Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 9 - Evidence - June 10, 2010
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, met this day at 10:31 a.m. to study the accessibility of post-secondary education in Canada.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Today we continue with our study on access to post-secondary education. The theme today is distance learning. We have three people to help us through the examination of this subject.
Dr. Thomas Chase is Vice-President (Academic) and Provost for Royal Roads University. Prior to that, he was Dean of Arts at the University of Regina. He is also founding director of the Centre for Academic Technologies.
Dr. Tony Bates is President and CEO of Tony Bates Associates Ltd. He is a private consultant specializing in e- learning and higher education. He is currently providing advice on e-learning strategy to a number of universities and colleges in Canada, and also to the Government of Alberta. He was a member of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council on Technology and Education in 2008-09. He has written 11 books on distance education and learning technologies. He has done consultation in over 40 countries. He has a wide variety of experience.
Lori Van Rooijen is Vice-President, Advancement, with Athabasca University in Alberta. She has had a successful career as a consultant in strategic leadership and planning, communications and public participation, and project management and development. Athabasca University itself is a pioneer in the use of computers to deliver online courses. While it is headquartered in Athabasca, Alberta, it has satellites also in Edmonton and Calgary.
Welcome to all three of you. We look forward to hearing your comments, up to seven minutes each. Unless you want to change the order, I will hear you in the order that you are on the agenda, and that means starting with Thomas Chase from Royal Roads University.
Thomas Chase, Vice-President (Academic) and Provost, Royal Roads University: Thank you for the privilege of being here with you this morning to speak on the subject of accessibility of post-secondary education in Canada. In the short time available, I would like to focus on one of the points that the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology has identified as being of particular interest: current barriers in post-secondary education such as geography, family income and challenges faced specifically by Aboriginal students.
As provost at Royal Roads University, I represent a unique Canadian university, one specifically founded by the Government of British Columbia to serve the needs of in-career professionals and their employers. The average age of our students is 36; the majority of them are in graduate programs. Indeed, we are the second-largest graduate school in B.C.; and we focus our academic programs solely in the applied and professional fields.
We do so with the explicit goal of high academic quality. In the most recent National Survey of Student Engagement, NSSE, we came first among Canadian universities for level of academic challenge and first among Canadian universities for active and experiential learning. In surveys of graduates done by the B.C. government, we consistently place at or near the top of British Columbia universities for level of student satisfaction with the quality, relevance and delivery of our programs. For public investment per full-time equivalent, FTE, student, we are also the most cost-effective of the British Columbia universities.
At the heart of our model is a blended, cohort-based, team-focused approach to learning. The majority of our graduate programs are organized around a series of intensive on-campus residencies lasting two or three weeks and involving the full cohort in team-based learning that is centered on problem-solving: in a word, active and experiential learning for highly motivated and very mature students. These residencies alternate with distance-learning segments during which students work online with their team under the guidance of a faculty supervisor. Again, the emphasis is on discovery and problem-solving rather than rote learning or memorization.
The success we have may be gauged by the external indices that I have already touched on, including the NSSE and the B.C. government surveys. More important, however, is the repeated testimony of our students and their employers that Royal Roads programs transform their way of seeing and doing. The intensive on-campus residencies establish bonds of support and mutual appreciation among students from widely varying backgrounds and locations. These bonds endure for years after the completion of their academic programs.
Graduates from our master's program in environmental education and communication, for example, many of them employed by governments and NGOs throughout the country, report that the program not only transforms the way they frame environmental issues but provides them with the tools to be effective communicators and advocates for change in their local communities.
Our blended MBA program, unique in Canada not only in its shape but in the pedagogical innovations it contains, provides employers and communities with well-rounded business leaders grounded in the practice and ethics of contemporary management.
Reports in the media over the past year and more have made clear that the traditional funding model for Canadian universities is under considerable strain. Competing demands on the public purse, most particularly the rise in costs of health care and end-of-life care for an aging population, mean that the future for traditional universities is challenging.
The Royal Roads blended model, by contrast, offers much promise in its ability to meet current and future needs of Canadians. The model allows those already in the workforce to gain educational qualifications, particularly graduate degrees, without suspending their employment or relocating themselves for months at a time away from their families. Our model, therefore, keeps the total cost of post-secondary education down by reducing the personal and professional dislocation associated with traditional face-to-face delivery on an urban campus.
