Reflections on UBC’s Unexpected Leadership Transition

Note: this entry will also be available via Insider Higher Ed on 10 August 2015.

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On a warm and humid Friday afternoon last week my email in-box pinged with a very important message to all UBC alumni, myself (BA, 1985; MA 1988) included. The formal communication, also pasted in below, had this to say:

Media Release | August 7, 2015

UBC Announces Leadership Transition

The University of British Columbia’s Board of Governors regretfully announced today that President Arvind Gupta has resigned to return to the pursuit of his academic career. Dr. Gupta has made meaningful accomplishments in his tenure as president, but has decided he can best contribute to the university and lead Canada’s innovation agenda by resuming his academic career and leadership roles in the business and research community.

“I want to take this time to thank Dr. Gupta for his service to the university community over the past year and acknowledge his hard work, integrity, and dedication,” said UBC Board of Governors’ Chair John Montalbano.

“Dr. Gupta worked tirelessly during his tenure to advance UBC’s core academic mission. He also developed an emerging strategy to support diversity and under-represented groups in the university, enhanced the student experience through better services, such as improved access to mental health services, UBC successfully raised over $200 million in one of the largest fundraising exercises in its history, and he facilitated a $66-million research grant that is the single largest in the history of UBC,” Montalbano further said.

Dr. Gupta, who has a PhD in computer science from the University of Toronto and was Chief Executive Officer and Scientific Director of Mitacs, a not-for-profit organization that fosters Canada’s next generation of global innovators, will return to UBC’s Department of Computer Science after his academic leave. This leave will enable him to focus on his research and scholarly work that will be of mutual benefit to Dr. Gupta and UBC. The university is delighted Dr. Gupta will continue to build on his accomplishments as a scholar and continue to engage on national policy on research, innovation, science and technology.

The Board of Governors also announced that Martha Piper, who previously served as UBC’s 11th president from 1997 to 2006, will serve as interim president from Sept. 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016 while the university conducts a comprehensive, global search for a new leader. 

Dr. Piper received her PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from McGill University. She has an extensive background in university administration, having served in senior leadership positions at McGill and the University of Alberta. Her work stewarding UBC to become one of the leading research universities in the world was recognized with the Orders of Canada and British Columbia. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Since leaving UBC, Dr. Piper has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including Shoppers Drug Mart, TransAlta Corp. and Grosvenor Americas Ltd. She was Chair of the Board of the National Institute of Nanotechnology and served as a member of the Trilateral Commission. Currently, she is a member of the boards of the Bank of Montreal, CARE Canada, the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, and the Canadian Stem Cell Foundation.

“I am very pleased to welcome back such a passionate supporter of UBC with a deep commitment to academic excellence,” said Chancellor Lindsay Gordon. “Dr. Piper’s considerable experience during her time as UBC president and the years beyond will be invaluable during this time of transition.”

“We look forward to her enthusiastic engagement with our students and employees,” Montalbano added. “Building on the legacy of her predecessors, and working together with her academic colleagues, the Board of Governors and UBC’s executive team, Dr. Piper will guide us well as we continue to deliver a globally renowned learning and research environment.”

UBC is consistently ranked among the world’s top 40 universities, and has an operating budget of $2.1 billion, more than 59,000 students on its Vancouver and Okanagan campuses, and more than 15,000 faculty and staff.

While the communication included some other information, this was it regarding the explanation for President Gupta’s unexpected departure: he had only been in the position since 1 July 2014 (see this timeline via the Ubyssey, a student newspaper) and was just beginning to pursue the agenda items outlined in his installation address. The Gupta agenda is also outlined on this Office of the President webpage, and was presumably outlined when he was interviewed for the position in early 2014.

A quick spike of media coverage emerged in Vancouver later on Friday and Saturday, though the majority of it included a simple rephrasing of the official communication. The only sections of note in my mind were comments in the Vancouver Sun about Gupta’s absent voice:

Gupta declined to comment Friday, saying the news release should speak for itself. Gupta wasn’t quoted in the announcement, which UBC’s managing director of public affairs Susan Danard said was his choice.

and this in the national Globe & Mail newspaper regarding comments by John Montalbano, Vice Chairman of RBC Wealth Management and Chair, UBC Board of Governors:

As it made the unexpected announcement on Friday, the chair of the board of governors at British Columbia’s largest university said no disciplinary issues prompted the resignation of Arvind Gupta.

“None whatsoever. Let me be very clear. None whatsoever,” John Montalbano said in an interview.

He said Dr. Gupta recently decided he could better contribute to the university in a senior role in its computer-science department.

“Professor Gupta has had an opportunity to reflect on what is in the best interests of himself going forward and has chosen to resign,” he said, calling the decision “regrettable.”

“Arvind clearly loves the university. He has reflected on what would be best for him and we’re pleased that he is stepping into the department of computer science.”

….

Mr. Montalbano said he expects UBC to survive the turmoil. “I am very fond of saying that even the greatest institutions are never dependent on one person,” he said. “I don’t believe we will miss a beat.”

As someone who has studied, worked and/or been associated with universities in Canada, England, China, Singapore, France and the US, I find all official university communications intriguing and worth taking seriously as an object of study. In this case, I’m perplexed by the lack of detail in the official communications about why and how the resignation occurred (which was not helped by a Friday afternoon release in middle of summer – note to Communications chief: bad timing idea!). All alumni like myself are left with is perusal of some speculative blog/media entries (see here, here, here, and here), speculative tweets, and this satirical poster floating through the Twitterverse on the weekend.

Make no mistake, this type of unexpected leadership transition is hugely significant. When Mr. Montalbano suggested in the Globe & Mail that a university president is defacto as disposable as a Swiffer Duster, it made me wonder if something else is going on and if risks are being taken with the future of my alma mater. Or maybe not? I just don’t know. Regardless, I would argue that UBC’s communication about this issue, to-date, is inadequate. It’s somewhat concerning that initial engagement with the media demonstrates a lack of understanding about the communicative politics of major institutional change, circa 2015, in an era where social media use can quickly impact an institution’s reputation — this is something we have been learning a lot about at the University of Wisconsin-Madison over the last four years.

Given that I don’t know what is going on at UBC, I’m going to move this blog entry forward via a series of reflections (formed into lessons) derived via a crisis at the UW-Madison in 2011-12 that was implicated in the resignation of our president equivalent after just three years in the position, and via the University of Virginia leadership crisis of 2012 that I wrote about in Inside Higher Ed here and here and that is summarized in this lengthy New York Times Magazine story. I’m also aware of multiple dimensions of the ongoing crisis (saga, really) at the nearby University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign that also led to the resignation of President Phyllis M. Wise last Thursday, and an ongoing brouhaha about modes and legality of communications about the crisis.

The first lesson is that an early lack of transparency and full communications can heighten the risk of a major crisis erupting. Amidst the debates and crises at UVA, UIUC, and UW-Madison, attempts to release highly selective forms of information to manage/control/shield formal and informal negotiation processes, maneuvering, agreements/disagreements, tentative deals, etc., all failed. A case in point is the communication announcing President Sullivan’s resignation at the University of Virginia, one that was eventually rescinded. What this did was to generate suspicion and enhance the drive for even more information, almost on an exponential basis. Open up, be direct, be clear – ideally as direct and clear as we are with our students about their papers/draft research proposals. It’s worth noting, too, that almost all of the initially shielded forms of information at UVA, UIUC, and UW-Madison eventually came to light and when they did the unveiling process generated mistrust, even more floods of freedom of information (FOI) requests, conflict, and some protests. This is not to say there is not a rationale for trying to manage the communications process, or that there are better times than others to open up about key decisions, but it is abundantly clear that managing a crisis (even on “a languorous Sunday in June, low season on the campus of the University of Virginia“) is not made easier by being vague, unclear, and by playing down the significance of a historically significant decision. An unexpected leadership transition costs substantial amounts of money, the delay of a multitude of key decisions/initiatives, and generates tens of thousands of hours of direct and indirect work for the university as a whole. An unexpected senior leadership change 13 months in, as per the UBC case, is sign of a crisis of one sort or another, it will cost, and given this it’s critically important to be open and clear about said costs.

