011-12).

Diversifying the supply of medical isotopes

Budget 2010 provides $35 million over two years ($19 million in 2010-11 and $29 million in 2011-12) to Natural Resources Canada to support research and development of new technologies for the production of isotopes. An additional $10 million over two years will be provided to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a clinical trials network to help move research on isotopes and imaging technologies into clinical practice, and $3 million over two years will be provided to Health Canada to work with stakeholders to optimize the use of medical isotopes in the health system.

Canadian Space Agency

Budget 2010 provides the Canadian Space Agency with $397 million over five years to work with the Canadian space industry to develop the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, the next generation of advanced radar remote sensing satellites. Together with $100 million from existing resources of the Canadian Space Agency, $497 million will be invested over five years in advanced research, technology development and construction associated with the Constellation Mission. The bulk of this spending will occur after 2011–12. ($5 million in 2010-11 and $18 million in 2011-12)

International Science and Technology Partnerships

Budget 2010 will provide $8 million over two years ($4 million per year) to extend the International Science and Technology Partnerships Program (ISTPP). The ISTPP was launched to promote collaborative research and development activities with international partners such as India, China and Brazil.

Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

Budget 2010 will provide Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) with $19 million per year, ongoing starting in 2010–11. This funding will allow the agency to extend the Atlantic Innovation Fund, a competitively allocated initiative that helps regional businesses, universities and research institutions to develop and commercialize new technologies, builds research capacity and encourages the creation of research and development partnerships.

Advancing the digital economy

The Government will develop a Digital Economy Strategy that will enable the ICT sector to create new products and services, accelerate the adoption of digital technologies, and contribute to improved cyber security practices by industry and consumers.

Canada Foundation for Innovation

Through Budget 2009, the Government committed to provide the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) with additional funding of $750 million. Of the funding announced in Budget 2009, the CFI has already committed $150 million to 28 exceptional projects through its 2009 competition. The balance of $600 million will support the Foundation’s future activities, including a new competition to be launched by December 2010. The CFI is finalizing its strategic plan, and remains committed to making strategic investments in current and new infrastructure. The Minister of Industry will provide additional details on the allocation of the $600 million in the coming months.

Aboriginal Canadians

The Government will engage in a new approach to providing support to First Nations and Inuit post-secondary students to ensure that students receive the support they need to attend postsecondary education. The new approach will be effective and accountable, and will be coordinated with other federal student support programs.

Pathways to Education Canada

Budget 2010 provides $20 million for Pathways to Education Canada to partner with the private sector, other governments and non-governmental organizations and work with communities in support of disadvantaged youth. This funding will enable Pathways to extend its reach to more young Canadians who are facing barriers to their pursuit of post-secondary education.

Supporting College Innovation

Through Budget 2010, the Government is doubling the budget of the College and Community Innovation Program (CCIP) by providing an additional $15 million per year starting in 2010–11. The new resources will support additional collaborative projects in colleges across the country, strengthen the competitiveness of small and medium-sized businesses through innovation.

Tuition fee increases – it’s a subject that raises emotions anywhere in Canada, but no more so than in Quebec, where tuition has been frozen or capped for the past 14 years. That didn’t stop former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard and a handful of other prominent Quebecers from reigniting the debate last week. In their “pact for the competitive funding of our universities,” they call for increased tuition fees in Quebec and a deregulation of fees that would allow universities to charge higher fees for certain programs like medicine, dentistry and law.

Currently, according to Statistics Canada figures, Quebec residents pay $2,272 per year for an undergraduate education at a Quebec university. The Canadian average is nearly $5,000.

Teacher and student groups in the province denounced the proposals, but many media commentators seemed ready to at least consider the idea. The Globe and Mail did a very handy media roundup of the controversy as it unfolded in the province.

I do think it’s time to revisit the debate. It has been periodically re-examined over the years, but politicians have shown very little appetite to raise fees in the face of fierce student opposition.

Quebec has one of the lowest levels of university participation in the country, so if low tuition fees were meant to encourage participation rates, it doesn’t seem to be working. Many studies indicate that non-financial barriers are far more important in determining whether an individual does or does not choose to attend university. For a subset of individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, higher tuition fees may indeed be a barrier, but that would be better addressed through targeted, non-repayable grants.

There are many other aspects to this debate, of course, so feel free to weigh in. Let the debate begin.