Our model has positive implications for populations traditionally under-represented on Canadian campuses, especially Aboriginal people. As noted, Royal Roads programming is designed specifically for those unable to commit to a conventional university delivery mechanism of semester-long, on-campus presence. For members of Aboriginal communities in B.C.'s interior and northern regions, we offer graduate education that allows people to remain in their home communities for the greater proportion of their in-program time. Furthermore, our team-based cohort model provides a tremendous degree of support to students who are working from home communities. This is in strong contrast to most other distance education programs, which can leave students in a one-on-one relationship with an unseen instructor, isolated from others in the program.
While enrolments of Aboriginal people are still proportionately below those of non-Aboriginal people, we are confident that our model will attract increasing numbers of Aboriginal professionals as the pool of potential applicants continues to deepen.
I would offer the following four specific suggestions to the committee for its consideration with respect to increasing accessibility.
Target federal funding to the development of a highly skilled workforce with an increased proportion of graduate degree holders.
Target federal funding to applied and professional programs that are directly related to federal and provincial goals for labour market development.
In partnership with the post-secondary sector, strategize on the international component of labour market development: How might we approach the challenge of attracting highly qualified international students to applied and professional programs in Canada, and then retaining those students after graduation so that they assist in meeting our labour market needs?
In approaching the range of issues around student loans, bursary programs, the Canada Learning Bond and similar instruments of fiscal policy as they apply to education, we recommend that you consider emphasizing the fact that investments made now in post-secondary education will pay a very high dividend in the future in the development of a highly skilled workforce, a more productive and diversified knowledge-based economy, and, perhaps more important than anything, a healthier and better engaged population.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Let me move now to Dr. Tony Bates.
Tony Bates, President and CEO, Tony Bates Associates Ltd.: Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for inviting me here. It is a great privilege to be here. I grappled with this to some extent because I knew I would have colleagues from two excellent institutions talking about distance education, and I would like to talk about something rather different, which is the need for conventional institutions to radically change to improve access for students. I would like to focus on that. I am not focusing on separate organizations for distance education, or even distance education, but flexible delivery of programs to meet students' needs today.
I also grappled with the difference between responsibilities between autonomous institutions such as universities, the provincial responsibilities and the federal responsibilities. I have tried to accommodate to those issues.
The important thing is the demographics of Canadian students now. The average age of a Canadian student is 24. There are now more students, what we would call lifelong learners, returning to education as there are students coming out of high school. That is a demographic issue and one caused also by the knowledge society, which requires people to continuously keep up to date. In other words, students are learning for life now and need access to universities throughout their life.
It is really important for students working in knowledge-based industries to have access to the latest research coming out of universities. Therefore, it is not enough for conventional universities to think of education from the ages of 18 to 25 or 26, but as Martha Piper, a former president of University of British Columbia, said, "Once a UBC student, always a UBC student.''
We have a demand for large numbers of well-educated students, for knowledge-based industries and, particularly, we need to look at how we will cope with lifelong learning.
One of the issues I wanted to raise concerning public policy is about how lifelong learning should be paid for. If many of these students have already been through the public education system, they have already been subsidized, and now they are working and not living at home, or most of them are not, so should they be subsidized to the same rate? Should they pay full cost? Again, I have my own views, but I have not seen any public debate about this. That is an issue I would like to put before you.
With lifelong learning and the knowledge-based society, universities and colleges need to focus on skills and competencies as well as content, and particularly skills defined by The Conference Board of Canada, such as independent learning, the ability to go on learning after they have finished a formal program, embedding information and communication technology skills within their subjects and so on.
In our conventional institutions, we have an old model inherited from the 19th century that works very well for an elite or for small numbers, but we do not have an elite and small numbers now. We have almost 40 per cent or 50 per cent of the population going on to post-secondary education; we have very large numbers of students and very large classes in even our best research universities, particularly in first and second year.
The institutions have not adapted very well to the "massification'' of higher education. They have continued the old model forward. Most institutions globally, not just in Canada, are using technology mainly in two ways. They are adding it on to the classroom model. They are putting in lecture-capture systems and clickers, where students can give responses and so on. We are adding the Global Positioning System, GPS, and quadraphonic sound to a horse and cart, but it is still a horse and cart.
The other big development is fully online learning, which is growing very rapidly. Across North America, online enrolments have increased over the last five to six years by about 14 per cent to 15 per cent per annum, compared with 2 per cent to 3 per cent enrolment in traditional institutions. Fully online learning is expanding very rapidly, and even then most institutions are not keeping up with the demand. Unfortunately, in most institutions, it is off to the side. It is not seen as central to the activity of the institution. It is often more expensive, seen as a money generator and run often outside the main academic stream. For instance, we do not have a mainline faculty often teaching online courses.
