MONTREAL/November 23, 2004—
Mr. Chairman, Distinguished colleagues and other distinguished guests of honour, ladies and gentlemen:
I wish first to thank the Chamber de Commerce de Montrèal for the invitation to speak today. I intend to use this opportunity to address a topic that, in my opinion, is the most important (without exception) to the future of Quebec societyómore important than which party holds power in the National Assembly, more important than federal-provincial relations, more important (and I say this as a physician) than health care.
I hope to persuade you that unless the 21st century graduates of Quebec universities remain competitive with those in the rest of Canada and throughout the developed world, and unless we are able to retain most of the graduates here, Montreal and Quebec generally will become less competitive economically, socially, and intellectually and our quality and standard of living will fall. In order to prevent this from happening both the Government of Quebec on behalf of Quebec society and Quebec's universities themselves must make crucial decisions.
Let me first focus on the decisions I believe the government must make in the interests of our society's future well being. The issue is well known to you already. CREPUQ and individual rectors have repeatedly made the point that a way must be found to provide adequate funding to Quebec's universities. It was AndrÈ Gide who said ì All things have already been said, but as no one listens, we must always repeat (begin again?î) Public support must be mobilized for either of two politically difficult decisions, or some combination of these. The first option is to substantially increase funding to universities by reallocating money from other very important programs; the second is to raise student tuition fees over a reasonable time period towards the Canadian average.
Either option would meet strong resistance and would require great political courage. This past weekend, Education Minister Pierre Reid opened the door to possibly raising tuition fees after the Government's present mandate is reviewed. Very likely this will be highly contested. There may be an answer. The issue is so important to Quebec's future that a serious attempt must be made to depoliticize it, to strive for agreement by all three political parties not to use this issue to gain temporary political advantage.
Why is such an unlikely scenario worth struggling for: I will briefly suggest three reasons.
1. Universities are important to Quebec
I need not take too much time to make the case for this statement. This Chambre de Commerce has itself made the case strongly in its mÈmoire to the Commission de l'Èducation of the AssemblÈe Nationale earlier this year.
Universities are the engines of a modern economy and of wealth creation
Although university graduates constitute only 16% of Canada's population over 18 they contribute 33% of all federal and provincial income taxes yet consume only 9% of transfers of all types by governments to individuals(1). A study commissioned by Montreal International conducted by Prof. Fernand Martin and Jean-Yves Benoit and released last February detailed the huge impact that Montreal's four universities and affiliated institutes make to our region's prosperity and development(2). They calculated the static impact (university expenditures, student and visitor spending) at $3.58 Billion annually and 65,200 jobs. Additionally the dynamic impact (the R&D activities on campuses and the contribution to local industries) of Montreal universities, as measured by contributions to Quebec's mean annual GDP growth, was estimated at $4.21 Billion per year and to the rest of Canada another $1.77 Billion per year. More than 156,000 jobs are involved in the information technology, aerospace and biopharmaceutical industries alone.
Universities produce the knowledge society needs to be competitive internationally.
Of all the R&D conducted in Canada 35% is in its universities, a higher percentage than in most OECD countries.
Universities contribute the educated citizens we need to be competitive
Some 540,000 graduates of Montreal universities work in the greater Montreal region. With the addition of 130,000 university staff and students the Montreal university community constitutes 20% of the region's population.
Universities contribute hugely to the quality of life and the vibrancy of Montreal and Quebec
The intellectual, cultural and artistic richness that characterize Montreal depend to a large extent on the direct and indirect contribution of our universities.
2. Quebec's universities are seriously under funded
For years Quebec's university rectors have called attention to their universities' under funding relative to those in the rest of Canada and the United States. For years they have been voices crying in the wilderness. However, strong influential allies have appeared, including this Chambre de Commerce. Last year a formal study was conducted jointly by CREPUQ and the Ministry of Education of Quebec using methodology acceptable to the Ministry. The result: compared to universities in the rest of Canada, the Quebec universities are indeed under fundedóto the tune of $375 Million per year. Another unhappy comparison: According to the Institut de la statistique du Quèbec during the past 10 years Quebec increased its allocation to education by 12% to $11.5 Billion. But during the same time Ontario increased its allocation by 57% to 15.4 Billion(3).
3. Chronic under funding will reduce quality.
The consequences of annual under funding are easy to describe. They include difficulty in recruiting and retaining first choice new professors; a less favourable student:professor ratio; less professor-student contact outside formal lectures; and fewer scholarships and bursaries. It is remarkable that Quebec's universities have been able to do more with less so that the quality of education has not yet slipped too much and research productivity, during the past seven years (thanks in part to the large infusion of funding by the Government of Canada) remains high. But the signs of quality erosion are starting to appear and, unless the chronic under funding is reversed, this will become significant. Please remember that the consequences of quality erosion will not be immediately apparent but over time they will be devastating. We will not be able to attract our own most promising students who after studying elsewhere may never return to Quebec. We will, over time, not be able to staff our universities with the professors capable of keeping us on the cutting edge of scholarship and research. Our high technology industries, the future of Montreal's economy, will be tempted to drift elsewhere. It is important to note that it is not only the rest of Canada that we must worry about but the rest of the world, especially the United States. In this connection let me remind you that between 1980 and 2003 per capita support for US universities increased by 25%. During the same period per capita support for Canadian universities decreased by 20%.
