Research is King

April 25, 2008

Alex Usher, Vice President, Educational Policy Institute

A minor talking point up in Canada this week is the fact that British Columbia got three new universities this week: University of the Fraser Valley, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and Vancouver Island University. Except that it didn't; the former University College of the Fraser Valley, Kwantlen University College, and Malaspina University College are still the same old places, and in practical terms, few students will have noticed the difference between this week and next.

Over forty years ago, BC made a conscious decision to go big on 2-year colleges and stick to just three 4-year colleges (the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University). The concession was that these 2-year institutions would be tightly-integrated with the 4-years from a curriculum point of view, so that laddering between the two was easy.

Twenty years ago, the thinking changed somewhat. The North was given a university (the prosaically-named University of Northern British Columbia), and a number of 2-year institutions were permitted to start giving 4 years of instruction, but with the proviso that one of the "real" universities certified the degree. Thus, “university colleges” (UCs) were born.

By the late-90s, there had been another set of changes: Royal Roads had been converted from a military teaching facility to a specialist degree-granting institution and UCs were allowed to grant their own degrees – but they were still refused permission to call themselves universities. The UCs themselves were almost pathetically eager to ditch the word “college” because of the inferior status it denoted. This persisted even after these institutions received recognition as universities from AUCC, Canada's quasi-accreditor (note to confused non-Canadians: we are one of the very, very few countries in the world without an accreditation system. Why? Because no one can agree who would run it. Yes, we're that petty.).

Why so much excitement over a name? In a word, academic vanity. Oh, sure, there were arguments made that alumni would benefit: some said that a 4-year degree from a university might be worth more in the local labour market than a 4-year degree from a “university college”. I suppose that's possible, but the evidence in favour isn't very good. Access to research funds? Well, the new designation will help a bit, but recognition from AUCC had already given staff members at some of these institutions (Malaspina and Fraser Valley) access to the various granting council funds. So what is it that is so bad about being a university college? Why is being a university so much better?

As Geoff Plant noted in his Campus 2020 report, it isn't that the University College model was so bad — it is that the University College brand failed. But why it failed is an interesting question. Did it fail with the public or did it fail within the academy?

There is some evidence that it failed publicly, I suppose. Certainly, if the New Brunswick experience with UNB St. John is anything to go by, people prefer to have a third-rank university than a first-rank college (which is essentially what the polytechnic proposal was), even though in practice it would still be teaching a lot of the same stuff. And yet, Canada is currently going through one of those intensely anti-academic moments, where virtually everyone in public life is praising colleges and their "practical skills" and denigrating universities and their "overly theoretical" curricula. There's certainly no brand failure from the public sector's perspective, anyway.

Perhaps the more important failure came from within the academy. Post-secondary education requires academics. The internal norms of the academic profession value research. Therefore people who teach at these institutions, which are basically teaching institutions, are not thought of particularly highly within their profession. To put it bluntly, they are considered low-prestige places; this grates with the academics who work there and impedes growth because the institutions can't hire the calibre of faculty that they would like. And so, for the past few years these institutions have been quite publicly campaigning (including online petitions and public transport ads) to get themselves called universities.

Now, neither Geoff Plant nor the government of BC is stupid. Both understand this dynamic very well. That is why at the same time that they are giving these institutions shiny new prestige-laden monikers, they are also being told in no uncertain terms that they are meant to be teaching focussed. On this basis, they expect to deflect criticisms that they are aiding and abetting "mission creep" at these institutions. Fat chance. Academics live in a world where prestige is the main currency of their existence (ironic, given how much people scream over prestige indicators in university rankings, isn't it?). The staff at these institutions will always want to do more research and have their institution be more research-intensive.

Have a good weekend.

The Educational Policy Institute is an international non-profit think tank dedicated to the study of educational opportunity. The Week in Review is a weekly publication that highlights the top news stories, reports and statistics related to academic preparation and access and success in the US, Canada, and beyond. The publication also features a commentary written by either President Watson Scott Swail, EdD or Vice-President Alex Usher.

To submit comments, news releases, or submissions, please email Dr. Watson Scott Swail at wswail@educationalpolicy.org or call (757) 430-2200.