I would like to see much more hybrid learning, where we do not get rid of face-to-face teaching. I have been in distance education all my working life, and it does much more than most instructors can imagine. However, some things are much easier to do in a face-to-face situation. If you are training someone to be an artist in glass, you have to work with your hands. You cannot do that at a distance. I would like to see more blended learning or hybrid learning, where some of the face-to-face instruction is reduced to give more time for students to work online. That would then enable students who are working part time, or have to commute, to do much more at home but focus when they get to campus on the things the campus does best.
Our current mainline, campus-based institutions do not have enough flexibility for current and certainly for future needs. In particular, the element that is really lacking, compared with Australia, the U.K. and even the United States, is that we do not have a national strategy to support e-learning or the use of technology in teaching. As a result we are missing out, and I will come back to what we are missing out on, particularly on the international market.
I have some solutions, and you will be happy to know that none of these are very expensive. I see the federal role as being relatively limited because the institutions are autonomous, but the big problem is the lack of incentives for change in the current system. Universities are well entrenched. They are very powerful lobbyists with provincial governments. They know they will get the money whatever the government says; it is very hard for governments to interfere, and they should not interfere with the autonomy of the institutions.
I will tell you my suggestions. Create a virtual national centre for digital learning; a virtual centre in that it would link together the experts in Royal Roads University, Athabasca, people in Ontario and so on to work collaboratively on a virtual network. I have provided some background on that. Particularly, this centre would provide a place where industry, education and government can come together to look at policy in this area.
I would like to see federal funds for innovative, national program delivery; programs that could be delivered across the country in a hybrid mode, with individual institutions providing the local support but maybe a centralized online component that will be shared across institutions.
Next would be a national depository or centre for Canadian open content. Open content is free educational materials available to instructors and students to integrate in their own studies. There is a big movement toward this, but no collection is being done nationally of digital educational materials.
Another suggestion is national awards for innovative instructors. One of the big problems is lack of transfer between institutions, and particularly between provinces, so that if you start your studies in B.C. and want to go to Ontario, often you have to start all over again because you cannot transfer the credits that you have received. Perhaps we could have a national credit bank.
In conclusion, we had a lead in digital learning. In the 1990s, Canada was probably the most advanced country in the world in using online learning. I think we have lost that lead now. We do not have a national strategy for education, for digital learning or marketing of services or products. It is not just an educational issue but also an economic issue. If we want to be internationally competitive in the knowledge-based industries, we have to have an education system that is really flexible and supports lifelong learning.
Last, the real issue here is not so much these individual proposals — and I could come up with many more — but the lack of an appropriate federal-provincial structure to support flexible delivery of programs, particularly across provincial borders. It is too important to leave just to the institutions and provinces alone.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Next is Lori Van Rooijen from Athabasca University.
Lori Van Rooijen, Vice-President, Advancement, Athabasca University: On behalf of Athabasca University, thank you very much for allowing us to speak today, along with my distance learning panel and colleagues. We are very happy to be here.
Post-secondary accessibility is critical to the future of this country and distance learning is an integral part of the solution. At Athabasca University, we have been living that now for over 40 years.
We are a public, comprehensive university. We do research, have undergraduate and graduate programs and serve over 38,000 students on a completely distance model. We use correspondence, technology and the online medium. Our university is very focused on providing and removing barriers. That is our mission.
Distance learning education continues to lead the sector as the increased accessibility it provides merges with the new information and communication technologies, ICT. New learning environments include such things as wikis, blogs, podcasts and three-dimensional simulations. Together, they represent a significant shift in learning, and one that needs to be available to all Canadians if we are to maximize learning and also have the innovative workforce that we need in this country.
I will speak about a number of issues today, though I will not go through all of them. You have the submission in front of you. However, I would like to highlight some particular ones today.
The first issue is the barriers to post-secondary education. As reflected in all of our major planning and guiding documents, this issue represents the central purpose of Athabasca University's work over our 40-year history. We have a great deal of information on how distant learning can address the needs of Canadians. In the interest of brevity, I will focus on four of them. Actually, I will likely focus on three because I think my colleague, Dr. Chase, has focused on Aboriginal issues.
Time and space is a particular barrier that Canadians face when they are choosing post-secondary options. Distance education was created to really address the issues related to where potential students live, where they can commute to and when they can study. The combined effect of our model is focused on working adults with inflexible schedules; people in the military or other travelling jobs; students who find out in February that they actually need a course to complete their degree at another institution; adults who perform well at work but did not perform well in high school; and rural youth who are only 58 per cent as likely to enroll in post-secondary education, unless they come from a higher-income family.
In short, anyone with English-language skills and some time can register for our university courses. Together with Télé-université du Quebec, TÉLUQ, Athabasca's French-language partner, we can provide accessibility to Canadians across the country.