Despite my initial misgivings with Twitter when I began using it last year, I’ve become a big fan of this micro-blogging utility. The fact that I’m even using the words “micro-blogging utility” in a sentence would have been surprising to me a year ago. (My most recent “tweets” can be seen in the righthand side of this page, if you scroll down just a bit.)

I use Twitter mainly for information gathering and, through it, have come across many interesting story leads and sources. Others use it for basic back-and-forth communication, although I don’t find it quite as useful for that purpose.

Many mix personal and professional communications on their Twitter accounts, and I find that somewhat annoying. Sorry, but I’m not that interested in the personal stuff, so I really wish these individuals would create two separate accounts, one for personal use, the other for professional purposes.

This brings me to an interesting news story I saw recently in the online University World News. Apparently a group of academics have created “Sciencefeed,” which the article describes as a “scientific version of [the] popular social-networking site Twitter.”

The article continues:

The aim is to speed up international scientific debate, with rapid-fire exchanges of thought between informed academics. Where Twitter users may comment on the latest fashions or habits of their dog, Sciencefeed users are supposed to blog about cutting edge research discoveries.

Sciencefeed apparently will be compatible with other social media platforms, so users can share their posts with their contacts and friends on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed and other similar services without having to log-off from Sciencefeed.

It’s a great idea, and one I think could be replicated. I’d love to see a Twitter “feed” related primarily to postsecondary education in Canada, as well as one devoted primarily to science policy. Yes, I know you can create something of the sort by actively following certain hashtags, but that is a bit of a hit-and-miss proposition, and still requires a lot of sifting of the wheat from the chaff.

I’m really not very “techie,” so perhaps something like this already exits. If anyone has suggestions or knows of an easy way to create such information channels, I’d be eager to hear from you.

What should you do if you’ve “done everything right” – went to university, perhaps even grad school – and yet you’ve failed to land meaningful employment? I have no career advice to offer, but do suggest you might have a look at a new blog by Laura Servage, a doctoral student at the University of Alberta. It’s called “My So-Called Career” (nice reference to one of my favourite shows from the ’90s), and focuses on “when your education and training hasn’t produced that ‘career’ after all.”

Ms. Servage’s studies focus on transitions from postsecondary education to work, work and learning, and Canadian higher education. The blog is part of her doctoral research. Under the title, “Over-educated, Under-employed,” she explains the blog’s premise:

You’ve been hearing forever that you need a good education to get a good job. You bought in. Now you’re under-employed. Or not employed at all. I started this website to gather media, research, and stories for and about people who’ve “done everything right” but haven’t got the great job they thought they would. … I want to understand why governments continue to promote higher education even as “good jobs” become more and more scarce.

It’s a touchy topic within the postsecondary education sector. Universities continue to extol the virtues of higher education, obviously, and in general I do strongly believe that there are enormous benefits to Canada of a robust, expansive and well-resourced postsecondary education sector. At the same time, I do see a growing sense of unease from some commentators that a degree may not have the payoff that students expect. Ms. Servage is clearly among them. From a recent blog entry, she writes:

What’s interesting to me is that the argument for ceaseless expansion of post-secondary education functions as a very effective distraction from much more fundamental issues that are routinely overlooked or ignored by post-sec stakeholders. These include: a lack of secure, quality jobs; significant increases in “precarious labour” (that’s crappy part-time, temporary and contract work); credentials and relevant experience not as objective requirements to do a job well, but as “gate-keeping” or “screening” tools when there are too many qualified people chasing too few jobs.

She continues, “you really have to wonder about this whole ‘knowledge economy’ thing.” Critics have argued — and from her own research, she concurs — that the knowledge economy and the skilled labour it requires is more about speculation than empirical certainty. The promise is always coming, she says, but never fully arrives.

A bit of an over-generalization, I’d say, but compelling nonetheless. Your thoughts?

It seems a safe bet that there’ll be many “green jobs” created in the environmental sector over the next decade, so why aren’t more students flocking to fields related to the environment?

The Canadian Council on Learning doesn’t have the answer, but it has raised the issue. In a report released yesterday, “Meeting the demand for trained personnel in Canada’s environmental sector,” the council claims that jobs in this sector will increase by more than eight percent by next year, yet enrolment in postsecondary environmental programs has actually dropped – by nine percent – since 1999.

“The green economy is an undeniable part of our society and global culture, and it is critical that Canada is prepared to meet this sector’s need for skilled workers,” says Paul Cappon, CCL’s president and CEO. The report says people who pursue these types of careers have a “strong emotional connection towards the environment and passion about the environment and environmental issues,” so “we need to nurture that commitment at the earliest possible stage,” says Mr. Cappon.

