Daniel Morin
While universities need to be responsive to various publics, including business, they must also take care to preserve their fundamental teaching mission, Rector Gilles Patry recently told a business and academic audience.
Speaking at the School of Management’s Alumni Breakfast on November 19, Patry raised the issue of the university’s competing roles in a knowledge-based economy. “We have to train students to work effectively in an increasingly competitive environment. We are also required to train them to become more socially responsible participants for national and global citizenship. And we need to equip the individuals to succeed in a more complex environment than we’ve ever had before,” he said.
At the same time, the rector said that universities have to be responsive to various publics: students, staff, parents, governments, businesses, NGOs, and the broader community. “There’s a danger that our responsiveness can be too focused on one of those publics and that we start forgetting part of our mission.”
Patry asked: “Are we neglecting one of the key missions of the university, which is the teaching and training of undergraduate students?”
“We must ensure that we are providing a quality university experience to our students,” he said. “There’s a perception that teaching is not equally valued as research; there is a perception that the reward system is focused too heavily on research, tenure and promotion in particular. Teaching is central to our mission.”
Patry called for a return of the liberal arts and humanities core training in professional programs, in particular medicine, health sciences, law, engineering and business.
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He also pointed out the need to review funding formulas to take into account the special needs of research-intensive universities. These institutions, he said, “are highly disadvantaged compared to the other universities.”
For example, the cost of training a medical student right now in Ontario is about $100,000 a year, while the University of Ottawa receives only $22,000 per year to train such a student.
Patry proposed a system of “tiered funding” that would take into account the different missions of institutions. Under such a formula, a university offering a wide range of medical, professional and doctoral programs, such as the University of Ottawa, would receive more money to cover the larger investments required by these programs. A component of this funding “should be based on performance and quality,” he added.
Initiatives such as the annual Maclean’s rankings of Canadian universities are positive in that “they bring attention to universities,” Patry said. Such rankings, however, are generally plagued by “inconsistencies.”
Performance and quality indicators need to be “measurable, verifiable by auditors and directly related to the quality of the university experience,” he said.
(The full text of the address will be available in January on the rector's Web site.)
The Role of Faculty in the Common Enterprise University (RTF document)
(Canada Post Lecture delivered by Dr. John Sexton, September 9, 2003)