The cultural context is probably an important one, as well. It is a barrier. We know that socio-economic status plays an important role in the decision to attend PSE. We also know that parental educational attainment also plays a role. This is a difficult one to address because it is a change of perception across many generations, and that is something that we need to work together on with schools, the kindergarten to Grade 12 system and other universities and colleges as well.
Finally, the last barrier is the digital divide. Many aspects of this divide need attention for all Canadians to participate in the e-economy, including improved digital infrastructure, increased comfort with the new technologies to facilitate the acceptance and application of new technologies, and access for under-represented groups.
Online education can bridge the digital literacy gap to create digital citizens with the technical, professional and soft skills needed to move out of the rapidly disappearing low-skilled jobs. Therefore, we see distance education as a great equalizer across the country.
The second issue is financial issues for students, and this has implications on public policy both at the federal and provincial levels. Financial barriers to student success and student funding mechanisms are highly interrelated, so I will deal with them all at once.
Part-time students have unique challenges. Most working adults are typically in part-time education — at least many of our students are. Therefore, they typically finish in a six- to eight-year time frame rather than a four-year time frame. However, that allows them to contribute to the economy while they are attending school and allows them to balance their life with their family, learning and work. However, many student funding mechanisms only apply to full- time students. That automatically reduces opportunities for part-time study. While some funding is available, more funding programs targeted at the part-time learner would enhance the environment that encourages more people to pursue university or college education.
Canadian adults working full time often have problems accessing federal funding or provincial funding, so they cannot study unless they have extra money. Relief would be provided if the loan income thresholds were changed or if employers could offer tuition programs because they would be able to write off tuition expenses, as they do in the United States. That would be extremely helpful for employers. It would also encourage adults to stay and work in the economy, which is critical to moving forward.
Students tell us that they do not necessarily understand government financial aid systems: They are unaware of the roles their parents' incomes play in that calculation; they do not understand repayment mechanisms; and they rarely read government websites about financial programs. That is what they are telling us, so we have adjusted our programs to ensure that they are aware of them.
The third issue is the mechanisms to fund scientific research and development and commercialization. Research and development and commercialization are central to economic growth. Government investment has increased in recent years. However, if Canadians are to truly realize the benefits research can bring, we need to think bigger and bolder, reach further and beyond addressing challenges and create an implementation of vision for the future.
There is a great global social need and real money in innovation. The process is largely based on the fields of research and development that are seriously underfunded in Canada. For example, 44 per cent of the federal funding goes toward science and technology, 45 per cent to health and social sciences and business law education receives approximately 11 per cent of the share. It is from where much of the innovation and creativity comes.
Our world is changing, and most Canadians are aware of the growing role of this reality, as the knowledge economy ramps up — an economy where primary economic drivers are based on creation and transmission of knowledge. Both of my colleagues have mentioned that this morning, as well.
Minister Clement has stated on several occasions that Canada needs a plan for the emergent digital economy that incorporates both public and private stakeholders into a common ICT strategy. We have already made a presentation, as the university, to the pre-budget consultations last year. We have heard that some of the things have come out of that following our presentation, so we are very pleased with the direction that it is headed.
Finally, the fourth issue is really the federal-provincial transfer mechanism. Some of this has been mentioned this morning, but I would like to focus on the fact that many aspects of the funding transfer system are of interest and could be reviewed. However, we focused today in our submission on the unique role of post-secondary distance learning.
Open and distance universities have a different business strategy and a different delivery model, and, therefore, they develop courses differently. We have a front-end approach, where we develop content first. Our economy of scale is based on enrolment. Therefore, our capacity is much more elastic, and growth can occur with lower per capita resources, and you heard some of that this morning already. We can deliver education less expensively but still with the same quality using distance and online technologies.
Institutional federal systems face a large and growing problem that, while distance education enrolments are nationally based, allowing diverse learners across the country to make program choices based on their individual needs, the institutions they register in are typically regional or provincial. That causes us problems with funding because the funding is provided by different jurisdictions from where a student resides. This happens because these funding mechanisms were developed prior to distance learning, and they do not necessarily support distance learning. For example, two-thirds of Athabasca University's students are outside the province of Alberta. We have worked very hard across the country to develop transfer agreements, articulation agreements, with over 350 universities and colleges, so that our students' transferability will work in their favour.
That is a large amount of work for us to do. This morning, Dr. Bates mentioned the importance of having some type of a national strategy on education that allows transferability of both funding and courses so that students' needs across the country are met through distance education. If Canada is truly committed to leading the knowledge economy, the idea of a transfer mechanism that acknowledges the role and needs of distance education needs to be addressed by the federal government in conjunction with the provinces.
