Confessions of a recovering dean
In 2015 I stepped down after a five- year term as dean of arts at Wilfrid Laurier University. For the most part, I enjoyed being dean; you can actually get some things done that benefit students.
Now, however, having returned to the faculty rankand- file, and with my blood pressure having returned to normal, seems a good time to reflect on some issues relating to university selfgovernance typically overlooked when discussing the challenges facing Ontario universities and yet which may be of interest to the taxpaying public.
Some background: about 10 years ago, Laurier decided to move from being an “undergraduate” university to a “comprehensive” university’ ( the formal switchover in the Maclean’s survey occurred in 2011). This meant, among other things, a proliferation of graduate programs and other vanity projects designed to raise Laurier’s research profile, along with the associated costs. Such costs included ( and include) infrastructure expenses ( buildings and equipment cost money!); t he megabuck salaries needed to attract research stars who teach few if any undergraduate s t udents ( and who, being tenured, effectively have a job for life in most cases); and the sunshine-list salaries associated with a seemingly endless supply of newly- minted administrators.
The problem: This expensive shift occurred in the context of an entirely predictable decline in undergraduate enrolment in arts programs. Since provincial funding is driven by undergraduate enrolment, that was not good.
Now, there are l ots of ways to respond to budgetary shortfalls caused by declining enrolments but one is simply to lower the minimum entering average ( MEA) for i ncoming students in order to bring in more bodies.
In fact, the MEAs in Laurier’s different arts faculties has been in the low 70s for at least the last seven or eight years.
Two things to note here. First, entering averages are calculated by averaging a student’s best six high school grades. Think: How well is a high school student doing if the average of their BEST six grades is in the low 70s? Second, high school grades are the best single predictor of university grades.
Taken together, it seems obvious that simply dropping MEAs to the low 70s runs the risk of bringing a large number of students into a university who will at the very least struggle mightily to succeed.
Does the province really allow universities to chase after provincial dollars simply by lowering MEAs? Well, yes. True, I don’t know of any “comprehensive” university that has let the bottom fall out of its MEAs as much as Laurier, but the incentive is there.
By comparison, for instance, I’m told that the University of Waterloo, a comprehensive university just down the street, maintains an MEA of 80 per cent for its arts programs.
So what’s happened? Have students admitted with low MEAs graduated at rates comparable to students admitted with higher averages? Hard to know, since it appears that no one has thought to run that report (I’ve asked!)
True, for the past two years, Laurier has ( finally) provided low MEA students with a program that provides special supports. Has it been successful? Unfortunately, I’ve seen the data for 2015-16, and I don’t think so. Just over 30 per cent of the students in that program had either left the university or were on academic probation at the end of their first year.
Another 20 per cent of the total only barely avoided academic probation — and they still have three more years to go before graduation.
I’ ve focused on Laurier because I’m truly saddened by the path taken by what was previously a top- rated undergraduate university in the pursuit of what, in my opinion, is a financially unsustainable vision of becoming an ersatz University of Waterloo.
But there is also a more general point to be made: Universities will always be tempted to follow the financial incentives and if the funding formula privileges simple numbers, and if a university can bring in those numbers simply by l owering i ts MEAs, then some will do just that.
There are some obvious solutions. Making provincial funding dependent on measures of student success, like retention rates and graduation rates, would be a start. There’s been talk about doing this for years, but it’s still just that, talk — and in any event, would not solve the problems associated with the dramatic decline in arts enrolments at universities like Laurier.
In the end the provincial government needs to show some firm l eadership by making sure that universities which chase after provincial funding by setting low MEAs provide reasonable supports to the students admitted — and then monitor things to make sure that if such supports don’t work, MEAs are set high enough to ensure that students admitted to university have a reasonable shot at graduation. It’s only fair.
THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO SHOW SOME FIRM LEADERSHIP. — CARROLL