Senators speak out on Tradition and Innovation


DANIEL McCABE | Quebec education minister François Legault hasn't yet issued his response to Tradition and Innovation, but McGill senators had an opportunity to express their feelings about the document last week.

Legault called on the province's universities to supply him with discussion papers outlining their academic priorities and their views on how Quebec's universities are funded. Tradition and Innovation represents McGill's response.

Legault will probably reply to the universities' papers sometime this month. The universities will be expected to answer and the process is supposed to fuel the minister's thinking as he tries to convince his government to reconsider the way it funds higher education.

In addressing Senate, Principal Bernard Shapiro noted that many in the McGill community view the entire back-and-forth exercise with Minister Legault with a jaded eye. They doubt it will amount to much in the end.

Shapiro admitted he has his own doubts about the process. By the time the universities issue their replies to Legault's response to their reports, the year will be almost over. The provincial budget will probably be tabled sometime early in 2000. Shapiro suspects that "the main parameters of the budget are already set. The longer this goes on, the less likely it is that [the process] will have an impact on the next budget."

Before opening Tradition and Innovation to comments from senators, Shapiro discussed some of the feedback he has already received about the document from the McGill community. "The comments I have received so far have been generally supportive, but with some very specific concerns."

One of the most frequently expressed complaints relates to the role of the social sciences and humanities at McGill. "Respondents felt that the stated commitment to the arts [in the report] was not reflected in actual proposals."

Shapiro says he has also heard criticisms that the document is too "vocationally oriented." He added that some felt that the important role played by McGill's library system was "under-emphasized" in the report. Many non-academic staff also believed that their contribution to the University, particularly during a period in which they have borne much of the brunt of downsizing, "was not adequately expressed."

Shapiro stated that "one of the most deeply felt, if not necessarily most received" complaints about Tradition and Innovation relates to the document's call for differential tuition fees -- students studying for high-earning professions such as dentistry or medicine would be asked to pay higher tuition fees.

Shapiro said that he himself had a criticism of the document he played a leading role in crafting. He thinks it doesn't pay enough attention to what he believes will be an "increased demand for access to universities" from the public at large, driven by demographics as well as by the increasing need for a more sophisticated workforce.

Political science professor Sam Noumoff said that the tone of the document troubled him at times. It points to the benefits of McGill's collaborations with the private sector, noted Noumoff. But he believes that universities also play an important role as social critics.

We might do business with, say, pharmaceutical firms to our mutual advantage, but we also have to stand ready to criticize those same drug companies if they behave in an unethical manner. Noumoff believes this aspect of McGill's mission was missing in the document.

Shapiro concurred. "It is worth making that point."

Microbiology and immunology professor Malcolm Baines wondered if Tradition and Innovation was intended to be a definitive planning document for the University or a lobbying device aimed at the government.

Shapiro responded that, for the moment, the target audience is clearly the government, but that he hoped the document would evolve into a planning tool for McGill's future.

"Two-sided sword"

Educational and counselling psychology professor Bruce Shore discussed the document's focus on McGill's role as an international university, describing it as "a two-sided sword."

While McGill itself clearly places a premium on this aspect of its character, off-campus opinion-makers in the press and the government have often been less enthused about McGill's international role.

There have been criticisms, for instance, that taxpayer dollars go towards the education of students who come from other countries and don't stay here. Shore worried that the document's emphasis on internationalization might backfire on McGill.

Shapiro noted that McGill's international involvements were intrinsic to the nature of the place. He added that this year, for the first time, more new McGill students arrived from outside the province than from inside Quebec. "That raises issues about the role of a university in the society in which it's embedded."

He doesn't believe McGill should duck the debate. Instead, it should argue for the benefits Quebec derives from having a university so active on the international scene -- from having McGill's Quebec students interact with counterparts from all over the world, for instance. "McGill plays a special role in Quebec. It's the only international game available."

Students' Society president Andrew Tischler said he was disappointed not to find much in the document that related to the quality of education McGill students receive. He pointed to McGill's less than satisfactory student to teacher ratio.

Shapiro responded sympathetically, noting that McGill had about 20 students for each teacher. The ratio at Ontario universities was 19 to one, while the Canadian average (not including Ontario) was about 16 to one.

Student senator Clara Péron, from the Faculty of Arts, believes that the document's portrayal of McGill "strays from what a university is traditionally about. Education was the goal." She worried that Tradition and Innovation portrayed McGill too much as "a job training place."