I very much appreciated sharing our views with you today.
The Chair: Thank you very much, all three of you, for your introductory remarks. A couple of you mentioned TÉLUQ, which is a program operating out of the Université du Québec à Montréal. We had invited them as well, but unfortunately, they could not be here.
As usual, I will start off with the first question. To varying degrees, you have touched on this in your introductory comments. I am interested in the unique challenges faced by people who are getting into distance learning programs. Do they have the same tenacity as the conventional, place-based PSE?
Is the dropout rate any different? In conventional place-based systems, some drop out early, and some drop out and come back. I am wondering about your experience with distance learning and other unique challenges. Ms. Van Rooijen has used that phrase and talked a little about that. It would be helpful if we could have a little more discussion about that, particularly as it relates to what the federal government might be able to do in adapting programs to assist people with distance learning. Dr. Bates, you said that Canada has lost its lead in digital learning. I am interested in why that is so that we can determine how we regain that lead. I will start with you on that.
Mr. Bates: The reasons are complex. In the federal jurisdiction of Australia, they have a department of education that has been active in supporting flexible delivery. For instance, Australia has the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, which is focused on the technical and vocational colleges in Australia. It has put up approximately $10 million a year over the last eight years to enable colleges to develop materials that can be used and shared across the country. That is an example of federal leadership in a provincial or state system. They obviously work with the states very closely on this, and we see now in Australia many more students taking flexible, online programs in vocational trades than we see in Canada, for instance. That is one example.
Institutions such as Royal Roads University and Athabasca University were created in the 1990s or 1980s, and we have had nothing similar created since. We have had no new institutions or institutions designed differently. I am not saying that we should create more open universities. However, we might look at an institution that is deliberately created as a hybrid university, with less funding for capital buildings — although definitely have capital buildings, maybe labs and so on — but more invested in creating digital materials than buildings, for instance. We have not seen any solutions of that nature.
These are the types of things that are a problem for Canada now. I left Britain because it was way behind Canada. I wanted to come to Canada because it was ahead, but Britain has caught up now. Their universities are doing much more in e-learning than ours are now, right through the institutions. That is what I mean by us falling behind.
The Chair: You mentioned a national strategy on e-learning. Is that part of the way that the federal government can contribute to overcome that?
Mr. Bates: Yes. The ministry in Britain created a task force on e-learning and had a national strategy to support e- learning across the institutions.
The Chair: Would someone like to address the question of unique challenges specific to the person who is in distance learning and how the federal government could specifically address that?
Mr. Chase: You have asked a series of provocative questions. Let me begin with a provocative response. Despite the fact that universities are there to innovate and shake up society in many ways, universities themselves are intensely conservative institutions in the way they are formed and run. One of the things the federal government could do is signal broadly to the country how it values distance education and how it values making the products of universities available to a much wider range of people.
To illustrate that, I would draw the committee's attention to something that is happening in California right now. The University of California, the system, is an enormous one, with well over 200,000 students. California is in an enormous budget crisis, with a deficit of $12 billion in their operating budget, and they are looking for ways to find savings. The University of California, which is a prestigious, research-intensive institution, is looking at moving a number of its high-enrolment introductory year-one and year-two courses online. In doing that, they are budgeting up to $250,000 per course to convert courses from traditional face-to-face delivery to online delivery. In Canada, we tend to be able to do things more nimbly, quickly and cost-effectively than our colleagues in California are envisaging.
One of the questions you asked was about challenges for students. The attrition rate for fully online programs tends to be higher because people suffer from isolation. That on-campus experience does serve a purpose and bonds people through the social interchange, the feeling of community and so on, which is one of the reasons that, at Royal Roads, nearly all of our programs use the blended model that brings people on campus for periods of time. However, Dr. Bates's suggestion of re-thinking nationally how we are investing money and taking some that is going into bricks and mortar and putting it into some of the softer sides, the intangibles around the design of good online or blended curricula, is one that Royal Roads would support. I think back to any number of traditional institutions in which you have several million square feet of inventory space on campus, much of which is vacant most of the time. Is that an effective use of funds? That is something we would want to argue at some point.
Ms. Van Rooijen: Dr. Chase has introduced one of the things that I feel strongly about. He mentioned science labs and offering programs in blended learning. At Athabasca University, we are completely online and distance learning, but that does not mean we do not provide those opportunities for our students. In fact, we use other post-secondary science labs when they are not in use, increasing the capacity of those institutions and their facilities so that we do not have to put more money into bricks and mortar. We do not build it ourselves. We actually go out to where our students are and find science labs that are currently at other universities or colleges and provide that experience on their campuses. The federal government has the opportunity to encourage that collaboration through matching grants, et cetera.
