When I grow up, I want to be a university

There is a saying heard around Canadian campuses: Every college wants to be a university. Every university wants to be the University of Toronto. And the University of Toronto wants to be Harvard.

It’s a thought worth keeping in mind as students in Waterloo Region and around the province deal with current the strike by college faculty.

There is a distinct food chain among post-secondary institutions. And every school seems to be constantly striving to improve their standing.

We can see this locally with the panoply of degree programs now offered at Conestoga College, as well as the constant expansions of our two universities. Sheridan College, on the outskirts of Toronto, plans to turn itself into a university by 2020.

Everyone wants to get bigger and move up the ladder. There’s nothing wrong with ambition, of course. But not everyone can — or should ? be top dog. Each part of the chain needs to appreciate the importance of its own unique role.

Usually this upward striving is driven by school administrators seeking to increase the prestige of their institution, as well as to latch on to more government grants.

What’s significant about the current provincewide strike, is how it involves the same prestige-seeking efforts, but this time driven by the union representing college faculty.

Aside from the usual wage demands, most of the union’s objectives involve a dramatic change in how colleges operate.

The initial demand from the union called for the creation of college senates, modelled after the university senate system. Such a change in governance structure would essentially put faculty in charge of many of the important educational issues facing colleges, making them much more like universities. And much less nimble in responding to changing situations. Additionally, the union wants to boost the number of full-time faculty by cutting back on part-time instructors. Again the intent is to make colleges look more like universities by turning the teaching cadre into full-time professionals at a distance from the work-a-day world.

While the union dropped its senate demand as part of its most recent final offer, this should not be interpreted as a retreat. The union now intends to pursue this objective by aggressively lobbying the provincial government, rather than trying to get college administrators to agree through negotiation. And, of course, the demand for a greater percentage of full-time faculty remains.

All this poses a existential threat to the current business model and educational role of colleges. There is no benefit to students or society at large in making colleges more like universities.

According to a consultant report released earlier this year, the existing mix of full and part time staff at colleges is crucial to maintaining the advantages of a college education.

“The engagement of part-time teachers enhances the ability of colleges to provide students with current, relevant, hands-on knowledge directly from those still working in the industry,” the PricewaterhouseCoopers report observes.

This connection between students and teachers currently working in the field is one of key components of the unique college educational experience, distinct from universities.

Replace them with full-time professors and you will lose the immediacy of a college education. The addition of more pricey full-time teachers will also drive up costs at the colleges, making their finances more like universities as well.

Surely the benefit of having a diversity of educational opportunities is to ensure as many students as possible can be accommodated. Not every high school graduate is destined for university, so why would we want to turn all our colleges into universities?

There is ample evidence that Canada is already well-served by its existing postsecondary system. Perhaps overly so.

Among Canadians 25 to 34 year olds, 61 per cent have some form of higher education, according to recent research from the OECD. This is the second highest in the world, trailing only South Korea.

Note also that many Ontario universities are starting to feel the effect of a demographic shift in university applications. Laurentian, Nipissing and Algoma universities, for example, have seen doubledigit declines in recent years. If anything, the evidence suggests we need fewer university spots, not more.

In 2015, Ken Coates, former University of Waterloo Dean of Arts, prepared the report “Career Ready” for the Canadian Council of Chief Executives on problems facing the Canadian job market and how the postsecondary school system could be improved to resolve these issues.

Coates’ most memorable observation was that Canada likely has too many students in university, and not enough students in college.

“Canada could dramatically improve the quality of university education by cutting enrolment by as much as 25 to 30 per cent,” he wrote. Rather than forcing everyone into Ivory Tower classrooms, Coates argued for greater attention on applied skills and a tighter connection between the job market and post-secondary education — the precise attributes currently provided by the college system.

If we want to make the school experience relevant for everyone, we need to maintain the broad diversity of post-secondary opportunities across all students.

Colleges ought to concentrate on staying job-focused, nimble and tightly connected to the real world. They shouldn’t turn themselves into universities.