On Tuesday, the Ontario Conservatives released a “white paper” on Higher Education. It’s an extraordinary document, by far the most detailed vision for PSE ever released by a Canadian political party. Everyone in higher education should read it, even if they aren’t likely to enjoy it much.
Much of the paper revolves around the notion of reducing the cost of delivery of higher education. For that reason, it liberally raids the ideas of Ian Clark et. al on teaching faculty, as well as the goofier elements of Glen Murray’s plans regarding online education. On the assumption that transparency will improve efficiency, there are musings on getting administrations to better explain spending, and even a threat of legislation on financial transparency for student unions. (Students! Time to read up on voluntary student unionism.
Much will be made about the paper’s “College First” pledge – which suggests students should be encouraged to go to college rather than university (partly in the name of cost savings, partly due to some ideas about graduate earnings, which rely on some fairly cock-eyed data analysis), but the vagueness about how to do this suggests to me there’s less here than meets the eye. I think a bigger deal is the idea that, in the name of excellence, there should be a mechanism to choose “elite” programs, which would receive extra investment AND be allowed to charge higher fees. The idea that this can be determined via a set of objective metrics like graduate employment and income suggests that the paper’s authors have never examined those metrics to see how much inter-institutional variation there really is (note: there’s almost none).
Oddly, for a conservative party, this paper is a recipe for much, much heavier government involvement in the running of post-secondary education. A few months ago, I wrote that the main difference between right and left on higher education policy in Canada was that one of them didn’t care how universities were run, while the other thought it knew how to run them better than actual university and college staff. Well, that distinction’s gone now. This paper is prescriptive about what should be taught, how it should be taught, and how accounts should be published. It suggests that some tuition liberalization will be allowed, but only for programs which the government itself picks. The only part of the system that will have less regulation are private career colleges. They’re OK, apparently, because they’re cheap.
This is an ambitious paper which should be applauded for asking a lot of very good questions. Ontario institutions need to spend the next few months patiently explaining why there are better answers than the ones contained in here.
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Good summary, Alex. I do hope we get a fuller discussion of some of the options now circulating. For example, on the “three year degree” issue, let’s hope the conversation defines some specific audiences for, and some specific competencies from, both existing and innovative options. For example:
– three year applied degrees only work for students who can make an early career choice to focus in on an area of depth. Those needing more experiences to get a sense of where they should be heading are likely to be better served by a better mix of breadth and depth in the early going.
– a little more innovation in degree options beyond those we have now. For example, more reciprocity in 3 + 1 arrangements: lots of students who do a three year general degree in a university setting followed by a year of college with a strong applied flavour, and lots of student who do a three year applied degree in a college followed by a year in a university setting with a stronger emphasis on capabilities from a liberal education (e.g., analytical reasoning, multiple framings for complex issues and reflective explorations of meaning).
– a little more innovation in institutional types. Dual-sector universities combining college and university environments are features of numerous higher ed systems, and might be the ideal setting for the 3 + 1 and 2 + 2 options if the research universities show no interest in rethinking their roles.
(And when you say that career colleges are cheap, you might quality that with “in terms of direct government grants”…)