I will speak to the component of the dropout rates and attrition rates. We find that completion rates are usually measured on a four-year time frame. Did you complete your degree in four years? Around that, many of our students attend other institutions as their home institution, and then they do take one or two courses from Athabasca University to complete their degree on time. For example, in Alberta, approximately 1,500 students a year from the University of Alberta come to Athabasca University to take a course or two to finish their degree on time. We are contributing to their own completion rates.
It is true that, in the past, students who were in individual studies such as Athabasca University did not always complete their programs because of isolation. However, we are finding now that with the social media and the ability to integrate that social media and those connection points into the curriculum, that is changing, and it is changing significantly. That is one of the reasons we struggle and think about doing a blended model all the time, but we have decided to invest in technology and in social networking opportunities for students to connect better. It reduces even more the barriers for time and space for our students, and they certainly appreciate the flexibility of our offering.
Our completion rates, when you look at a student who registers in a program and completes it, are as high as residential universities if you factor in that they take it over a longer period of time. They may take seven or eight years to finish their degree, but if they are intent on finishing, they will. It has been helpful with the new social media as well in reducing that isolation.
Mr. Bates: My response to your question about difficulties is that we have a very heterogeneous mix of students now, and for the student coming out of high school, probably with not many independent-learning skills, they need the campus much more. For the person who has already graduated, is in the workforce and wants to come back to take a professional masters program, they can probably handle the whole program fully online.
I worry about that group that is in between that needs some campus-based support but more flexibility in the way they work. We really want not so much distance or face-to-face teaching but innovation in teaching. Innovation in teaching should be the focus to provide more flexible delivery to students and also to imbed the use of technology into the teaching of the subject areas. I cannot think of a single subject area where students do not now need to know how to use computers and the Internet within their profession.
That is the reason for using technology. It is not because technology is cool and all the rest of it but because it gives more flexibility and develops the skills we need — and we need many models of doing that.
The Chair: Thank you very much for those answers.
Senator Ogilvie: I want to thank the witnesses for their very interesting observations. I was particularly pleased with your sense that things will have to change in the future. My own view for some time has been that our current higher- education system, that is, universities, in Canada is not sustainable. I predict that within the next decade we will have run into a significant wall. Some of our universities will come out of that extremely well and be internationally competitive and so on, but they will not all survive. The approach of using technology in innovative ways will be important going forward.
Much of the time, however, you spoke about things such as degrees, which I can understand. We have a long tradition of recognizing it as a certification and the measure of a certain level of education. However, with the types of things you are talking about and have implemented, as others have, we will probably get closer to a just-in-time or just- in-application education system in which the certification programs will become quite varied as well.
I do not have any overall questions to challenge you in any way because you have given us very good observations. However, Ms. Van Rooijen, you made one remark that caused me to sit up. You said that only roughly 11 per cent of R & D funding goes to the areas of education, business and so on. However, you said that these are the areas from where most of the innovation comes.
This is the first time I have heard that business programs in universities lead to innovation. Indeed, there is an enormous challenge to even create an entrepreneur. My experience in universities has shown me that the traditional parts, the faculties of education, were the least innovate areas. In fact, having introduced a technology learning environment that is in the Smithsonian Institute as being, at the time, the world's leading example of the application of technology to the learning environment, it was, in fact, the professors of education across this country who damned the idea as being a destruction of the concept of books as we know it and the learning environment as we have had it.
Therefore, can you tell me how it is that the two areas that you specifically mentioned are from where most of the innovation comes?
Ms. Van Rooijen: Perhaps the note should have said "some of the innovation.'' I do not have the same experience as you with respect to the issues around education and business. Many of the faculties at our university have been extremely innovative, particularly our business faculty. They have contributed significantly to the corporations that they lead, ultimately, in determining how to create innovate solutions to business — and businesses generating and running the country. Many things are happening in that.
My experience is probably a little different. I stand by the statement that 11 per cent of the total funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, SSHRC, is not enough for some of the innovative things that are happening now in universities in business, education and law. My experience in education is that there are some innovative leaders out there, and they should be funded.
Senator Ogilvie: To focus it a little, if you had said the distance education components of education, I might have been more inclined to agree. I would argue that your environment is quite different from what I call "traditional'' faculties of education.
Ms. Van Rooijen: Yes, it is.