Dean of Law Peter Leuprecht echoed Péron's concerns, saying that it is vital that McGill makes it plain that it offers more in terms of education to its students -- a focus on thinking critically, for example -- than simply turning them into "labour product for the market."

Student senator Jeff Feiner proposed that one of the document's priorities for McGill ought to be mechanisms for supporting faculty who wish to improve their teaching.

Professor Alenoush Saroyan, from the Centre for University Teaching and Learning, a unit devoted to helping professors do just that, said she welcomed Feiner's comments.

She added that there is a budding international movement afoot for college and university teachers to receive some form of certification before they are allowed to teach.

Tuition talk

On the subject of differential tuition fees, student senator Anjali Mishra, from the Faculty of Engineering, argued against them. She said it was a mistake to assume that all medical or law graduates were on their way to lucrative careers. High tuition fees might dissuade students from becoming involved with such socially valuable, but poorly paid, activities as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Médecins sans Frontières.

By charging high tuition rates, McGill would turn off student applicants who aren't principally motivated by the prospect of big bucks. The result could be faculties filled with "money-grubbing fools," predicted Mishra.

Student senator Mathieu Bouchard, from the Faculty of Law, agreed. "What's important for McGill is that it maintains a diverse body of students." Higher tuition fees might convince many students interested in law not to apply to McGill, he argued. Those on a career path to big salaries in corporate law would continue to apply. Those interested in working for non-governmental organizations would not.

Shapiro said he agreed, to a point, with their concerns. But he added that students wouldn't receive a worthwhile education at all if "we don't produce the resources to sustain" the University.

Law professor Richard Janda argued that "the point was moot" since Legault has stated that tuition fees won't go up during the government's current mandate. As a result, Janda thinks the section on differential tuition fees ought to be deleted from Tradition and Innovation.

Justice for all

Janda also worried about the issue of "distributive justice around the University." If some faculties were able to profit from charging higher tuition fees than other faculties, it could create a university of haves and have-nots.

Shapiro responded that distributive justice was already a real cause for concern. "There are huge inequities in distributive justice" at McGill, Shapiro noted.

For instance, because faculty in certain disciplines are highly coveted by universities at the moment, "there are huge differences in faculty compensation. We pay some people with no experience more than we pay others with 30 years of experience."

Bill Stansfield, a student senator from the Faculty of Medicine, said that medical students would grudgingly accept the notion of differential tuition fees. "We are cognizant of the high cost of medical education." But Stansfield added that students would expect that the bulk of the extra fees would remain with their own faculty.

Students would also require a better loans and bursaries system to help them out -- he suggested a loan forgiveness program for students who do charity work.

Shapiro said he worried that, as different parts of the University mulled over approaches to revenue generation such as differential tuition fees, "they each want to increase the revenues for themselves." Taken to extremes, such a model "is a nightmare."

If there are schemes for generating new sources of money for some parts of the University, McGill has to strike a careful balance so that it doesn't result in gross inequities in the resources different units have at their disposal. Otherwise, it "will skew the way we spend money in a way that's inappropriate."

He noted that Harvard once tried an "everybody pays their own way" approach to funding, only to abandon it. "They couldn't support the core programs important to the university" with such a model. "We do have obligations to one another," Shapiro declared.

Noumoff said he was concerned about a recommendation in the document that the government supply tax breaks for alternative forms of donations to the University from corporations and other sources. Specifically, he worried about the prospect of firms "donating" staff to the University to bolster McGill's teaching ranks. He didn't want such outsiders to be in a position to hold any sway over curriculum decisions.

Biology professor Gregory Brown noted that the report called on the government to supply more funding support to graduate students. He wondered why it didn't make the same appeal on behalf of undergraduates.

Shapiro said McGill was certainly "not opposed" to undergraduates receiving more aid, but that the situation confronting graduate students was more acute (as older students, they don't usually receive the same kind of assistance from their parents, for one thing).

On the subject of financial support for graduate students, Shapiro continued, "Our competitive position, in terms of other universities, is so much poorer."

Dean of Science Alan Shaver congratulated Vice-Principal (Academic) Luc Vinet for the leading role he played in putting together the document, a role made all the more difficult by the fact that Vinet is still learning about McGill as a newcomer to the place.

Shaver added that Tradition and Innovation "has real vision." He said he has seen the documents that other universities have prepared for Legault and, in comparison to Tradition and Innovation, "they're quite mundane."