The second and related lesson is that key decisions need to be communicated about with reference to process descriptors, with these descriptors tied to established/mandated governance processes and governance structures. Most North American universities have ‘shared governance’ systems of one form or another, whereby faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders (including board of trustees or governors) engage to ensure universities operate as effectively and efficiently as possible. And there are ‘governance pathways’ for most key decision, including for those associated with hiring, dismissals and acceptance and/or encouragement of resignations. It is important to outline the detailed governance pathway associated with key decisions, including attention to who decided what, when. The surest way to generate a wave of even more FOI requests, all enormously time consuming to respond to, is by being unclear about process vis a vis governance structures and rules, formal and informal.

The third lesson is that the crises at UBC’s peers in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Illinois reflected, and captured the essence of, fundamental changes and points of conflict about the mission of research universities, changes in governance processes and structures, differing visions for the future of the university, and conflicting perceptions of optimal forms and styles of senior ‘leadership.’ An existential crisis of sorts is occurring in many (most?) major public research universities and systems: from mission creep, to the pressures associated with austerity, to the (in the U.S. at least) defacto end of the social contract supporting public higher education, to the emergence of more active and sometimes politicized governing boards with less interest in broad oversight and more in detail, significant change is underway. The unexpected leadership transitions at UVA, UW-Madison, and UIUC generated enormous attention to the cultural, economic, and political forces reshaping these universities, as well as associated lines of power that bring these forces to life. A crisis is a wonderful teaching and learning moment. Use it, and be prepared to see it used, for this is what a university is all about.

In closing, the unexpected leadership crises at UBC’s peers in VA, WI and IL generated a myriad of costs (many unexpected), and a torrent of debates that far surpassed original expectations. As a UBC alumnus, I’m proud that the Fall of 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of UBC’s first class of students. I hope that the value system associated with the construction of UBC’s ‘second century’ will be one that is associated with rich currents of openness and transparency, including with respect to alumni, so we know what’s going on, and in so doing we’ll all be able to effectively nurture and protect our treasured ‘place of mind.’

 

Kris Olds

Can Canada Attract American Students?

Alex Usher posted a pithy entry this morning titled ‘The Latest Bandwagon – American Students‘ that is worth a read.  In fact, it is a short one so I’m going to reprint the whole thing below, and then reflect back on his discussion of the emerging view that Canadian universities could/should recruit more American undergraduate students. I’m basing my comments below via reflections of my Gr. 12 son’s experience this year applying to five Canadian and five US universities, as well as a discussion I coincidentally coordinated with approximately 140 UW-Madison students a few days ago in my summer version of Geog 340 (World Regions in Global Context). This discussion involved engendering comparative thinking about regional similarities and differences and centered on a hypothetical study abroad year split in half between l’Auberge Espagnole (in Barcelona) and l’Auberge Canadian (in the Canadian city of their choice). The exercise ended in a hypothetical forced decision about having to choose between a future life in Spain or Canada should they be forced out of the country of their citizenship.  The objective of this discussion was to get them to begin reflecting on how student mobility and placement in new contexts contributes to the transformation of personal identities and subjectivities.

Now I don’t want to embarrass my teenage son, so I’ll leave out the details of which specific universities he applied to, but let’s just say they were relatively strong universities and liberal arts colleges, some in the big cities and some in small-to-medium sized cities.  My son is a Canadian citizen and US Permanent Resident so is treated as Canadian when it comes to tuition in Canada (which puts them, I would estimate, 25-50% below the average tuition for a US public university). And my ~ 140 UW-Madison students are predominantly juniors and seniors from the Midwest, the US coasts, and then Malaysia, South Korea, and China.

So what does Alex Usher have to say:

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about US students coming to Canada.  NBC ran a segment on Americans at McGill, and the Globe and Mail ran a piece on the same.  This seems to have led many institutions to start thinking “hot damn, another market! How can we grab us some of these Americans?”

But for most institutions, this would be the wrong reaction.  Before venturing into a market, every school needs to ask itself two questions.  Why would Americans want to go to your school?  And why does your school want Americans?

Before a school starts recruiting in the US (any new market, really), some self-reflection is in order.  What, exactly, does my school offer an American that they can’t get at home?  “Cheap” isn’t good enough; Mexican universities are cheap but you don’t see American undergraduates flocking there (they weren’t flocking over our border when the dollar was at 62 cents, either).  There has to be a value proposition.

In fact, there are maybe a dozen schools in Canada that offer a mix of price and quality that make them attractive to parts of the US student population.  Students wishing to go to out-of-state flagship schools – say, Illinois or Virginia – can get similar product at a lower price in a better venue by going to McGill, Toronto or UBC (Queen’s would have a shot here, too; at a stretch, so would Alberta).  Students with their hearts set on a liberal arts education but who can’t get into any of the Tier I Liberal Arts Colleges in the US would consider St. FX, Acadia, Mount Allison or Bishop’s.  Windsor has a shot due to proximity.  For everybody else, it’s going to be a much harder sell.

Which brings us to that second question about “why Americans”: to the extent that international students are revenue sources, it’s important that they be cheap to recruit, so as to maximize net revenue.  If you’re not one of the above-mentioned institutions with a clear-cut value proposition, chances are that American students will be difficult and expensive to recruit. So why spend money chasing after them instead of, say, Korean students, when they all bring in the same amount of revenue?  You might of course just want American students because of the mix of experiences they bring to campus.  That’s fine – but you need to put a price tag on what that’s worth and limit your recruitment efforts accordingly.

In recruitment, every dollar is precious.  Institutions need to know their strengths and value propositions, and not chase every new market just because it’s new.

I agree with the broad tenor of Alex’s argument, but have some things to add.

The first thing to add is that Canadian universities (and Canada more generally) are terra incognita institutions (apart from McGill University, and then sometimes the University of Toronto and University of British Columbia) in a terra incognita country from a US high schooler’s perspective. This awareness factor is in no way correlated to the quality of the undergraduate education a student will acquire – it relates, in my personal opinion (as an academic living in a college town in the US for 12 years) to word of mouth via educated parents, many of whom value cosmopolitan urban contexts. In other words, Alex’s “maybe a dozen schools” is very optimistic in my view. Knowledge (or lack thereof) about Canadian universities reflects the remarkable lack of knowledge about Canada. School curriculum ignores Canada, as does the US media.  A few blips occur — most recently about the Keystone Pipeline and Toronto’s Mayor (cough cough…further comments from me censored) — but Canada is hockey, fishing, and for the elites Whistler-Blackcomb and Montréal. I’m generalizing, of course, via my perch here dealing with university-fixated parents in College Town WI/USA, but I’ve facilitated discussions about Canada with 500-800 students over the last several years and am confident in stating that Canada is terra incognita no question about it. I am no longer shocked about what US students don’t know, and just pleasantly surprised if they know something, anything (and is not their fault; blame the education system here and Canada’s unwillingness or inability to beam the CBC down south).

