Mac resists provincial constraints on goals

Sam Colbert

Managing Editor

When talk of “differentiation” – the plan to specialize Ontario universities in specific disciplines and in one of either teaching or research – emerged last year from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), McMaster’s president Patrick Deane responded in opposition.

He held an open forum, which was attended primarily by faculty members, to discuss the matter. The sentiment in the room was consistent: McMaster would resist these pressures to specialize by remaining a diverse and well-rounded institution, strong in both teaching and research.

Last week, Deane held a similar forum to discuss his recent letter addressed to the McMaster community, Forward with Integrity, which outlined his vision for the future of the University. Though the letter emphasized McMaster’s intention to avoid “a division between teaching and research that runs counter to the principle of institutional integrity,” any mention of “differentiation” or reference to HEQCO was absent.

“If we are too conscious of responding to each of these currents, we are not being ourselves,” he said at the Oct. 20 discussion of work being done by HEQCO. McMaster has to think of itself outside of these contexts, he said, to be able to properly and effectively define its vision.

He did add, though, that the school “will not go that route” of being either a research-oriented or teaching-focused university, and that McMaster “has a historical right to that niche” compared to other schools.

On Nov. 2, the McGill-Queen’s University Press is set to release a sequel to its 2009 publication Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario, which originally outlined differentiation in the province.

The new book, written by University of Toronto professor Ian Clark, as well as David Trick, president of  higher education consultant company David Trick and Associates, and Richard Van Loon, former president of Carleton University, will be entitled Academic Reform.

The book will call for post-secondary funding in Ontario to be earmarked either for teaching or research, effectively enabling the provincial government to designate some schools as research-intensive and others as being strong in teaching. The authors argue from the perspective of students, who are often stuck with instructors that may be leading researchers in their respective fields, but are not effective teachers.

Ontario students can have the best experience possible in teaching schools, they say, while research schools can maintain the reputation of the province’s university system internationally.

From Deane’s perspective, teaching and research go hand-in-hand. In his letter, he stated that McMaster will “as an institution escape the not uncommon yet destructive tendency to see and experience excellence in research and in undergraduate education as antithetical aims.”

At the forum, which was attended by about 200 people, most of whom were faculty and administrators, Deane expressed his general dissatisfaction with the way Ontario schools are funded. “We’re still not confident that we can do what we want to do with the resources that we have,” he said.

He discussed the “circles of imprisonment,” enforced by both funding restrictions and pressures to specialize, that prevent McMaster from fulfilling its vision of high-quality education, calling for a reworked funding formula from the provincial government.

An Oct. 10 editorial in the Globe and Mail explained that the problem isn’t with the amount of money taxpayers are giving to post-secondary education, but with the way it’s administered. “We are getting less for more,” it said. “Teaching is getting short shrift; more students are graduating, but not enough are leaving school with the skills they need for success in the real world.”

Deane acknowledged in the letter that allocation of resources will need to change, though he suggested that it support experiential, self-directed and interdisciplinary programs, in which teaching and research are linked. Emphasis on these types of learning, he said at the talk, will make for a “quintessentially McMaster experience.”

One attendee of the event noted that the goals of the last major visioning document for McMaster, a 2003 release from the office of former president Peter George called Refining Directions, were not strongly reflected in the budget that followed. Though some components of the more recent letter could mean more immediate change, Deane explained that, as a whole, the letter spells out a long-term project.