In a world that is increasingly embracing unabashed capitalism, multiple free trading blocs and technological innovation, it is becoming ever more evident that Canada’s ability to create knowledge and apply it usefully (and commercially) is the key to sustained socioeconomic progress. The obvious corollary is that developing our human capital will be critical, and that higher education must be front and centre in this effort.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the minimal level for productive entry into the workforce is now a college diploma, and for many occupations a bachelor’s degree is required. This is in stark contrast to the post-Second World War era when a high school diploma was adequate to allow the bulk of the population to enjoy successful careers and a decent quality of life. Although the creation of many new colleges and universities during this period contributed to a higher percentage of Canadians gaining access to post-secondary education, the demand continued to outstrip the supply of available seats. And this growth, combined with declining government per capita support, placed great limitations on the institutions’ ability to keep up with the rising expenditures needed to attract and nurture top faculty and refurbish and expand academic space for the modern age.<\/p>\n
Paradoxically, in the first decade of the 21 century, despite the general acceptance of the value of higher education, our institutions are operating in an environment that is more difficult than ever before. Not only must they be managed more efficiently and effectively, while constantly increasing enrolment, they must also cope with the accelerating pace of change, a given in today’s world.<\/p>\n
Although there are many challenges, the greatest is the pressure on operating budgets. It appears that limits on increases in tuition fees, coupled with governments’ inability and\/or unwillingness to substantially increase their contributions, are such that inadequate funding will always be a problem in Canada. This is in contrast with the situation in the United States where, despite other financial problems, local taxation at the college level is permitted and universities enjoy larger contributions from alumni and foundations. In many provinces funding has dropped from about 80 percent of the total in the early 1990s to barely 50 percent today, leaving institutions to make up the shortfall in other ways. The funding squeeze will not be alleviated by the recently introduced public accountability measures (popular with politicians), such as incentivebased key performance indicators. And with governments determined to cut taxes and lower cumulative deficits, it is unlikely the focus will shift any time soon. Besides, with institutions still solvent, politicians can argue\u2014 not unreasonably\u2014 that in the past they either had too much money or were simply not effectively managed. Unfortunately, this view focuses shortsightedly on increasing the number of students who can be pushed through the system, without upgrading the per capita funding units. Moreover, despite the universities’ best efforts, financial self-sufficiency is not a realistic possibility in the Canadian context, even for such wellendowed institutions as the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n
There are also other issues that increase pressure on our institutions. Ostensibly, colleges and universities exist to serve the broader public good, and their record over the last century has been admirable.\u00a0But the contemporary reality is that their very survival as institutions is uncertain. It is difficult for them in this context to address the broader societal issues that some feel post-secondary institutions have a responsibility to confront. For example, close to 50 percent of Ontario’s high school population does not presently go on to higher education, so a large proportion of our young people are woefully unprepared for the work world of the 21st century. Also, we have a growing proportion of immigrants, yet we do not adequately prepare them to successfully integrate into the Canadian economic mainstream. These two factors contribute directly to the social disruption that is particularly affecting our cities and to the widening economic gap between rich and poor. Unless the federal government introduces measures to support new immigrants and higher education institutions adopt streamlined and flexible prior learning assessment and recognition processes (PLAR), this problem will only become worse. When the lack of government funding to address the shortage of specialists in the skilled trades\u2014 such as tool and die makers\u2014 is added to the mix, Canada appears to be in an unenviable position competitively.<\/p>\n
Colleges are under intense pressure to meet the escalating imperatives of a computer literate workforce, but as they adjust to that phenomenon by, for example, granting their own degrees in applied fields, the educationally disenfranchised will fall further behind. Unless Canada’s public policy focuses on developing all of our people, not only will we be unable to rectify the chronic labour market mismatches and inadequacies generated by the current system, but Canada’s future socioeconomic progress will also be hindered. And with an aging population continuing to pressure governments to maintain their emphasis on health care, it is difficult to see how these issues will be addressed in the short term.<\/p>\n
Two other factors are also irrevocably changing the higher education landscape. The diversity of the Canadian population, compounded by a plethora of emerging learning technologies, will increasingly require a different educational staffing and delivery focus. A population consisting of diverse ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds, not to mention an increasing diversity in ages, calls for faculty who can identify with that mosaic and understand its viewpoints. The unprecedented number of faculty retirements that will occur over the next few years is thus an opportunity to fill the vacancies with professors who better reflect the population they will be serving.<\/p>\n