The second thing to note is that the timelines for applying to universities in Canada are significantly out of alignment with those in the United States.  US high school students, bound for college, often take tours of campuses in Gr. 10 and Gr. 11 and have decided, by the summer before Gr. 12, where they will apply to in the early fall. University application deadlines (Early Decision, Early Action, Regular Decision) via the Common Application, are earlier than in Canada (especially Ontario).  Most importantly, decisions about admission are made much earlier in the U.S. than in Canadian universities. And on a related note, U.S. universities are much better at stipulating the date decisions will be made, and at providing feedback on how (e.g., email, or downloaded PDF of letter, or letter in the mail) the decision will be communicated. They stick to the exact stated dates so you feel a sense of enhanced certainty during uncertain times. Rejections come with clear and well written letters that provides data on application volumes and admissions percentages, often situated in historic context. [And don’t forget these are not difficult to produce, or costly to disseminate – they are simple form letters made available, for the most part, via email or download sites. But they at least recognize that a student put a lot of effort into applying and was willing to alter life course to attend their university.] In contrast, many (not all) Canadian universities provided vague rolling windows about target decision deadlines. And I won’t start discussing how ineffective the Ontario Universities Application Center OUAC) website is – I mean, why imply decision outcomes will be communicated via it when they are not? The image above is a screenshot, taken today, of the OUAC page meant to communicate to my son about admissions decisions that were made by three Ontario universities some 1-1.5 months ago…perhaps the OUAC site is run by Mayor Ford’s office! [sorry]

The third reason Canada has an uphill climb to attract students is that the cost to attend a Canadian university is relatively high. Canadian universities have less scholarships to distribute unless you are a stellar student and once you add up the costs of international tuition fees and books, housing/food, and living (including air travel to and from Canadian cities), the costs are substantial, putting Canadian universities practically and psychologically (for parents) out of reach.  I’m not implying Canada needs to ramp up scholarship support for non-Canadians, but it is not as cheap as is often conveyed, especially with a broader, deeper, and more heterogeneous scholarship and tuition support (including via discounted rates) ecosystem in the US.

If Canada ever wants to attract more US students, I would agree with Alex Usher that institutions “need to know their strengths and value propositions.” But at the same time some not insignificant systemic changes need to be made regarding:

• How US students (and their parents) are engaged with in Gr. 10-12.
• How the application process is timed, structured and handled.
• How communications with applicants (at the application stage, the review stage, and the admissions or waitlist or rejection stages) are structured and handled.
• How college financing is structured and communicated (to students, and especially parents).

Alas there is not much Canada can do to improve how it is represented in the media down here, though I did note George Stroumboulopoulos (and CNN) flew the Canadian flag high last night…Strombo for Mayor?!

Kris Olds

Measuring Academic Research in Canada: Field-Normalized Academic Rankings 2012

Greetings from Chicago where I’m about to start a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on Mobilizing Higher Education to Support Regional Innovation and A Knowledge-Driven Economy. The main objective of meeting here is to explore a possible higher education focused-follow-up to the OECD’s Territorial Review: the Chicago Tri-State Metro Area. I’ll develop an entry about this fascinating topic in the new future.

Before I head out to get my wake-up coffee, though, I wanted to alert you to a ‘hot-off the press’ report by Toronto-based Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA). The report can be downloaded here in PDF format, and I’ve pasted in the quasi-press release below which just arrived in my email InBox.

More food for fodder on the rankings debate, and sure to interest Canadian higher ed & research people, not to mention their international partners (current & prospective).

Kris Olds

>>>>>>

Research Rankings

August 28, 2012
Alex Usher

Today, we at HESA are releasing our brand new Canadian Research Rankings. We’re pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished here, so let me tell you a bit about them.

Unlike previous Canadian research rankings conducted by Research InfoSource, these aren’t simply about raw money and publication totals. As we’ve already seen, those measures tend to privilege strength in some disciplines (the high-citation, high-cost ones) more than others. Institutions which are good in low-citation, low-cost disciplines simply never get recognized in these schemes.

Our rankings get around this problem by field-normalizing all results by discipline. We measure institutions’ current research strength through granting council award data, and we measure the depth of their academic capital (“deposits of erudition,” if you will) through use of the H-index, (which, if you’ll recall, we used back in the spring to look at top academic disciplines). In both cases, we determine the national average of grants and H-indexes in every discipline, and then adjust each individual researcher’s and department’s scores to be a function of that average.

(Well, not quite all disciplines. We don’t do medicine because it’s sometimes awfully hard to tell who is staff and who is not, given the blurry lines between universities and hospitals.)

Our methods help to correct some of the field biases of normal research rankings. But to make things even less biased, we separate out performance in SSHRC-funded disciplines and NSERC-funded disciplines, so as to better examine strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas. But, it turns out, strength in one is substantially correlated with strength in the other. In fact, the top university in both areas is the same: the University of British Columbia (a round of applause, if you please).

I hope you’ll read the full report, but just to give you a taste, here’s our top ten for SSHRC and NSERC disciplines.

Eyebrows furrowed because of Rimouski? Get over your preconceptions that research strength is a function of size. Though that’s usually the case, small institutions with high average faculty productivity can occasionally look pretty good as well.

More tomorrow.

A (not ‘The’) UBC response to Nigel Thrift’s questions on global challenges and the organizational-ethical dilemmas of universities

Editors’ note: our sincere thanks to Stephen J. Toope, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of British Columbia, for his thought provoking contribution below. Professor Toope’s entry is the ninth response to Nigel Thrift’s ‘A question (about universities, global challenges, and an organizational-ethical dilemma)‘, which was originally posted on 8 April 2010. The previous eight responses can be located here.

Professor Stephen J. Toope was named the 12th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia on March 22, 2006. He will begin his second five-year term in July 2011. An International Law scholar who represented Western Europe and North America on the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances from 2002-2007, Professor Toope’s academic interests include public international law, legal theory, human rights and international dispute resolution. He has worked on issues of human rights and legal reform in the Caribbean, East Africa and Southeast Asia. His latest book is Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: an Interactional Account, published by Cambridge University Press in the summer of 2010.

Kris Olds & Susan Robertson

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Last spring, Vice-Chancellor Nigel Thrift of Warwick University posed a profound ethical challenge to universities around the world.  He asked if we are appropriately organized to fulfill our contemporary mission.

At least since the creation of the land-grant universities in North America it has been received wisdom that universities have three interlocking goals and opportunities: to foster student learning;  to preserve and increase the store of human knowledge; and to engage with the wider society.  Some commentators like to call contemporary universities “multiversities” because of this complexity of mission, and they note that the goals and opportunities are not invariably in synch, despite the fond wishes of university leaders who suggest that there is an inevitable synergy amongst teaching-research-community engagement.

Nigel Thrift’s welcome challenge is to ask how the three goals of contemporary universities, and especially the goal of community engagement (or ‘service’ in its more condescending formulation), might be better pursued.  His implicit suggestion, carefully not insisted upon, is that universities might do a better job if they banded together in deeper partnerships to address the great crises of our times.  Prof. Thrift focuses upon the example of climate change, and it is a most appropriate choice, being scientifically complex, geographically unfocussed and full of potentially devastating effects.  Other contributors to the online dialogue on GlobalHigherEd have advanced other causes eminently worthy of global attention from our universities: pandemic disease, income inequality, pervasive poverty, ideological fundamentalism.  I would add, especially for countries of immigration, understanding and fully benefitting from cultural diversity.

