I'm sorry: York is "looked down upon" while Waterloo is "world class"? Not in social sciences and humanities I'm afraid. Also, to put York, Carleton, and Manitoba in the same box doesn't make much sense, since Manitoba offers more medical doctoral programs than either. As the premier university of the province (and an older generation U) it's mission is NOT the same as York and Carleton. Seems to indicate an Ontario-centric argument on the author's part. Having said this, York's indicators in terms of grad education and research are far stronger than Carleton's as well. This article doesn't mention teaching load or number of graduate programs, and makes the silly argument that on McGill is research intensive. No stats are offered to back this up. Whatever. Back to the drawing board Alex.

One interesting measurement that the University of Waterloo uses in some of its literature is a measurement of the number of spin-off businesses started from the university, in terms of either profs using their research to start a business, or students starting one before or just after they graduate. It is interesting since it links directly to economic activity and providing jobs and opportunities to the community that hosts the university.

The funny thing about the bigger, older universities is that they are now becoming associated with the "Degree Mills" of the newer schools, but from the graduate education perspective rather than undergrad. U of T and Western, for example, churn out graduate students at a ridiculous rate and their quality suffers for it (even if the prestige of the institutions somehow remains unaffected). There are no guarantees that the quality of education is any better at these places, and usually it works the other way around. For every brilliant thinker who comes out of U of T, another 20 are disposable and merely derivative of their supervisors.

I liked this article and at the same time don't disagree with some of the other comments. I do think though that for the majority of people who do not intimately know the finer workings of our Universities, they rely on a brand image or stereotype view which is build as much on what they are told as what they see/feel. Why to most people think that Waterloo is one of our top Universities? Not because the majority have some first hand experience to report on; rather because it was rated highly in Macleans and other like rankings. Though I don't know what their metrics are intimately, I suspect they are highly based on what the author has outlined.

One day, York may actually be a real university, instead of very expensive daycare for kids who "need a degree" in "anything".

Clint, All due respect, but calling U of Manitoba the premier university in the province does not say much. So too is UPEI for its province. The UofM does not just have to compete with Winnipeg and Brandon but rather must compete across Canada and the world for faculty and students. Manitoba and many schools (in Canada and elsewhere)are caught in this situation where they are unable to provide the sort of student atmosphere a small school would offer or a research environment top research schools provide. I think Alex is bang on.

A problem with the last two articles is over-simplification of university comparisons. All universities, even small ones, are highly heterogenous. There is a world-class research speciality cluster in the physics department at St. F.X., while some departments at U of T are research underachievers. Likewise on student education, multiple universities, large and small, are world-class in at least one area, but most also have patches of weakness.
These patches of strength and weakness are not evenly distributed, and there are policy decisions that could encourage strength. But it is a mistake to think that more per capita funding per faculty, or bigger size institutions (for research), or smaller ones (for teaching) will automatically generate more quality. The quality patches often have more to do with semi-accidental circumstances that bring strong, complementary colleagues together.
As a micro-example, the most research productive graduate student ever in my group, suffered a drop in productivity after moving on to larger, better funded laboratories. Other students who floundered under my supervision are thriving elsewhere.
So, simple generalizations are not applicable to fostering university quality. Even small institutions can (and do) foster pockets of excellence. And large institutions definitely host pockets of weakness.

The large public research universities in the US do NOT fund graduate study and research by skimming a bit off each undergraduate. The exact opposite is true. Less than 20% of their funding comes from public sources or tuition. More than 80% comes from the success of their graduate professional schools, gifts related to their successes, and their research projects.

Teaching and research are connected. Most of the best professors I ever had were leaders in their fields.

Although you will find top students at many universities, the average intellectual capability of a student at UT is qualitatively higher than one at York, which creates a different learning environment.

The general point is spot-on. There are two concepts of university. Large public research universities in Canada and the United States do fund graduate study and research by skimming a bit off each undergraduate. What we need is an active debate obout how large the skim should be at each university and in the system as a whole. This debate does not happen!

Here’s two key metrics that every government should be using in measuring post-secondary education program quality: Graduate employment success and student loan defualt rates

In Canada the government squanders hundreds of millions of dollars a year subsidizing the education at universities for students in programs who will NEVER find related work. Every college/university program should be funded in a way that recognizes the potential for employment in a related field (i.e., a grad with a PhD in Political Science who works at Starbucks and defaults on their student loans wouldn't qualify).

If there is little chance of related employment then the tuitions for that program should be higher and the provincial support grants should be lower. For programs that educate or train people in fields such as engineering technology, nursing, or skilled trades where there is a critical and growing shortage of people, the tuitions should be almost $0.

