Revamping Ivory Towers

Re: Ontario must revamp colleges, universities, Ken Cuthbertson, Feb. 18

Ken Cuthbertson’s assessment of the state of post-secondary education in Ontario, and not only just in Ontario, is fair but incomplete. Besides the flawed business model as some suggest, or the excessive bureaucratic class of senior administration, the universities presented themselves as absolutely necessary regardless of what they had to offer. The seventies and eighties saw a tremendous expansion of universities/colleges, aimed to make higher education accessible to the masses, but without the foresight of investigating the potential benefit to society. In fact, they intentionally blocked any attempts to rein in their growth, claiming that higher education was the right of all and everyone. This period correspondingly introduced ever wider fields of study regardless of their validity and societal contribution, resulting in a huge financial burden on the government.

Now we see that Laurentian University’s faculty and the student union are demanding a financial bailout but, at the same time, appear unwilling to see the whole picture.

The solution does not lie in merging universities and sifting through programs to see where the savings can be found. It makes far more sense to concentrate on, as Mr. Cuthbertson suggested, the offering of career-oriented programs and leave many peripheral fields of study to institutions such as Athabasca University that offer courses on line with less financial burden.

We should never close the door to a person’s desire to learn, but it is the responsibility of every institution to explain what the practical implication of their education might be in the everchanging world outside the Ivory Towers. Zdenek Kutac, Calgary