As I suggested several days ago now, I have wanted to return to various recent stories about higher education that have appeared in Canad and elsewhere recently and now I'm finally in a position to do so.
As some of you may have heard, times are tough. The economy is in the tank these days and (forgive me Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty) no one seems to know what to make of it. Into this muddle, however, recently waded the
Educational Policy Institute with a
report (.pdf) that attempts to look out beyond the recession we see in front of our faces to speculate what the impacts might be on higher education in Canada. Not surprisingly, authors Dunn and Usher aren't bathed in a warm glow of light when they peer into their crystal ball.
The gist of the report comes down to this (in my opinion): universities (in particular) and colleges are being squeezed by tanking revenues (e.g., endowments) and increasing expenses (salary and pension obligations), enrolments will continue to rise and it is forseeable that governments will squeeze the sector further when their balance sheets recover a bit and start looking to get rid of their deficits by cutting operating grants and student aid. According to Dunn/Usher there are a few ways to make everything a little easier over the next half decade. Among the ideas they put forward are:
- Help institutions restructure faculty salaries and pensions through pay outs to older staff.
- Don't constrain the ability of institutions to meet shifting demand with antequated enrolment formulas.
- Allow tuition increases of as much as 25%.
- Protect student aid programs that matter (targetted and need-based grants) and ditch the ones that don't (tax credits).
- "Fund brains, not buildings" - In other words, pay to make sure that our highest quality faculty and researchers remain in Canada.
- Use good measurements to understand the system and leave aside other things.
Coverage of the report was decidely mixed, but in many ways predictable. The
Globe barely managed an article with a pulse (and put it behind their pay wall).
Wells took the opportunity to make a classy argument picking up on Dunn/Usher's idea of "brains, not buildings" a regular new, welcome hobbyhorse of his. The
Star, naturally, acted hysterically about the tuition increase recommendation. Others reacted
even more hysterically (good for Ms. Mallick for getting one of those "old-fashioned M.A. in English literature from the University of Toronto" just like the other %1 of her age group). Usher chose the
Bill Rawls, "in your eye McNulty" routine,
in response to the responders.
Here's the thing - really, nothing that EPI wrote in this report is really all that controversial in the sober light of morning. Many of these things happened after the last recession (funding cuts, tuition hikes, stripping student aid of anything that didn't require repayment, etc.) and if the intent was to encourage everyone to keep an eye on the ball this time around then it was worthy of the doing. To be perfectly honest, I have a hard time figuring why EPI bothered to write this report at all, other than to annoy particular groups of people whose reactions were entirely predictable? In so far as Dunn/Usher really felt the need to write the report, however, it just stinks to me of a concerted effort to piss off the CFS and CAUT and send the Macleans On Campus blog comment boards into a frenzy. Mission accomplished.
However, the historical comparisons are the real problem and the real danger with this report because it does fall squarely into the realm of idle speculation based precisely on what happened "last time" and smart people aren't so sure this is like last time. Niall Ferguson, a smart person,
recently said, "You're going to end up assuming that this recession is going to end up like other recessions, and other recessions didn't last that long, so this one won't last so long. But of course...[t]his is something really quite different in character from anything we've ever experienced in the postwar era." This is what I'm getting at. Dunn/Usher assume, first, that they can know how this economic situation will end up, which is an assumption fraught with perile. Then they assume they can know a series of governmental, institutional and social reactions that are inherently unknowable. Then they issue a series of recommendations. And, all of it is based on what happened during and following the last major economic downturn 10-15 years ago. This just isn't that useful, which makes the extreme reactions all the more ridiculous.
On another note, I'd say that when the Minister responsible for the area your report addresses is
running fast in the opposite direction from it, it's just not good for business. It's not good for anybody.