Mr. Chase: Senator Ogilvie, I welcome your comment about the next decade. We are probably in the position right now vis-à-vis post-secondary education across the Western world that Northern Europe was in in about 1520, just before the reformation blew everything loose. I, too, believe that what we have for cost or structure is not sustainable. The traditional university model that we all grew up with and that we reflect to one degree or another is essentially a funding model and business model that was developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it has reached the end of its life cycle.
We are on the verge of a tectonic shift. We see bits of it in Europe now with the Bologna Accord, a rationalization of what is happening across Europe in terms of the laddering of qualifications and degree structures. I will come back to that in a moment. In the U.K. now, with the new government facing enormous fiscal strain, I think we will see a university sector under tremendous challenge, and we are not very far away from that in Canada.
Dr. Bates and Ms. Van Rooijen have already pointed to some of the ways that we can anticipate some of these difficulties and address them before we are forced into positions that we do not want to take. Above all, we want to preserve quality. We must have degree programs of very high quality. To return to an earlier suggestion I made, whatever the federal government can do to value and to promote in the academic economy the value of distance education, blended education and different modes outside the traditional modes would be of very great help.
Finally, on the degree structure, our three-cycle degree structure of bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees is ancient. To an 18-year-old coming into the system, it seems similar to something out of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is a fairly archaic system. We are working hard across the sector to articulate better from institution to institution and within institutions to ladder qualifications much better and to do the type of just-in-time education that you suggested.
I agree that within a decade much of the sector will be difficult to recognize. How that difficult-to-recognize sector will look, I cannot yet predict.
Mr. Bates: I want to talk a little about the research side. E-learning and online learning falls between the social science and science areas. I was part of the NCE-TeleLearning project 10 years ago — the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada — which was funded out of the science side and closed down because it did not produce things. The challenge is not technology; the challenge is people, and it is people using technology.
We need a way of doing research into organizational culture and change if we are to see our institutions change. That is the problem. It does not fit comfortably with SSHRC. They are also controlled by the academic disciplines, and this is a cross-disciplinary area. That is the issue for me with research. However, we do need research of a different type, different from the traditional academic research, that is focused on development, for instance, applications for mobile phones. I see that Research in Motion Limited, RIM, and Desire2Learn Incorporated have partnered, but there is no educational partner in there. We should be looking at the pedagogical aspects as well as the technology aspects there.
Senator Plett: Dr. Bates, I certainly agree with some of the solutions in your paper insofar as the federal role is concerned. You mention here, as you did in your oral presentation, the autonomy of the institutions. I have a bit of a disagreement with you that if institutions are receiving federal funding or, indeed, provincial funding, they are entirely autonomous. Maybe that is more of a comment than a question. I do agree with the solutions. If you want to comment further, I think we are losing the autonomy if we are giving money.
Mr. Bates: The ideal funding model from a university president's point of view is for the government to throw the money over the wall and go away.
Governments can and do influence institutions, but it is very difficult. I do not want the universities micromanaged. Governments are not in a good position to micromanage a university. For example, the B.C. government withheld 1 per cent of all operating budgets from all institutions in one year — and I believe 0.5 per cent the other year — put it into a pot and said that they could have that money back as long as they came forward with innovative ideas about teaching and research. Out of that came WebCT, which became Blackboard Vista, which is now the main learning management system used throughout the world. It was $2.5 million out of UBC's operating budget. It did 60 proposals, and UBC changed quite substantially as a result of that government initiative. They hated it, but it did drive some change in the institution.
Yes, government can provide leadership, but I do not want it interfering too much in the day-to-day operation of the institutions.
Senator Plett: I probably agree with that. A friend of mine ran a private elementary school, kindergarten to Grade 6 or maybe Grade 8. It was privately funded. I asked him one day why they did not apply for some provincial money. His answer was that they wanted to remain autonomous; they did not want the government telling them how to run their school, so they turned down funding. As I said, this is more of an observation.
We have heard from past witnesses, and you have suggested today, that it is difficult to get these students into PSE because of funding issues. There is a lack of money for a student to be able to pay, so we need to subsidize. Yesterday, we heard about some of those programs. I wanted to ask this question yesterday, and it might have been more relevant, but we ran out of time, so I will ask it today.
One of the reasons for universities having a hard time attracting students is because some of our technical and community colleges are becoming more innovative. You have already suggested that you want to become more innovative, and I applaud you for that. Dr. Lloyd Axworthy is a very good friend. He is the president and vice- chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. We get together on a fairly regular basis. The University of Winnipeg has become very innovate in attracting Aboriginal students and creating programs in which they can get involved that would be similar to possibly a technical college.