In its July 2004 Topic Paper ìA longterm economic forecast for Canadaî the TD Bank publication TD Economics concluded that ìGovernments must provide support for post-secondary education that approaches the per student levels seen in the U.S. so that Canadian labour quality can continue to riseî(4).
I have already suggested that an attempt should be made to enlist the agreement of all three Quebec political parties to take the issue of student tuition fees off the political agenda so that Quebec students will participate to a greater extent in paying for the cost of their education. I have one additional proposal to make regarding government funding and it is also politically contentious. Like health care education is a provincial responsibility though the federal government has a strong interest in both fields. We have had three recent commissions on the state of healthcare ñ Mazankowski, Kirby and Romanow. All have called for more federal transfers to permit the provinces to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities in the national interest. This is what happened as a result of the recent Federal-Provincial agreement. Why not a high level Federal-Provincial commission on higher education? I am confident that such a commission would have to address the fiscal imbalance between the two levels of government with regard to education as the other commissions have done for health. The result could well be a formula acceptable to the provinces, including Quebec, for federal participation in funding core university activities. Such bilateral arrangements in support of university research already exist, for example, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which has made a huge difference for Montreal universities.
The initiative for such a ground breaking step would have to come from the provinces, ideally with Quebec in the lead. I doubt that the Federal government, especially a minority government, could take such an initiative. Neither could the Government of Quebec do so unless there were, again, a three party agreement to depoliticize the issue, as with student tuition fees.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am well aware of the political and intellectual obstacles to these proposals. Yet I am convinced that bold ideas are required if a decline in Quebec's universities is to be prevented.
Let me now turn to what the universities must do. Improved funding, crucial though it is, will permit our universities to be competitive in the 21st century only if they are also prepared to make the several changes that will ensure high performance in a new, challenging climate. Today I have time only to speak about one of these. I believe that our universities must place priority on relevance to society. In recent years universities have been criticized, from within academia as well as from without for, on the one side, clinging excessively to an anachronistic ivory tower ideal and, on the other, for prostituting academic tradition by doing the bidding of industry and/or the state. Is the Ivory Tower dead? Should it be dead? Has it not been gone for a long time?
Today, with variations from country to country and often within countries, universities everywhere engage heavily with governments as well as private industry and commerce. Academic traditionalists are concerned and every year books and articles appear warning of the dangers of external intrusion into the academy. In their view such intrusion will inevitably lead to external interference and even dominance to the point that university autonomy and academic freedom will disappear.
This is not my view. Neither the idealized but narrow vision of the ivory tower university engaged in pure scholarship for its own sake nor the frank coopting of universities in the service of private industry or the state is acceptable. But while we must continue to protect the university's traditional autonomy with regard to its core activitiesóselection of students and professors, curricula, research agenda, freedom to speak and to publish, etc.ómore explicit engagement with society is both necessary and desirable. This must become accepted as one of the core values of the 21st century university.
What forums should such civic engagement take? I will suggest some and refer to my own university, Concordia, as an example of some of these. It is important first to stress that the type and degree of social engagement that is appropriate for a particular university will depend upon that university's mission, tradition and aspirations.
All Quebec universities, and especially the research intensive universities, contribute to the economic progress of our society not only by producing skilled graduates for our industries but also by the transfer of knowledge to the private sector, thereby increasing its capacity to receive and use research findings from anywhere in the world, and by direct commercialization of research, establishing spin-off companies and private-public partnerships.
But beyond this traditional and well known avenue of university-society engagement other routes are also being opened in Canada as they have been to a much greater extent elsewhere in the world.
At present intentional social engagement remains a peripheral or derivative activity for most universities, not a deliberate, planned core activity.
Let me first assert that the primary objective of a university education is not, as 71% of respondents in a 2003 United States opinion poll indicated, to prepare undergraduate students for a lucrative career(5). To be sure, important economic advantages accrue to university graduates. They have a much lower unemployment rate, more often work in jobs of their choosing and over a lifetime earn an average of $1 million more than those who have not gone to university. Indeed, Jack Mintz, President of the C.D. Howe Institute quoted a University of Toronto economist's study which concluded that ìa bachelor's degree is a much better investment than the stock market, providing an average lifetime return of 13.8% for men and 17.6 percent for womenî on the money invested in education(6). No, in my view the primary objective for a 21st century Canadian university is to help prepare students to become responsible citizens of a democracy.