We also need to set-up degree granting Polytechnical Institutes, and close some of the weaker universities and colleges. Currently colleges who train people for desperately needed trades are funded only at about 60-70% of the levels per student wasted at the virtually useless education of B.A.'s at universities. Also, approximately 10% of the applicants to the colleges looking for career oriented training already have a university degree! What are they looking for? --- An education from people who have spent time working in the real world, outside of the musty halls of academia.

We spend over $36 billion annually on the post-secondary system in this country and yet far too many graduates are not prepared for the working world and yet we still have shortages in skilled labour; from doctors & nurses to welders and electricians. The university presidents and OISE acedemics are so far removed from this reality in their ivory towers that they are even worse than the politicians.

Read this research on where the Canadian business community for example anticipates shortages of 'skilled' labour:

www.fcei.ca/research/reports/rr3026.pdf

Occupations requiring management or university level education: 8%

Occupations requiring college level or skilled trades training: 74%

(from Table A1)

Why don't we put a focus on educating people for careers that offer employment opportunities and a return on the investment?

(Didn’t Dr. Rick Miner just publish a report on this very subject that was discussed in a G&M; article just this past Tuesday?)

@ Journeyman…Interesting comments, however surely you realize that there are huge vested interests perpetuating the myth that more and more people need a university level liberal arts education after secondary school. The masses of incoming students in programs where they can be crammed into lecture theatres and taught primarily by part-time TA’s are a money maker for the universities. To encourage this universities have already lowered the bar for entry and this will only drop further as the demographics drive the available student numbers down in the next 10-15 years. These unprepared, disinterested, and unmotivated undergraduates are dragging down the whole system.

Our liberal studies degrees should actually be the most demanding academic programs in our universities with very high entrance requirements. A few scaled-down programs taught at very high levels would actually better serve the country, however the education industry realizes that this approach would be uneconomical. There are simply too many academic careers, administrators, and other staff at the universities counting on this income stream to speak about these issues honestly.

@Douglas Campbell. The point about heterogeneity is excellent, and absolutely true. The 1,000 word format does impose certain limits on my ability to do justice to those kinds of complexities, unfortunately. I'm guessing you'll like next week's post, though.

One thing, though. I never equated size with research quality. What I did say was that research universities do require a certain scale in order to succeed. Obviously, pockets of excellence in research can exist in smaller institutions, but if one has pretensions to be a research university, then size is a must. It doesn't guarantee quality, but unless you've got Saudi-like quantities of money, it's a necessary pre-condition.

I'm a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin Madison, went Mt. Allison as an undergrad. I've been to world class institutions, at least as defined by the "rankings".
I agree wholeheartedly with this article. I've had this long academic career, and I know a lot of friends who went to say a Brock, or Trent, or Carleton (just to name a few) who got great educations. They had fun during their education and they now are starting good jobs. There is nothing bad about these places, I think they do a great job.
I read a couple comments about squandering money for unemployable degrees etc. Well my PhD is in drug discovery, with emphasis in chemistry and cancer biology (again from a world class institution), believe me there aren't any jobs here either. Education is important, the fact that many people don't get jobs in their field of study does not take from the value of that education.
I remember when I was applying to university for the first time, I had a real prejudice towards universities (I made fun of brock a lot). I was wrong and I want to say sorry to all those people I may have offended with my so called humour.

I was educated at a preeminent private US university, University of Chicago. Some of my professors had Nobel Prizes. Many were excellent researchers. My very finest teachers were not given tenure.Why? They loved to teach and I suspect other universities accepted them for this wonderful talent that they did have. The great researchers that I did have for lectures clearly had no clue how to teach, did not love it and thus were dreadful. There is a balance that needs to be found. I taught at the University of Alberta which has both a very strong research component and, as well, a strong undergraduate teaching component. I cannot speak for other areas of this university but I can say that without question, my colleagues took both their research role and their teaching role as an equal part of their jobs. They worked in two full time careers as in fine arts where I taught, we had a full teaching schedule of classes and then were expected on our own with NO university facilities to continue our research...and we did..all of us. This is the reality of research outside of the usual funded areas in medicine,the sciences and engineering. Essentially, for those in the Arts surely, it matters little whether one taught at UA or Waterloo or any other good institution. The Arts are at the very sad bottom of the pool in terms of research funding and thus the aspect of teaching/research is turned on its head. Tenure and rising through the ranks at any university in this country is variously qualified in terms of research publications or equivalent and although teaching is supposed to have equal value it does NOT. Canada has sadly followed the corporate US model in terms of status in terms of papers published at the expense of the more useful and modest Canadian model of equity between both research and teaching AND the essential ignoring of Arts funding for research and tenure track teaching right across the universities system is destroying this. Further the eroding of tenured faculty in the Arts areas are a travesty creating an under class of teachers living on penurious wages whose sole occupation is to teach our citizens in such areas.It is shameful and is destroying our hard fought efforts over the last half century to create a democratically accessible university system which equally values the Arts as well as the Sciences as a part of the mix for an educated society.

