Student groups, universities singing ‘big five’ blues

MONTREAL (CUP) – Giving more money to elite research schools isn’t the answer, say university leaders and student lobbyists.

The presidents of five of Canada’s top universities have spent the summer calling for a greater share of research funding. Currently these five – the universities of Toronto, Montreal, Alberta and British Columbia, along with McGill – receive just over 30 per cent of the over $2.5 billion given out annually by the federal government for university research.

The presidents of these ‘big five’ universities are also calling for a national debate on the future of post-secondary education in Canada.

Amit Chakma, president of the University of Western Ontario, a school that has received hundreds of millions in Federal research funds, said he doesn’t think much of the call to give a bigger share to a select group.

“I don’t know of a way of designating five, or six or eight – if you expand the number, Western would be included there. You don’t designate excellence that way. You create an environment and let creative people come up with creative ideas,” he said. “Excellence can reside almost anywhere.”

Chakma said instead that the “chronic underfunding” of Canadian universities needs to be examined and fixed.

He said he does agree with the ‘big five’ that Canada needs a national strategy for post-secondary education, however. He is calling for a first minister’s conference and a blue ribbon panel to discuss the issue.

Arati Sharma, national director for the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, said that while the lobby group has not taken a stance on the call for more research funding to go to the ‘big five,’ she’s glad that the debate has started – but wishes students were a part of it.

“This debate is lacking the student voice. It’s institutions that are debating what the national strategy looks like,” she said.

“The national strategy is not only about research funding and targeting institutions based on their merits or anything like that. The debate really needs to be much more holistic than just the institutions.”

Sharma said she also supports a national strategy for post secondary education in Canada, starting with a national conference that includes all stakeholders, including students, faculty and administration as well as government.

Megan Nicholson, chairperson of the National Graduate Caucus of the Canadian Federation of Students, takes a stronger stance against the call by the ‘big five.’

“Grad students are rejecting this call to segregate teaching and research universities and we feel that this approach really is fundamentally flawed,” she said. “What we should be doing is opening more doors to researchers and not closing them to anyone who lives outside of Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto.”

“If university presidents want to see more innovation, there should be a collective push by all university presidents and not just a small segment of the top five sort of ‘elite’ Canadian universities,” said Nicholson. “Collectively, we should be pushing for more investment in public research.”

Concordia University president Judith Woodsworth, whose school receives millions in federal research funding annually, also takes issue with the call.

“What happens in the classroom and the research lab can no longer be artificially separated. For any university to be dynamic there has to be a creative flow between innovative teaching and the research that continually expands the boundaries of the particular discipline,” said Woodsworth in a written statement.

“So, should we be looking at re-dividing the research pie among ‘elites’ and ‘the others?’ Instead of fighting over the crumbs, perhaps we need to bake a larger pie so that our universities thrive across this country.”

Related Posts