The superficial answer to Prof. Thrift’s challenge is obvious.  Given that we have not been able to solve our fundamental problems, nor to fully exploit our opportunities, the answer demanded by Prof. Thrift’s question must be ‘no’:  universities around the globe are not optimally organized to do what the world needs us to do.  I suggest, however, that to figure out a way forward, the primary question needs to be torn apart into a series of related questions.  Why are we organized the way we are?  How easy will it be to re-organize ourselves?  What promising models might be pursued?  What are the limits to re-invention?  Each of these questions is complex, and I will only be able to trace out some tentative answers in this short response.  What is more, the answers are not always encouraging.  So as not to descend into paralysis, however, I will end by joining President Indira Samarasekara in proposing a few concrete ways in which we might improve our collective ability to harness the brains, energy and heart of our universities, to do our fundamental job: helping to make the world a better place through education and research.

First a caveat, as I am an academic after all!  Ever since becoming a university president, and beginning to read and listen to others of my cohort, I have been struck by a tendency to assume that the world today is entirely different than it was twenty or fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago.  The idea seems to be attractive to some colleague presidents that it is our destiny to fundamentally re-shape what we have inherited.  This impulse is often prompted by a sense of frustration with our own faculty members who are accused of not “getting it,” of somehow living in the past.  By the way, I do not suggest that Prof. Thrift reveals these tendencies, for I know him to be far more subtle.  But it is worth remembering that universities are one of the only social institutions to have survived, both intact and wildly changed, since the medieval era.  (Other examples are religious institutions, now under increasing attack, and some political institutions, like the Icelandic parliament).  This is no accident.  Universities have proven themselves to be crucial to social, economic and cultural evolution.  In seeking to promote needed change, we must be careful to acknowledge the strength that we bring to the task.  The mix of conservatism and openness that marks universities, probably due in large measure to our commitment to collegial governance, is a remarkable asset, even as I acknowledge that it can lead to frustration, and a failure sometimes to seize the day.

The Confines of History and Nation

As suggested just above, university organization is very much an inherited trait.  Most of us have forms of collegial governance in relation to academic decision-making: senates or governing councils of some kind.  They often must work in conjunction with boards whose duties are focused on the financial and property aspects of the university.  Professors, even in those places where tenure has not been fully established or preserved, are best thought of as ‘independent contractors’; they are certainly not placed within a directive hierarchy.  University ‘management,’ at least in relation to the academic side of the house, is much more about encouragement and cajoling, and sometimes even shaming, than about ‘executing to plan.’  Concrete student expectations tend to be oriented to the short term, like keeping tuition low, improving access to courses, and not being too disrupted by physical changes to the campus, even when student visions are grand, like equality, environmental sustainability and fairness.  I doubt that this conundrum has changed all that much in the past couple of hundred years.

Prof. Thrift and other commentators have noted that the nation-based organization of universities is one of the central problems in promoting effective cross-border collaboration.  Of course, this too is historically contingent.  Just as the law of commerce was once fundamentally transnational (the medieval lex mercatoria), universities, though physically implanted in one place, were deeply cross-cultural.  We all know the stories of wandering scholars like Erasmus, who contributed to the academic life of Paris, Leuven, Cambridge, and Basel.  Although we are currently experiencing a re-discovery of the basic need for mobility amongst scholars, our national systems are not fully cooperating.  There are still many barriers to international recruitment, like impaired transferability of credentials (especially amongst the professions) and narrow-minded visa rules.  Moreover, many of our most important funding mechanisms (e.g. national research councils) remain inwardly focused, doing precious little to foster global collaboration.  For North American public universities, we are also confronted by sub-national constraints.  We are partially funded by state or provincial governments; even recruiting students from a few hundred kilometers away can be controversial.

The Risks of Hubris

Hubris may be the greatest flaw of universities, especially big ones with strong reputations.  We need to recognize that our own brilliant hiring and attraction of ‘top’ students cannot of itself create a critical mass of talent sufficient to solve fundamental global problems.  We must find partners.  We must collaborate, not only with other universities but with community groups, civil society organizations, industry, and government.  Even if we are to create effective cross-sectoral collaboration, we must also display some pragmatism, defining our ambitions with realism.  ‘Grand challenges,’ unless sufficiently specified and broken down, can turn into attempts to boil the ocean.

Chasing Ephemera

Rather than focusing intently on what needs to be improved in the world, university leadership can become preoccupied with superficial measures of reputation: university rankings; collecting prestigious partners; satisfying consumerist understandings of what student learning is all about.  Universities can also find themselves responding to the immediate rather than the important.  We are challenged by research funding vehicles that focus on short term wins or immediate political issues.  The pre-occupation with ‘commercialization’ of research in the first part of this century is a good example, but so too was the rush to create new computer science and electrical engineering spaces for students just as the tech bubble was bursting in the 1990s.  Perhaps we should have been pushing for more geographers, economists, political scientists, and sociologists to help us figure out how to promote a more sustainable world.

Models of Collaboration

So far, none of the university networks that sprang up at the beginning of this century has fulfilled its promise.  Attempts to jump-start research collaboration on crucial issues through these networks have seen modest success at best.  Let’s be honest.  Just because presidents and vice-chancellors say they would like something to happen on the research front does not make it happen, even if we can cobble together ‘seed’ funding.  Research networks typically arise in an organic fashion from the bottom up.  Our faculty and graduate students notice good work somewhere else, and they reach out at a conference or online.  Exchanges may begin, and true collaboration evolves.  Perhaps we can facilitate such organic growth, but we cannot direct it hierarchically.  Some research communities, like high energy physics and astronomy, have been very effective at creating multinational networks out of necessity: their need for large facilities. The same trend is now seen in life sciences and clinical research. In other words, researchers will naturally form networks to solve big problems with high infrastructure costs.

An example of a strong international research network is the structural genomics consortium, which has a solid base in Canada, but with partners globally.  It has attracted significant support for UK partners through the Welcome Trust, and is well established in Sweden. My own university is involved in outstanding collaborative work in the field of quantum materials with the University of Tokyo and the Max Planck Society.  In the field of climate change, which Prof. Thrift focuses upon, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has already created an influential experts group that already includes many university researchers, but we have not been able to link the IPPC effectively with broader university research agendas. We need to learn from successful global collaborations if we are to expand our reach to address the fundamental problems of our era.

Possible Ways Forward

Build from the bottom up. Where are there research teams, and groups of dedicated and inspired students, who are already working together across borders?  Can we support them, and help them find new partners in other places?  By starting with small, focused and effective networks we can build up confidence to move to more ambitious global platforms.  How do we seek out real commitment to specific efforts, rather than the ‘why not, we can do that too’ response?

Challenge National myopia. Those of us living and working in the USA or the European Union must make a specific effort to look outside the borders for partnerships that may be less obvious.  Those living in smaller states need to encourage our governments to change rules to allow research funding that crosses borders, even though we may seem like small players.  We should encourage national research councils to sponsor joint initiatives.  We all must do more to facilitate and fund migration of students and scholars.  If university folk get a chance to meet one another informally and over time, the chances of effective collaboration later are significantly enhanced.

Communicate authentically about strengths. None of our universities is good at everything.  There are many important global issues.  Where are we best placed to make a real difference, working with others?  In the case of my own university, I suspect that we are most likely to contribute in a major way to global solutions on climate change and sustainability more generally.  We could also make a real difference in collaborating on the prevention and control of infectious disease, and in intercultural understanding.  Our ability to lead in a global effort to understand and combat ideological fundamentalism is less obvious.  Like all universities, our expertise is not entirely balanced across all areas of research.  In UBC’s case, we have deep knowledge of Asia, but have invested little in creating knowledge of the Middle East.  This reaffirms the necessity of cooperation.