The report cites various examples of environmental careers, such as agronomist; ecologist; environmental chemist, engineer or lawyer; forester; geographer; oceanographer and toxicologist.

The report says stimulating an interest in the environment among students is the best way to increase the supply of graduates in environmental programs. The report recommends a number of ways to do this:

• offering students experiential activities such as outdoor programs;
• educating teachers and students about the diversity of the jobs available in the environmental sector;
• offering information and guidance during the career decision-making process; and
• focusing on the elementary and middle school years as a time to introduce environmental education programs.

As an emphatic outdoor enthusiast, I’m all for offering students chances to experience the great outdoors. Yet, I must say I’m a bit surprised that enrolment in environmental programs is down. That seems counterintuitive in this era when there is so much attention devoted to the perils of climate change. Perhaps couch kids and their harried parents are simply spending less time in outdoor pursuits, or maybe the constant downbeat message on the environment has driven students away. Any thoughts?

As an aside, the federal government decided to end its funding of CCL in January. The money apparently runs out on March 31, so I suppose this is one of a handful of final reports working their way through the pipeline at the council.

The Regina campus of First Nations University, designed by First Nations architect Douglas Cardinal.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada held a day-and-a-half workshop last week for university presidents focussing on aboriginal education. This workshop was the first in a series of planned AUCC events on aboriginal access to higher education, which was identified by AUCC as one of its three main advocacy priorities this year. “All Canadians stand to benefit if Aboriginal Canadians have improved access to a university education and the tools they need to complete their studies and transition into the work force,” AUCC President Paul Davidson said recently.

I point all this out simply to underscore how tragic it is that First Nations University of Canada may soon be forced to close its doors following yesterday’s announcement by the Saskatchewan government that it is cutting funding to the institution, the country’s first and only aboriginal-run university. It seems like one step forward, two steps back for aboriginal higher education in Canada.

According to the Globe and Mail, Advanced Education Minister Rob Norris said the province had “lost confidence in the direction of the institution,” after recent allegations against its senior administration by a former financial officer. This comes in the wake of a string of problems at the Regina university mainly concerning how it is governed. The Canadian Association of University Teachers went so far as to censure the institution in December 2008 for its failure to resolve the governance issues.

But the latest accusations of financial improprieties were the “tipping point” that compelled the provincial government to withdraw $5.2 million in funding from the university as of April 1, said Mr. Norris.

I am in no position to second-guess the Saskatchewan government’s decision. It could not have been an easy decision. I know both CAUT and AUCC, which also conducted a review of First Nations University and placed it temporarily on probation, found no joy whatsoever in making these moves. AUCC lifted the university’s probationary status in April 2008.

Again according to the Globe and Mail, while the province cannot shut down the university, Saskatchewan’s actions place the school’s existence in jeopardy. The federal government is expected to contribute $7.3-million this year, but is likely to follow the province’s lead, a spokesman for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs said last week.

If this is indeed the end, it is a very sad day for aboriginal higher education in Canada.

The National Post carried what I thought was a balanced piece this past Saturday dealing with the controversy surrounding Trinity Western University. That is praise indeed from me, as there is much in that newspaper that I find unbalanced.

For those unfamiliar with the TWU controversy, it began last year when the Canadian Association of University Teachers created an ad hoc investigatory committee “into whether academic freedom is being infringed at Trinity Western University by the requirement of a faith test as a condition of employment.”

The two professors who took up the investigation, William Bruneau of the University of British Columbia and Tom Friedman of Thompson Rivers University, concluded in their report this past October that indeed “TWU’s Statement of Faith, its Res­ponsibil­ities of Membership statement and the univer­sity’s policy on academic freedom allow for unwarranted and unacceptable constraints on academic freedom.”

Jonathan Raymond, TWU president, is taking CAUT’s actions very seriously. “Such an allegation can easily damage the reputation of a university and place a cloud over the scholarship of its faculty,” Raymond wrote in a recent response to CAUT’s report.

It’s not clear to me exactly why CAUT took up the issue when it did. TWU’s faith conditions are hardly new – they’ve been around for as long as the university itself, which was founded in 1962. It’s also not news to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, which granted TWU membership back in 1984.

The CAUT report received only scant media attention immediately after its release, but Maclean’s On Campus and others have recently picked up on it. See some of the Maclean’s online commentary on this issue here and here.