For this objective to be met students must be challenged to develop certain crucial intellectual skills such as critical thinking, critical analysis of received information, communication skills, and so on. But good universities have always done this. Equally important, I believe, is the challenge of socializing students to the values of our society. These include the primacy of law and justice; respect for people; tolerance of values with which one disagrees; the right to security and order; and the need to balance personal advantage with the greater good of the collective, the community. Both academic and extra-curricular activities are important in this regard.
As you know, socialization of students has been a particular challenge for Concordia though all universities must give this priority. Let me remind you that Concordia, which has grown by 30% during the past decade, is a remarkable diverse place. Among its 32,000 degree students and 8,000 continuing education students this year are men and women from 137 countries and every ethnic group that has established itself in Montreal. Many study part time, about 70% hold a job while they study, and many are the first in their families to enter university. They bring to Concordia not only a richness of diverse languages, religions and cultures but also diverse values. While they are attracted to our way of life in Montreal, Quebec, Canada many also continue to identify with the societies from which they or their families came and, understandably, they retain strong feelings of affiliation with those societies. It is not surprising that tensions elsewhere in the world are also experienced on Concordia's campus. Sometimes this leads to problems that bring us much unwanted (and often unfair) publicity. But these episodes are rare. Concordia does have an unusually exciting campus life but for the most part passions are contained. Regrettably, the news media do not report the very many examples of intergroup collaboration nor the success of the programs we have designed to strengthen socialization and acculturation to Canadian values.
Other forms of social engagement range from developing close links with a university's immediate neighbours, that is, helping to improve the lives of people in the surrounding community, all the way to social action and activism. In this connection two movements in American universities are relevantóthe Campus Outreach Opportunity League and Campus Compact. Both aim to stimulate values of citizenship through student participation in public and community service by not only increasing student volunteerism and service learning but also by integrating civic engagement into courses, research projects and faculty activity(5). In Canada, Montreal's own McConnell Foundation is attempting to duplicate this United States initiative by inviting universities to apply for funding in their new University-Based Community Service-Learning Program. Concordia has applied because we have for many years embraced and operationalized this concept in our Institute for Cooperative Education, our School of Community and Public Affairs, our Graduate Program in Community Economic Development, our Applied Human Sciences Undergraduate Certificate in Community Service and the Centre for Human Relations and Community Studies, the John Molson School of Business Graduate Certificate in Community Organizational Development and the Entrepreneurship Institute for Minority Communities.
Yet another form of social advancement, well developed at Concordia and in the UniversitÈ du Quèbec system, is to facilitate higher education for members of our society, young and old, who face obstacles that prevent them from being accepted by more traditional universities. These include: academic' late bloomers' who are motivated and intelligent but who for a variety of reasons did not have high grades in high school and CEGEP; financially disadvantaged students who must work full time; students who have cultural barriers to overcome, such as most aboriginal students or linguistic barriers; and those with no family history of higher education. Concordia helps their access to university by giving these high risk students a chance, recognizing that they will have a lower graduation rate; by very flexible scheduling; and by special support and mentoring programs.
In conclusion; within the limits of the time available and your patience, I have tried to make the following points:
ï Quebec's universities are vitally important to our society
ï Quebec's universities are seriously underfunded and are at risk of decline
ï If this is not corrected the long term consequences for Quebec are very serious
ï The solutions to this problem all require great political courage and will be difficult to achieve without agreement by all three political parties to abstain from making them political footballs
ï I have suggested the unfreezing of student tuition fees, reallocation of funds from other departments to the Ministry of Education and a Federal-Provincial Commission on the funding of higher education
ï Not only must the government consider such measures but universities also must be prepared to make changes
ï Among the changes proposed is an intentional increase in the social engagement of Quebec universities.
On a personal note, I am now in the final year of my mandate as President/Recteur of Concordia University. During the past decade I have personally experienced both the frustration of leading an underfunded institution and the tremendous gratification of seeing first hand what a difference an engaged university can make in the lives of so many people. It has been a privilege to contribute to the development of one of Montreal's outstanding assetsóits university sector that, for the moment, remains a source of pride to us all. We need your help to keep it that way.
References
1. Morris, Claire, President's Report, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, October, 2004.
2. Universities: Catalysts for the Development of Metro Montreal: Economic Benefits, Montreal International, February 2004.
3. Le chiffre du Jour, Institut de la statistique du Quèbec, Quoted in La Presse, 4 November, 2004, LPAI.
4. TD Economics, The Toronto Dominion Bank, Toronto 2004.
5. Chambers, T. and Burkhardt, J. Fulfilling the promise of civic engagement, ACB Priorities, 22:1, 2004, Washington, DC.
6. Mintz, J. M. Canada's Future in the Balance, Presented to the Economic Club, Toronto, 28 January 2004.
- 30 -