Help our students and alumni become global citizens. In focusing, as we almost inevitably do, on research as a means of addressing global problems, we should never forget that our most important ‘translators’ are our graduates.  Are our students being exposed to classes in which they really confront the problems of our era?  Are we doing enough to help students see how they could make a difference in the world?  Are we helping them connect with the wider community during their studies (e.g. through community-service learning)?  Are enough of our students being introduced to perspectives from other cultures, other parts of the world?

Walk the talk. Universities must learn to be more Janus-faced.  By that, I mean the opposite of hypocritical.  If we are really going to address the fundamental problems of global society, we can’t just research solutions and preach.  We need to act on our own campuses, and in our local communities, as well.  Are we leaders in economic, environmental and social sustainability?  How aggressive are our own greenhouse gas reduction targets?  Are we modeling best practices in intercultural dialogue?  Do our own workforce practices address issues of income inequality?

Stephen J. Toope

A University of Alberta response to ‘A question (about universities, global challenges, and an organizational-ethical dilemma)’

Editors’ note: today’s guest entry has been kindly developed by Indira V. Samarasekera, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Alberta, Canada. Professor Samarasekera’s engaging entry is the eighth response to Nigel Thrift’s ‘A question (about universities, global challenges, and an organizational, ethical dilemma)‘, which was originally posted on 8 April 2010. The previous seven were provided by the people below and the entries can be linked to via their names:

• Peter N. Stearns (Provost, George Mason University)
• Gregor McLennan (Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Bristol)
• David J. Skorton (President, Cornell University)
• Daniel I. Linzer (Provost, Northwestern University)
• Allan E. Goodman (President & CEO, Institute of International Education)
• Lucia Rodriguez (Director, Global Master’s in Development Practice Secretariat, Columbia University)
• Dzulkifli Abdul Razak (Vice-Chancellor, Universiti Sains Malaysia)

Finally, please note that we will continue to welcome proposals for responses to Nigel Thrift’s ‘A question‘ through to the end of 2010.

Professor Samarasekera (pictured above) became Alberta’s 12th university president in 2005. Over a professional career spanning three decades, she has distinguished herself as one of Canada’s leading metallurgical engineers. As a Fulbright-Hays Scholar, she earned an MSc from the University of California in 1976, and, in 1980, she was granted a PhD in metallurgical engineering from the University of British Columbia.  She was awarded the Order of Canada in 2002 in recognition of outstanding contributions to steel process engineering. Professor Samarasekera is also Chair of the National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT), and sits on the Board of Directors of the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) and the Public Policy Forum of Canada.

Kris Olds & Susan Robertson

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I have been following with interest the initial entry in this series by Nigel Thrift and the responses that followed.  The internationalization of large, public research universities leading to more rapid research advancements that address what he terms the “long emergency” is a topic I am passionate about and explored in my opinion piece in Nature (‘Universities need a new social contract,’ 12 November 2009).

I agree with Professor Thrift that universities—and university researchers—must be the “primary intellectual fire-fighters” in the emerging global crisis which is unprecedented in complexity, universality, and potential for comprehensive devastation.  It’s time universities and the “nation-states” that consider us their “national assets” recognize our mutual ethical obligation to focus on both the short and long-term emergencies we see gathering force, however uncomfortable that may make our political or academic colleagues who might prefer to respond with semantics exercises or further retreat into their cloistered halls.

Goal: Arming Future Generations with Advanced Solutions

International collaborative engagement of public research universities in global issues is now imperative if we are ever to arrest any of the threats to nearly every field that sustains life on our planet: water quality, air quality, food production, sanitation, climate and environment, health and nutrition, disaster prevention and relief, land and sea wildlife preservation, energy resources and consumption, economic stability, international security, and more.

The contributions we can make—that our nations are expecting us to make—touch every area of our mission:  teaching, research, and service.  As many of the thought-provoking responses to Professor Thrift’s question noted, our paramount responsibility is preparing students to serve in the quest for solutions, whether as future development practitioners, as researchers, or simply as ethical, informed global citizens who care and support those on the front lines of humanitarian and scientific efforts.

Student and faculty exchanges, study abroad, international student recruiting, rescuing oppressed and threatened scholars, and advancing current curriculum offerings with creative new interdisciplinary global studies programs and program components—the human knowledge side of this equation—is indeed very important, primarily for the long run.  It is the upcoming generation that will have to face the accelerating consequences of the threats attracting our attention now.  All universities’ first organizational-ethical dilemma is to organize optimally to prepare learners to lead optimally effective initiatives in every challenged field worldwide.  Their lives and the lives of generations ahead depend on it.

But what will they have in their arsenal to strengthen what Professor Thrift calls their “war footing” if we don’t envision, fund, and facilitate—not only research, but the often more expensive push into development and application of scientific and technological discoveries into practical, effective solutions.  These are what workers on the front lines in future generations will need to arrest damage, repair and prevent future damage, and improve and sustain universal quality of life on our planet.

Which returns me to the importance of creating a new social contract around research that recognizes that we face a universal imperative for cross border research collaboration that challenges all nation-states to step up with their public and private universities, not just in North America, but around the world.

We need to get creative and follow the lead of many of our individual academic researchers, who are now collaborating across geographic and discipline boundaries to concentrate the best minds, research facilities, and joint initiatives on the big issues threatening global survival.

As Dr. Peter Stearns fears in his response, creation of this new social contract and ways to fund research and development yet to be done will “entail substantial investment.” That’s why we and our nation-states must collaborate to fund large, complex research programs that address the most threatening problems, where the global community must find solutions fast, and use of those solutions must span all borders.

At the University of Alberta, our founding promise of “uplifting the whole people” guides us in our ethical commitment to forge ahead toward our vision of a world of expedited interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, international research.  We have lit a fire under our former structural inertia and, over the past few years, have been trying some new things I would like to share.

So I return to Professor Thrift’s original questions:  “Are universities optimally organized to address the fundamental ‘global challenges’ that exist, and at the pace these challenges deserve to be addressed?  If not, what should be done about this organizational-ethical dilemma?”

The answer is “no,” but here are some examples of what we believe is moving The University of Alberta in the right direction.

Helmholtz Alberta Initiative

In September 2009, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers and the University of Alberta established a five-year agreement creating the Helmholtz Alberta Initiative to combine their scientific research capabilities in tackling the environmental issues facing Alberta’s oilsands.

This initiative was the result of years of diplomatic and information sharing between University of Alberta leaders and academic researchers and their counterparts in Germany, the German government, German research universities, and German research centers.  From these years of conversations, common goals were identified, possibilities were defined, alignments were explored, and eventually graduate student and faculty exchanges, joint research projects, and collaborations with industry, both in Canada and Germany, were established and the initiative is well under way.

In fact, it is already expanding beyond the technological and environmental issues facing oilsands development—which  are also concerns for coal operations in both Alberta and Germany—to  include health sciences research initiatives.

As part of this partnership, in addition to the resources invested in the initiative by the University of Alberta and the Helmholtz Association, the Alberta government invested $25 million, which came from the Canadian federal government’s ecoTrust program.

This example demonstrates both the sophistication of effort, involving many levels of conversation from researchers to university leaders to heads of nation-states and the time required—years of delicate deliberations—to put together such a collaboration.  But it also demonstrates it can be done.

Li Ka Shing Institute for Virology

In addition to collaboration of nation-states, we have looked to international foundations and philanthropists to be partners in helping us fund research of international importance to our university, their mission, and the world.

In February 2010, the Li Ka Shing Canada Foundation gave us $28 million, the largest cash donation in our history, to establish the Li Ka Shing Institution of Virology. The power of this gift was amplified by $52.5 million in related funding from the Government of Alberta to help University of Alberta researchers in their quest to treat, cure, and prevent virus-based diseases worldwide.