University Affairs also recently ran an opinion piece on the issue by John G. Stackhouse, Jr. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was our commentary which tipped the Maclean’s On Campus crew to the story.

I won’t downplay the fact that this is a complex and thorny issue. I know academics are supposed to question all assumptions, and I would personally feel uneasy it I were told that that there is a base set of assumed and unalterable truths that I must work from. But I think Professor Stackhouse is right when he suggests that a committed group of scholars can take “a number of basic assumptions for granted” (i.e., faith) and still “go on together to analyze a wide range of important questions.”

I think there is one other important point: no one is forcing students and professors to study and teach at TWU. They are there of their own volition and are almost certainly well aware of the conditions imposed on them and have accepted to live within them.

There’s a new acronym out there for followers of international higher education trends: AHELO. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to pronounce it – probably like “a halo” – but what I do know is it stands for Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes, an ambitious new project of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to assess and compare learning outcomes in higher-education systems around the world.

We seem to find it hard to assess and compare our own learning outcomes within Canada, so I wish the OECD well in its attempt.

The first phase of AHELO was presented yesterday to U.S. educators at a conference of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation in Washington D.C.

The OECD, in explaining the reasons behind AHELO, says:

The 21st Century is witnessing the rapid transformation of higher education. More students than ever before enter higher education and a growing number study abroad. The job market demands new skills and adaptability, and HEIs (“Higher Education Institutions”, which include universities, polytechnic schools and colleges) struggle to hold their own in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

Thus, OECD ministers agreed that their member countries “needed to take a further step by making higher education not only more available but of better quality, and that current assessment methods were not fully adequate to meet these changes. An alternative had to be found. AHELO is the result.”

The OECD stresses that AHELO is not a university ranking, but instead sets out to identify and measure as many factors as possible influencing higher education, with the emphasis on teaching and learning.

The project’s first phase will be a feasibility study focused on developing learning measures in four areas, or what the assessment team calls “strands.” Ten countries are participating in the feasibility study: Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Finland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Depending on the results, a full-scale AHELO could be launched by 2016.

A sociology professor at the University of British Columbia and a doctoral student at Harvard University have weighed in on the eternal debate as to why there is an overwhelmingly leftist slant in academe. Some claim that the liberal tilt of university professors demonstrates bias and discrimination against conservatives, while others suggest that it shows that academics are better educated and hence more open-minded and rational.

Neil Gross at UBC and Ethan Fosse at Harvard take a somewhat different tack. They claim it’s more a case of self-selection, or typecasting. Here’s their theory in their own words:

The theory we advance—which, we contend, ranks highly in terms of comprehensiveness, realism, and parsimony—holds that the liberalism of professors is a function not primarily of class relations, but rather of the systematic sorting of young adults who are already liberally- or conservatively-inclined into and out of the academic profession, respectively.

In other words, they argue that the professoriate has been “politically typed” as appropriate for and welcoming of people with broadly liberal political sensibilities, and as inappropriate for conservatives. “This reputation leads many more liberal than conservative students to aspire for the advanced educational credentials that make entry into knowledge work fields possible,” they write in their as-yet-unpublished paper.

Their findings echo those of husband and wife academics Matthew and Kellie Woessner, who claim that values and personality traits are largely responsible for why liberals are attracted to academe and conservatives are not. Their paper, “Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates,” can be seen here; and a discussion of their findings can be found here and here.

Neither the Woessners, nor Professor Gross and Mr. Fosse, believe that discrimination plays a major role.

Interestingly, our own columnist, philosophy professor Christine Overall, doesn’t quite buy the personality argument. In a January 2009 column, she suggests that “smart, well-educated and conscientious people tend to form left-wing views,” adding that, “perhaps the dearth of conservatives in academia can be explained because it is just harder to hold right-wing views in the face of compelling evidence against them.”

As an aside, just how left-leaning are professors? I don’t know of Canadian statistics, but in U.S., according to The Chronicle’s 2009 Almanac of Higher Education, 55.8 percent of academics consider themselves either  “far left” or “liberal,” while just 15.9 percent claim to be either “far right” or “conservative.” The remaining 28.4 percent self-identify as “middle of the road.”

Scientists, many of whom of course are academics, have a similar bias. In a spring 2009 survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Pew Research Center, 56 percent of respondents said they were liberal, 42 percent said they were neither, and a mere two percent said they were conservative (from Science, July 10, 2009, vol. 325).