Regardless of the backgrounds of these new faculty, the students of tomorrow will be very different from their 20th-century predecessors. The socalled \u201cGeneration-Y\u201d have been raised as sophisticated consumers, and as such, expect individualized, custommade, modularized education, a world unknown to the traditional lecturer. In fact, emerging technology and software, coupled with rising student expectations, are forcing major changes upon traditionally change-resistant, monopolistic institutions. Canada has few private institutions, unlike the United States, hence the competition and challenge to the status quo that exist there simply are not a factor here. One example of a technological change combined with different student expectation is the presentation of curriculum content in an \u201cinfotainment\/edutainment\u201d format to retain the interest of learners who have grown up with the Internet and animated, graphically designed material. Indeed, as companies such as the Disney Corporation recognize the potential of educational programming and make use of their deep pockets and technological expertise to enter the educational marketplace, our public institutions will be hard pressed to stay abreast of students’ minimal expectations from their educational providers.<\/p>\n
As our institutions grapple with the paradigm shift of becoming learning\/knowledge rather than teaching organizations, many will go through a difficult phase. Some will manage this better than others, and, as a result, institutional reputations will mutate, wax or wane as students gravitate toward those that appear to respond most favourably to their learning requirements.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the knowledge society also presents tremendous opportunities for those institutions that are willing to break from past traditions and seize the potential of new initiatives. Students must increasingly become and be viewed as lifelong clients whose ongoing retraining and personal development needs can be met by a planned, laddered program at their \u201chome\u201d institutions. This is an important concept, because the private sector will find alternative ways to keep its employees up to date if our post-secondary institutions do not. Already, the currency of our institutional credentialism is being challenged by internationally benchmarked competency standards (e.g. ISO 9000) that are recognized worldwide. These are administered independently by agencies that appreciate the requirement by global employers for a credentialing system that can be easily understood and adopted for their company’s use, anywhere. In fact, the competency certifications of many trade associations will soon, minimally, be integrated with post-secondary credentials for fast-track entry into specific professions.<\/p>\n
Because students in the prime 1824 age group still want face-to-face interaction with their peers, it appears that institutions will continue to offer a large proportion of their programs and curricula at a home geographical base. But these students will naturally expect assignments, faculty contact, and so on, to be available through the electronic highway. There is also a requirement for complete courses and programs to be available online for learners who want distance education. As such, institutional nerve centres will utilize worldwide distribution and learning resource systems to allow faculty to accommodate home\/office learners, linked through video conferencing and chat lines, to create both a virtual and an actual global campus.<\/p>\n
Universities and colleges wishing to capitalize on these developments must become comprehensive learning organizations catering to people and companies demanding just-in-time (i.e. anytime, anyhow, anywhere) education. Higher education institutions will build on their strengths to become \u201cdiversified knowledge solution providers\u201d to specific industries and sectors, encompassing everything from commercialization, technology transfer, applied research, consulting and learning services, and custom specification. This concept represents a dramatic shift from the traditional activities of teaching and research institutions.<\/p>\n
With a strong eye on the bottom line and without compromising the best of their traditional values, institutions will be forced to become more creative and entrepreneurial. Certainly greater risk-taking will be the norm, involving various co-ventures with private and public investors, strategic partners, as well as profitmaking subsidiaries targeted to promising markets. Institutions will more readily embrace combinations of publicly supported and commercial arms, some split into separate divisions of the same institution and others operated as separate enterprises and\/or brands. At the very least, higher education institutions will provide an increasing portion of their activity on a fee-for-service basis, and traditional services will be broadened to include learning\/knowledge management consulting services catering to a broad array of lifelong learners and organizations.<\/p>\n
These developments will put great pressure on the faculty of tomorrow. Beyond the requirements of the normal academic pedigree, they will have to deal with learners on an individualized basis, factoring in the complex demographic profile of each, as well as becoming comfortably conversant with the new educational technology. In this respect, replacing the thousands who are beginning to retire will be difficult. Demand certainly far outstrips supply, and many potential faculty will opt for more lucrative careers in the private sector. Moreover, serious efforts must be made to diversify the face of existing faculties, seeking people who can be outstanding role models and personal mentors to tomorrow’s students.<\/p>\n