Part of the foundation’s donation will extend the university’s connections to Shantou University Medical College, with the launch of the Sino-Canadian Exchange Program—a joint PhD program between the two medical schools.  With the creation of the institute, the University of Alberta joins the East West Alliance, a portal into a global network of medical research institutions including Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley, Oxford and Cambridge universities in the United Kingdom, and the Institut Pasteur in France, among others.

Like the Helmholtz Alberta Initiative, the funding, partnerships, aligning of objectives and resources, and establishment of inter-organizational trust (another dimension of the organizational-ethical dilemma) took years, involving many levels of conversation.  But again, it demonstrates that interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, internationally organized and funded collaborations can be done when a university establishes its international vision, communicates it well, and dedicates the institution’s will to achieving it.

Eight Considerations toward “Optimally Organizing” for Results

I present these examples, not as a model or fait accompli but rather as an insight into a process the University of Alberta took to identify the infrastructure that we needed and put it to the test.  We began by defining a vision of what we thought might be done to build on decades of less formal relationships established between our nation-state, our administrative leaders, and our faculty leaders and credible representatives of the two countries:  Germany and China.

Once we were in agreement on our vision, we then asked: “ How will we get there?”  Like many large universities, our “international” emphasis to date had been primarily on recruiting students and faculty, both here and abroad, for undergraduate and graduate studies, research fellowships, faculty exchanges, and study abroad.

In all, we identified eight considerations that we had to address in order to move toward more optimal organization for reaching our goals.  Again, I don’t propose that University of Alberta has created the model.  However, I think it’s important for any university that wants to help shape the new social contract internationally to begin with these considerations, identify others that might apply  as well to its institution, and craft the specific vision and organization it needs for its international research collaborations to succeed.

1. Prioritize and focus: it’s the quality and purposefulness, not quantity of international partnerships that counts and yields results.  Your institution can’t be everywhere and everything to everybody, internally and externally, although it is tempting to try.
2. Sharpen your in-house international expertise and align it to your vision and execution/cultivation objectives.  You rarely can reassign international student recruiters to be researchers, organizers, and ambassadors in establishing these relationships.  It takes international relationship pros with contacts and experience collaborating with your subject area specialists to advance substantive, productive initiatives.
3. Demand top executive engagement and ambassadorship in the cultivation and formation of relationships.  The top people in international institutions want to meet, know, and negotiate with the top people from your institution.
4. Develop your nation-state’s engagement and support. Without that, your ability to command attention and negotiate international funding is severely limited.
5. Recognize that tapping into nation-state partnership funding or international philanthropic sources requires demonstrating mastery of diplomacy as much—perhaps even more—than demonstrating mastery of academic collaboration. Make sure your staff can prepare your ambassadors with statements of purpose, backgrounders, talking points, and protocols specific to every encounter.
6. Develop or acquire skills in international negotiation for individual audiences, nation-states, and academic disciplines at all levels of discussion between your institution and your potential international partners.
7. Organize internally to engage, communicate, and exchange information on your initiatives to your university community, focusing on communicating your leadership’s focus on few partnerships well done, so your international initiatives do not appear to be “gad flying” to academics, students, and others in your university and community.
8. Persist in maintaining, advancing, and sustaining relationships with prospective international partners with whom you see potential for a mutually beneficial relationship.  Remember, international university partnerships and funding are sought by many institutions worldwide, large and small. Your institution, objectives, and investment in forming any relationship can easily fall off the table if you don’t persist in keeping it front and center until—and after—it delivers your desired result.

Indira V. Samarasekera

Measuring the economic value of Canada’s international education “industry”

Yesterday, Canada unveiled a report assessing the economic contributions that international students make to the country. Entitled Economic Impact of International Education in Canada, the report was presented by Stockwell Day, the Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, at a meeting of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).

Highlights from the report include the following:

• In 2008, international students to Canada contributed $6.5 billion (CAD) to the national economy, provided 83,000 jobs, and contributed $291 million (CAD) in government revenue
• This estimate is based on tuition fee payments, accommodation costs, and discretionary spending for international students from the K-12 to post-secondary levels
• While all provinces receive incoming students and report financial gain, Ontario and Quebec receive the lion’s share, with nearly two-thirds of all international students coming to Canada going to these two provinces
• Nearly 40% of all revenue comes from the top two source countries: China and South Korea
• The total value of international education is higher than the value of national exports in coniferous lumber ($5.1 billion) and coal ($6.07 billion)

Three other entries have recently been made on this blog on similar research conducted in different national contexts: Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. That Canada has joined these countries in the calculative process of determining the economic value of international education is significant for a few reasons.

First, while the state has multiple rationales underlying its promotion of international student mobility – ranging from international diplomatic and academic exchange ideals, to generating both short and long-term as well as direct and indirect economic benefits – the public discourse in Canada has hitherto tended to emphasize education as a (largely) publically-funded sector. In commissioning a report that emphasizes the economic contributions of international students, and the relative economic contribution of education services (e.g., see Table 15 from the report below), the Government of Canada seems to be showing a growing willingness to frame international education as an emerging export industry.

Second, education is a provincial responsibility in Canada, so policies and initiatives have tended to be decentralized. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s (DFAIT) interest in developing a national agenda for international education has been manifest in the past few years, most clearly evidenced with the launch of the “Education in-au Canada” branding campaign last year. In commissioning a report that quantifies the overall export industry’s value, one can assume that this report serves in part to support the continued inclusion of education as a component of DFAIT’s Global Commerce Strategy. Moreover, the report prominently displays the financial contributions that international students make to provincial government revenues, a distinction that I have not seen made in other reports. One can further speculate that this inclusion is due to continued debates within and between various levels of government on the value of supporting the expansion of international education. (It should be noted that the report also says the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia had previously conducted similar research on their own.)

Lastly, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the report was commissioned by DFAIT but prepared by Roslyn Kunin & Associates, Inc., a private consultancy firm. As GlobalHigherEd has noted in previous entries on this topic (e.g., on New Zealand), other jurisdictions have adopted similar arrangements, but this still raises questions about private firms acting as knowledge brokers for the state, producing reports that can act both as analytical devices and lobbying tools. Given that each of the national reports reviewed on GlobalHigherEd are drawn from very different data sources and based on different modeling techniques, it also raises questions about the international comparability of such figures, and their potential role in benchmarking a country’s position vis-à-vis “competitor states” in the global international education market. For example, Canada’s report (that was produced from secondary data sources) cites annual contributions as $6.1 billion (CAD), whereas the US returns (as noted in a previous entry) are calculated to be $15.5 billion/yr (USD). Considering that some estimates put the United States as receiving 22.8% of all internationally mobile students, while Canada receives just 3%, there are clearly different data, assumptions, and perhaps intentions, underlining these reports.

Kate Geddie

Editor’s update: link here for the press release of the newest US report (‘International Students Contribute $17.6 Billion to U.S. Economy‘) which was released by NAFSA on 16 November 2009. The report was produced by Jason Baumgartner who wrote a 13 May 2009 entry (‘Economic benefits of international education to the United States‘) in GlobalHigherEd.

Roger Martin via The Walrus: Who Killed Canada’s Education Advantage? A forensic investigation into the disappearance of public education investment in Canada

Source: Martin, R. (2009) ‘Who Killed Canada’s Education Advantage? A forensic investigation into the disappearance of public education investment in Canada‘, The Walrus, 20 October.

Editor’s note: Link to the title above for the full article. Roger Martin is Dean, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. The Walrus is a Canadian news magazine.