Alex,
It took you a lot of words to say not very much.
Eyes glazed over early on. Didn't finish reading it.

PEIexPat: Of course there will be no serious discussion regarding my comments.

After all asking Liberal Arts professors to discuss the widespread societal need for university level Liberal Arts education is akin to asking a line worker at the General Motors plant for his honest thoughts on the societal need for more cars.

It just ain't gonna happen!

Hi all,

There are a number of good points in both the article and discussion, but I think that Alex misses the basic premise of the modern research university, which combines the values of Newman and Humboldt, or at least strives to.

It is, of course, possible to have good research without good teaching, as Neil Fiertel points out. An institution dedicated to good research alone, however, needs no students, as Newman correctly pointed out. On the other hand, it's possible to have good teaching without research; just look at high schools.

A university, however, does both and marries them. The problem with the research metrics that Alex draws attention to isn't that they measure research, but that they measure it in isolation. How much of the research enters the classroom? Are the students effectively taught from textbooks, while the new knowledge their professors is discovering goes only into journal articles? In that case, research and teaching are made to fight one another, not reinforce one another.

Secondly, all of the research metrics effectively discount the sort of education Cardinal Newman valued. There isn't one research metric I've seen that doesn't punish the humanities. Publication levels are higher in the sciences, where an article can be little more than a write-up of some experiments. Funding levels are certainly higher, and in any case nothing could be more perverse than confusing value with cost.

Measuring universities against "societal need", "student satisfaction" or some bureaucrat's five-year plan doesn't promise anything better. If we measure by default rates, as Journeyman suggests, then we punish programs that don't make people rich, and education is not the same thing as lucrativeness. What if the world's best medical program produced lots of people who volunteered to work in Haiti? They wouldn't get rich, but they would be receiving a great education and using it for the greater good.

Measuring the graduation rate, as Alex suggests, is no better. The best way to assure a high graduation rate is simply never to fail anyone, or discourage them with much work. The best degree is the kind which has earned a high reputation, because few people can earn it.

"Societal value" (or whatever) is at best a proxy for education, one which, like all proxies, threatens to obscure rather than illuminate what it ought to measure. In sum, all the statistics we could use to measure societal good or anything else are just so many potential perverse incentives. Bankers have shown us how easily any sort of statistical measure can be gamed.

What we should do, instead, is concentrate on what makes universities into universities, and not just bureaucratic institutes for education, research or societal betterment. What does make universities into the unique institutions they are, and to which everyone seems to seek admission, is that they achieve societal improvement by teaching research, and by teaching through research. Break that connection, which is qualitative and not quantitative, and nothing will ever work again.

"Try naming a university built in the last fifty years that is genuinely considered "World Class" according to the standards of academia."

I can identify two in BC alone. Simon Fraser University was founded in 1965 and is one of the top schools in Canada and a world leader in many fields. The even younger University of Northern BC is well-regarded internationally in several areas of study.

Waterloo was founded in 1957, admittedly not the last 50 years, but I think that's close enough.

I simply think it is up to the student. A good University has a good library and some good professors who inspire you to get an education. I had a Professor at Carleton who was tremendous. He taught Medieval History. Who ever thought an Eastern Ontario Redneck would love such a subject?
Then I went to Queens for education and all I heard was a lot of people patting themselves on the back for being at Queens and their minds hadn't been opened at all.

Journeyman, while I'm somewhat sympathetic toward your position, I think it also illuminates what's wrong with Canadian post-secondary education today. Do we value education as a means to an end or an end in itself? It is apparent that the latter is true, and consequently, universities have endeavored to be all things to all people. In the process, however, higher education has arrived at the moral of an old Aesop fable: he/she who tries to please everyone ends up pleasing nobody.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with so called "professional" education, one must wonder why certain faculties---ie nursing, most of what is taught in business schools etc---belong in a university? As a liberal arts graduate who holds an M.A. in history and has worked in an auxillary field---archives---I've also seen the pitfalls of a "professional" approach to teaching in that auxillary field. While said approach teaches students HOW to do something, it doesn't teach them WHY they do. In turn, this produces intellectual stagnation which currently plagues archival thinking. Don't get me wrong, I support the developement of Poly Techs across Canada, but never think that innovation will emanate from them.

Timber Wolf, you are forgetting one thing in your assessment of graduates from a polytechnic or trades education:

Historically some of Canada's greatest innovators and entrepreneurs actually come from a technical or trades background! (And I could name a long list, some of whom I have worked for directly, and whose efforts employ 10’s of thousands of Canadians.)

In terms of the 'arts' and our investment in these educations, I wonder if the average Canadian could name one Canadian poet, musician, author, or philosopher who owes their 'innovativeness' to a Canadian university education.