In this competitive market, institutions are already being forced to offer substantial hiring bonuses to attract talent and to take proactive measures to stop the poaching of professors. Creative ways must be found to deal with this situation. One suggestion is institutions must learn to \u201cgrow their own\u201d by identifying prospective faculty in their undergraduate pool, offering full scholarships and other support right through the doctoral level, together with relevant work experience, as an investment in the institution’s future. Institutions must become more flexible in their hiring patterns. More than in the past, they must be prepared to embrace two-way faculty exchanges with industry, allow collaborative research with the private sector, promote more joint appointments of faculty with institutions even in other countries, and encourage more visiting nontraditional scholars (i.e. from nonacademic walks of life).<\/p>\n
While convergence may have fallen from favour in the business world due to the recent debacle in the telecommunications sector, the concept still makes good sense for approaches in higher education. For too long institutions have operated in separate silos, college to university, and even university to university. Tomorrow’s learners will demand more flexibility in what they learn, together with education that is tailored to their personal specifications. While there is currently considerable institution\/individual collaboration in interdisciplinary research teams, there are few convergent\/co-operative programs that truly address the precise learning needs of students. In Ontario, to take one jurisdiction, college students have tended to end their learning pathway when they complete their college diploma. Those who do gain admission to university through transfers generally take longer to complete a degree than do students who entered the university directly. Conversely, thousands of bachelor’s degree holders return to college to take one-year, accelerated programs in specialty areas designed to make them marketable in the contemporary economy. In both cases, this represents five years of taxpayers’ and personal expense.<\/p>\n
The convergence of student demand, institutional self-interest and customer service will herald an era of unprecedented institutional cooperation. One encouraging example of this, which is working to all the stakeholders’ advantages, is the University of Guelph-Humber initiative. Designed to enrol 3,000 full-time students in a variety of fields by 2006, the intention is to allow students to complete a diploma in one area and an honours degree in another. For example, a student could complete a diploma in wireless technology and a bachelor of science, all in four years and at one location. This is not a simple articulation program where students take the first two years of the college program and then transfer for the last two years to a university, as now occurs in many jurisdictions. Under the University of Guelph-Humber initiative, two different credentials will be awarded after four years of study (and none after two). To accomplish this, co-operation and mutual respect on the part of staff at the two institutions were critical. Curricula were totally rewritten and then integrated, joint faculty were appointed, admission requirements were co-ordinated, and costs were cut for students by making it primarily a commuting rather than a residential program.<\/p>\n
There will be subtle spin-offs as a result of this venture. The University of Guelph will be able to bring any of its programs, particularly at the graduate level, to its \u201ccampus\u201d at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto in order to capitalize on the enormous potential of the educational \u201caftermarket\u201d in the greater Toronto area. As the global economy takes firmer hold, more convergent initiatives will establish roots involving relationships between two or more institutions and the public and private sectors.<\/p>\n
In order to provide the necessary impetus and perseverance to bring about these changes and to manage the complexity of our 21st-century institutions, new leadership will be required. While academic credentials and publication track records will still be prerequisites, an increasingly important qualification will also be a strong sense of strategic vision vis-\u00e0-vis the institution’s role in the global economy, entrepreneurial and fundraising skills, as well as partnering and coalitionbuilding abilities. Comfort in myriad global, cultural, economic and personal settings will also be a must. These qualities will not only be necessary for the president of the institution, but also for most of the senior administrative team. Finding and attracting such individuals represents another challenge for the governing bodies of our higher education institutions. If one accepts that leadership makes a difference and that the creative efforts of strong, visionary risk-takers represent the single most important element for progress, how successfully this issue is resolved across the spectrum of our many colleges and universities will speak volumes to Canada’s success in the 21st century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a world that is increasingly embracing unabashed capitalism, multiple free trading blocs and technological innovation, it is becoming ever more evident that Canada’s ability to create knowledge and apply it usefully (and commercially) is the key to sustained socioeconomic progress. The obvious corollary is that developing our human capital will be critical, and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-07T23:36:03Z","apple_news_api_id":"4b2a9d3c-742b-4207-938c-04b2f6ffa7eb","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-07T23:36:03Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ASyqdPHQrQgeTjASy9v-n6w","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9346],"tags":[],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-261667","issues","type-issues","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n