Canadian universities strive for differentiation and elite (global) standing

I’ve just returned from Vancouver (pictured to the right), and my visit included a pleasant day at the University of British Columbia (UBC), my BA and MA alma mater.  UBC is perched on the edge of Canada, and the Pacific Ocean.  While it has always been a strong university, it is now striving to become a “world class” university, it seeks to position itself high within the two main global rankings, and it is currently fashioning a more strategic and effective approach for “international engagement and global influence”.

UBC’s ambition is to create a one of the world’s leading research universities; one “producing discoveries and innovations that advance human understanding and that make our world a better place” while acting as a “magnet for talent, helping to retain our most gifted students here in BC, and attracting bright and ambitious young people from across Canada and around the world”, while also functioning as a “connector — linking new ideas and best practices into our local communities, and bridging Vancouver and the Okanagan to global networks of innovation” (in the 2008 words of Stephen Toope, UBC’s President).

But how does one West Coast university, embedded in a provincially governed higher education system (national research funding, nonwithstanding), ramp up its game?  In the Canadian context, it comes down to convincing the state to enable universities to become more innovative, more competitive, yet while always receiving significant levels of state support, especially financial largesse.  Unlike the UK case (see ‘Privatise elite universities, says top VC‘, The Guardian, 1 June 2009), Canadian universities like UBC are seeking more state support, though in this case via an enhanced national presence in higher education.

Yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education captured this sentiment with considerable insight.  The article (‘Canada’s Elite Universities Propose a National Strategy for Higher Education‘, 17 August 2009) put it this way:

Canadians have long held an egalitarian view toward their universities, generally agreeing that none should be treated as more special than any other.

But now the presidents of five of the country’s largest research institutions—the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, Montreal, and Toronto, and McGill University—are banding together to suggest that perhaps some Canadian universities should be, to use a famous phrase, more equal than others.

Canada needs not only to improve its higher-education system as a whole, they say, but also to pay special attention to institutions like theirs. Their argument, essentially, is that if the country hopes to raise the international standing of its universities, then their group must be allowed to focus on graduate education and high-quality research.

“The Canadian way has been to open the peanut-butter jar and spread thinly and evenly,” says David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto, the largest institution in Canada.

“We’re not talking about having a system of first- and second-class schools,” he adds. “We need more liberal-arts universities, we need more polytechnics, and, of course, smaller universities will continue to do the research they’re doing.”

The idea, he says, is to develop a focused strategy that plays to each university’s strengths: what the five call a “differentiation” model for higher education—a model, they say, that would be adequately financed as well. (my emphasis)

The Chronicle article is well worth a read, and it matches the tenor of speeches given by many of these “elite” university leaders over the last several years.  Yet, despite my UBC roots, I can’t but help flag a few noteworthy challenges.

First, is differentiation best scaled at the university (institutional) scale?  What is the logic for excluding or devalorizing the disciplinary/field scale, or the city-region scale, or the research network scale?  Universities like Waterloo, for example, have some units with considerably more research capacity than in any of the five self-identified elite universities. In short, more effort needs to be made to demonstrate that the university scale is the right scale for differentiation, assuming you believe this is indeed an objective worth supporting.

Second, and I speak here as an advocate of statecraft, is it realistic to expect a national Canadian higher education strategy to truly emerge.  There are multiple ironies (like Alberta – Canada’s Texas or Montana – advocating a stronger federal role in any sector!), and some blinkered thinking going on.  Look at the challenges of crafting a national higher education brand (‘Canada’s new branding effort: “Education in/au Canada”’, GlobalHigherEd, 3 October 2008).  In my biased view the aesthetically challenged branding effort expresses the problems of achieving action on a national scale in Canada in some sectors. Might not more effort be focused upon engendering new forms of provincial and local scale statecraft; statecraft associated with genuine innovations in policy-making, program development, and project framing/implementation? One could argue that the City of Edmonton, or the Province of Alberta, could do more for the University of Alberta than could Ottawa, for example.

Finally, what are the pros and cons of encouraging more dependence upon the national government?  Besides Madison in the USA, I’ve also been based in Singapore, France and the UK, and dependence upon a national government is a double-edged sword.  University missions would have to increasingly reflect national priorities, and university leaders (not to mention faculty) would have to accept reduced power, less autonomy, more hierarchy, all the while coping with temporal shifts in priorities come national electoral cycles.  Yet, as the Chronicle notes:

More broadly, the five are calling for a national higher-education strategy. While they have shied away from asking for the creation of an education ministry, they argue that without federal coordination of resources, along with a clear vision for the future of Canadian universities, the system will fail to raise its stature internationally.

Given what I know about my motherland, and what I have experienced in much stronger national systems, I seriously doubt that Canadian universities would be willing to accept what comes with greater “federal coordination of resources” and a “clear vision”.  I don’t doubt that university leaders like UBC’s Stephen Toope, or Alberta’s Indira Samarasekera have legitimate claims (and gripes), but they should be cautious regarding what they seek: their objectives might come to light, and enhanced dependence mixed with unhappiness with the direction of the national vision is not an ideal outcome. And what national government is going to craft a strategy, and hand over more monies, without a greater role in governing universities? This is a Pandora’s box if there ever was one.

This is a debate worth watching as all universities – including those in Canada – seek new ways to achieve and legitimize their increasingly “global” objectives. Canada’s elites seek more state action (and defacto dependence) while some of their equivalents in the UK seek to privatize to reduce dependence on the state, and all with the same end objective (elite global standing) in mind!

Kris Olds

Collaborating to create a global brand for Canada’s higher education system(s)

Note: our thanks to Jean-Philippe Tachdjian, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT), Government of Canada, for permission to post his slideshow here. CMEC is the acronym for the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. Kate Geddie’s earlier entry (‘Canada’s new branding effort: “Education in/au Canada”’), along with one by Nick Lewis on New Zealand (‘“New Zealand Educated”: rebranding New Zealand to attract foreign students‘) are worth reading in association with this slideshow.

New report on Canada’s R&D landscape

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada just released a detailed report titled Momentum: The 2008 report on university research and knowledge mobilization.

I will paste in the full press release below, and one of us is likely to return to select aspects of the report over the next few weeks. It is abundantly clear that Canada is framing university-related R&D at a global scale, albeit with an eye on select countries and regions. Pages 91-102 are particularly focused on international collaboration with respect to patterns, mechanisms, challenges, and opportunities. Concern with international competition is suffused throughout the report.

The additional point that stands out is the relative significance of universities as drivers of R&D as compared to the private sector, the federal and provincial levels of government, and the non-profit sector. See these two graphics from the report:

A cursory review of the report, and any knowledge of Canada, will also lead to the question of the geographical concentration of said R&D within this large and diverse country. No prizes for correct answers to the question of what is happening where, though the why and what to do about it of structural change in Canada’s geographies of R&D clearly needs some more attention.

Here is the press release:

Media release

AUCC report shows universities are major contributors to Canada’s economy and quality of life

Ottawa, October 21, 2008 — The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada has launched a report on the state of Canadian research and development (R&D), with a particular emphasis on university research, at an event that included partners from government, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector.

The report, entitled Momentum: The 2008 report on university research and knowledge mobilization, shows universities are major players in R&D in Canada, performing more than one-third of the country’s research and contributing at least $60 billion to the economy in 2007. However, analysts agree that the world competition for talent, knowledge and innovation is fierce and Canada cannot be complacent with its accomplishments.

“The rest of the world is not standing still and the global race for research talent is becoming more and more intense,” says AUCC chair Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University. “We expect this report to stimulate public debate on the required level and mix of support for university research in Canada.”

