Some thoughts today about this article.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-leveraging-the-value-of-canadian-universities-is-key-to-our-economic/

I'm always curious about what people who don't work in postsecondary think about it. Stackhouse and Schrumm have put together a great primer on what the average Canadian think the postsecondary system is. 1/14

First, Stackhouse attended Queens, and has done some work with their board, I think we can assume he has a very good idea of how Queens works. Schrumm also did all of his schooling at Queens. So, we can assume this article is a pretty good representation of Queens 2/14

That being said, lets get to the assumptions.

1) Canada's position as a leader in international education is intentional.
That's... not really true. Oh, Canadian universities care deeply about international students and want to be a leader in international education... 3/14

but our position has more to do with the US flubbing the last decade of international education and that our postsecondary education quality is pretty stable between institutions. Also, the regions where international numbers have gone up the most... 4/14

tend to be in places where the institutions had to find new ways of funding the institution. So while most universities are excited about more international students, a (small) part of that is based on the higher tuition fees. 5/14

2) That most universities have a meaningfully similar undergrad program.
They don't. Oh, there are some similarities, and when students transfer between institutions the registrars office does everything they can to make the two programs line up. 6/14

In provinces with a robust transfer system (hi BC, the BCTS is amazing) this is built into the institutions that sometimes you'll have students who have the credit but it's not quite the same as if they went to that school. But it's still not perfect, or ready for this plan
7/14

I experienced it first hand many years ago when I applied for a program at [top university] and they told me I'd need to upgrade there before taking the post-degree program as they required classes that only they and one other PSI taught. It's OK, I went to UBC instead. 8/14

How different are the institutions in Canada? Well when considering an English degree, Queens has a fairly straightforward system where around half your classes are discipline specific and the other half are open electives. 9/14

MRU on the other hand has half the classes be discipline specific, 1/4 of them be specified general education/liberal arts classes, and 1/4 of them open electives.
10/14

Lets look at those first two years for English.
Queens:
2 Intro to Lit
2 History of Lit
3 Lit Interpretation

MRU:
1 Intro to lit
3 History of lit
1 Writing
2 Lit Interpretation

Those are similar but clearly distinct programs with different focuses. 11/14

And that's in one of the more homogeneous programs in Canada. Imagine the differences between Biology programs (trust me, they're substantial).
12/14

3) That Universities are under the purview of the federal government

This is an easy mistake to make, and it gets made a lot. Postsecondary education is firmly under the Provincial mandate. The level of intervention that they're calling for would get massive push-back. 13/14

So, the underlying concept would require a lot more alignment between universities than there currently is, and a lot more Federal oversight than there currently is. But that gives you an idea of what postsecondary looks like to those outside of it.

14/14