As pressure rises for increased enrolment at Ontario universities, and the same institutions are pushed to deliver innovative research, sustainability of our post-secondary education system may be at risk.
This conclusion comes from four leading academic, each with years of experience in studying and delivering post-secondary education. One of the authors is Greg Moran, former Provost and Vice-President (Academic) at The University of Western Ontario, now a professor in Western’s Department of Psychology.
The book is Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario. Originally commissioned as four separate papers by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, the authors decided it would make more sense to pool their knowledge and speak with one voice about what it will take to meet post-secondary challenges in the future.
“Universities are stretched to the limit and expecting that undergraduate courses will all be taught by tenured professors who are also expected to carry out research, may not be the best approach,” says Moran. “One answer is to encourage diversity – funding a system that encourages new models such as universities that just pursue a mission of undergraduate education. Another is to improve the paths that allow credits to flow from one institution to another.”
Ontario universities were asked to take in an additional 100,000 student in the last decade and may face further growth of another 60-100,000 students in the next 10 years.