“This is a time when we cannot afford to cut back on public investment, but should instead see the potential for stimulating economic growth at the local and the national level by investing in people and knowledge. Having a highly skilled labour force is undeniably a major asset for any country,” notes AUCC president and CEO Claire Morris. “In these uncertain economic times, Canada must continue to improve its innovative capacity to ensure long-term prosperity,” she adds.

Momentum 2008 focuses on the importance of partnerships in university research and looks at the variety of forms collaboration takes – from university partnerships with private companies to research projects with governments, communities, the not-for-profit sector and international partners. It provides a comprehensive account of Canadian R&D, particularly the activities of the university sector and the resulting progress achieved. It also presents detailed research and analysis of national and international trends that will drive changes in university research and the Canadian R&D landscape in the future.

Momentum 2008 documents the wide range of benefits to Canadians such as new products, services, processes, policies and new ways of understanding society.

This is the second edition of Momentum produced by AUCC. The first was produced in 2005 as a way of providing information to decision makers and policy-makers about the benefits from investments made in university research.

The Momentum report is available online. Download the report.

– 30 –

For more information please contact:

Leslie Cole, Communications Officer,
AUCC, 613 563 3961 x 330

Kris Olds

Canada’s new branding effort: “Education in/au Canada”

An international “brand” for Canadian education was recently launched, marking the latest national government’s effort to gain market share in the global education sector. Similar in motivation to recent campaigns developed by other countries such as the Netherlands, Malaysia and New Zealand, Canada’s new brand represents one pillar of the federal government’s strategy to recruit greater numbers of international students to Canadian institutions and to promote Canadian education overseas in the increasingly competitive international education marketplace.

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), there were over 156,000 international students in Canada in 2007, which translates to roughly 5% of total foreign student numbers (see the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2008 for up-to-date comparative data). In comparison, the US, UK and Australia together receive 45% of all global flows.

Canada’s new logo (pictured to the left) is a jaunty red maple leaf with the bilingual caption “IMAGINE: Education in/au Canada.” According to the CMEC, it is intended to complement existing provincial and institutional efforts by establishing a more easily recognizable national umbrella image, particularly for use in recruitment fairs and exhibitions. Unlike many countries focusing on the university-level market, Canada’s new logo is intended to be used by all levels of education, from primary through to further and higher education.

The fact that Canada has pursued an education brand is noteworthy as it signals a new, perhaps unprecedented, form of collaboration across the different levels of government in relation to international education. As Glen Jones explained in another GlobalHigherEd entry, education remains an issue of provincial and territorial jurisdiction in Canada, meaning that international education policies have generally remained decentralized and uncoordinated. This new brand, however, was developed through collaboration by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s (DFAIT) Edu-Canada Initiative, the provincial and territorial ministries of education and the CMEC, as well as several stakeholder and sectoral representatives. And while provincial responsibility for education is not at question, this multi-scalar and multi-sectoral initiative represents a new structural response to concerns of competitiveness in the international education industry and for the potential labour force gains that foreign students who choose to remain in Canada, post-graduation, represent.

Kate Geddie

OECD’s Education at a Glance 2008: a ‘problem/solution toolkit’ with problems?

Last week, or to be precise – on the 9th September at 11.00 Paris time, the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD), launched its ‘annual snapshot’ of the sector, Education at a Glance 2008. Within hours, the wheels of the media industry around the globe were pouring out stories of shame, fame, defeat and victory, whilst politicians in their respective countries were galvanized into action – either defending their own decisions or blaming a previous regime.

As previous entries in GlobalHigherEd (see here and here and here, as examples) argue, global indicators increasingly matter, not because they are always able to tell us much that is useful, but they work as a powerful disciplinary tool on nations. This, in turn, provides the issuing agent, in this case the OECD – ostensibly a ‘collective learning machinery’ – with an important mechanism for influencing the form and scope of education policies and programs around the globe. This is the tangible stuff of globalization – but this problem/solution toolkit is not without its own epistemological problems. Let’s take a look at two countries reported on this week – which headlined the OECD’s Report in the following way.

In the UK, the BBC and the Telegraph focused on the graduate league table, and the fact that the UK has not fared particularly well. The evidence? In 2000, the UK ranked 4th in the world in the number of school-leavers going to university. By 2006, this had plummeted to 12th.

Graeme Paton of the Telegraph reported on an interview with Andreas Schliecher, the OECD’s architect of Education at a Glance. According to Dr. Schliecher, the UK has major problems in producing school leavers with sufficient quality of credentials, whilst other countries have managed to sort out these problems and were already in the fast lane, leaving the UK behind.

Ministers canvassed by the Telegraph, however, insist that they were tackling the shortfall by encouraging more pupils to go to university and by pointing out the OECD good news story for the UK, that university graduates in the UK aged 25-64 earned 59 per cent more than other people – well above the national average.

In Canada, the influential Macleans magazine reported that in the OECD Education at a Glance comparisons, Canada was one of the few countries with the highest percentage of its population having completed post-secondary education. However, we are also given another statistic, and that is that the earnings advantage gained from completing post-secondary education in Canada had decreased in recent years and was quite low compared to other OECD countries. This is reflected in the lower average private rate-of-return on investment in post-secondary education relative to other nations in the OECD.

Let’s dwell, and not just ‘glance’, at these figures for a moment, and ask what is being reported here by the OECD:

• competitive economies need a more highly educated workplace to perform more demanding work;
• all countries need to encourage their young people to go to university and complete a degree; and
• the incentives for this expenditure (which is increasingly being paid by families) are that there will be a higher rate-of-return to the student than if the student had not gone to university.

However, as we can see from our example above, countries with high levels of graduation (which the OECD says is good) report increasingly lower returns to graduates (ah…and is this not bad?).

Now, this is where the underlying human capital/homo-economicus rationale underpinning the OECD’s Education at a Glance begins to falter – for it cannot explain why it is that following the OECD’s prescriptions – of a high level of enrolment in higher education – reduces the overall earnings to the individual rather than increasing it.

While not one that is acknowledged in the repertoire of the OECD’s ‘problem/solution toolkit’ approach, this is where a sociological analysis is particularly helpful. As sociologists of education (see Phil Brown and Simon Marginson) have shown using Fred Hirsch’s insights on ‘positional goods’ tied to social status in his book The Social Limits to Growth, an advantage will only have economic value when no-one else has it. That is, its value depends on its scarcity. In other words, if we all have a graduate degree, then its value is diminished in the marketplace compared with when only half of us have one. This is part of the dynamic, for example, underlying degree inflation.

There’s also another issue, and this is the assumption that jobs in the ‘new knowledge economy’ will require us all to have graduate qualifications. However, the Confederation of British Industries (reported in the UK Guardian newspaper on the 17th Sept), disagrees, arguing that universities were producing far too many graduates leaving more than a million people in jobs for which they were overqualified. They argue that there are currently 10.1 million graduates in the UK, but only 9 million graduate jobs.

The deeper, and more tricky, question for policymakers now becomes: do we encourage everyone to hop onto the same credential treadmill with fewer and fewer returns and potentially higher levels of indebtedness? To be sure, there are important outcomes for individuals of a university education. However this experience is becoming more and more expensive, and the promised lifetime earnings are likely to be less and less. And who will shoulder the cost? Families? Employers? The State? And, how might the state and interrnational organizations, like the OECD, legitimate more and more credential inflation when the current ‘knowledge economy’ discourse is showing it to be somewhat hollow?

Or, ought we not think through what a range of trajectories might be that distributes talent/skills/training and investments over a wider portfolio of education/training/career options than is currently being presented to us?

Susan Robertson