I received my education at a technical college. One of the problems is that our construction industry is booming. The oil sands — and we have talked about Alberta here a few times — are attracting people away from schools. I am using many illustrations here. My nephew was in university in Manitoba. He wanted to get a degree in physical education to become a physical education instructor, but of course this cost a fair bit of money. He decided to take some time off and go to Fort McMurray to earn some money. This was many years ago, and he is still working in Fort McMurray earning a large amount of money. I see that situation as being more challenging than the fact that they cannot afford to go to school. They can become a plumber, an electrician or a carpenter while they are making money. Many of these trades are paying better money than some people coming out of universities with degrees are getting, who struggle for the first few years. You see lawyers out pumping gas because they cannot make it in the first years of law.
Tell me what the challenges are. Would you agree with me?
Ms. Van Rooijen: I would absolutely agree that there are challenges in getting young people to university when the economy is hot and there are many opportunities for making money. At Athabasca University, we are working with a number of the oil sands companies that have taken many of our young men, in particular, and we all know that the participation rates of young men in post-secondary are very low. We are working with them now, developing a program called Learning Communities, which means using distance learning and providing on-site education to these young workers who need to have an education for later on when they discover that they have been working hard in the oil patch and at 30 years old or whatever they are physically broken and cannot do anything else. This was a concern for many of the CEOs of the companies with which we have been dealing.
We have found out that many of these young men feel intimidated around education. They do not feel that they are good enough to do post-secondary education, so they do not do it. When they find that, through our university, they can take university programs, there is much uptake of that on-site in the work camps. It has been working out very well.
As you mentioned, they do their trade certificates or complete diplomas through colleges and then go up there. At Athabasca University, we have arrangements now with most colleges across the country where we offer a two-plus-two program. We take the first two years that they have done in their diploma, or through trade certification, we assess those credits and give them credit for those two years. It is not a fait accompli; it is a very complex process, but it can be done. We give them credit for a four-year degree, which mean they have only two more years to earn a university degree. That time factor is a huge decision point for them. We are finding that many of these young people who have diplomas are now taking degrees. We are also finding that degree holders from our university and others are returning and taking diplomas from colleges. The transferability is not just between universities; it must be between colleges and universities if we are to make a truly seamless system.
Many things can be done. There are many innovate things out there. We have taken the Learning Communities project and developed it for Aboriginal communities, where we work with five band councils in Alberta to deliver and use distance education. However, the elders and the community provide the support so that those Aboriginal students can stay in their community, learn, become mentors for their community and earn their degree. It is working very well.
Mr. Chase: I could not agree with you more. What you have outlined is yet another symptom of what we were talking about a few moments ago with metaphors such as tectonic shift or transformation of the sector. The divide between the community college or the technical college sector and the university sector is, of course, in one sense a disguised class divide. That must change, too. It has begun to change, but within 10, 15 or 20 years we will see that changed out of recognition. We hope we will have a post-secondary system that is much more seamless in how those programs are articulated.
Mr. Bates: Canada is short 60,000 power engineers. Power engineers can earn, after one year's experience, $100,000 at 24 years old, yet we are not getting enough of them because people go to university and not necessarily to college.
In British Columbia we have 50,000 people who started an apprenticeship program and never finished because the times were good; they could get work, and they never formally qualified. Then, when the economy tanked last year, suddenly they are all scurrying for jobs, but they are not qualified, so the qualified people got the few jobs that were left.
B.C. has put in place a flexible learning program. A typical example is Vancouver Community College, which offers a 13-week course to working apprentices who are not qualified yet — 10 weeks done online and the last 3 weeks done face to face. They found that half the students already had the hands-on skills, so it was straight back to the employer after one day; they passed. Then they could focus on the students who needed the skills.
Another model is the cook's model. Camosun College provided cook training across the province; it was a very successful program. For some reason, B.C.'s Industry Training Authority, ITA, has closed that program now. I do not know why. I think some internal politics exist there.
That is what needs to be done if we are to improve the quality of people who are out in the workforce already who need formal accreditation, and to bring their skills up to the top levels.
Senator Plett: Thank you very much, and continue the great work.
Senator Merchant: Thank you to all of you. It is nice to see you again, Dr. Chase.
I, too, wanted to focus a little because I come from Saskatchewan. You know our demographic. We have many young First Nations people.
Ms. Van Rooijen, you started to answer some of my questions. What are the special challenges that you have experienced with Aboriginal students? Has this long-distance learning made things easier for them or is it more difficult? What are their completion rates? Are they able to find work once they have completed their training? Please deal with the Aboriginal issues first.
My second question is about the international students that you mentioned, Dr. Chase. Why are those important to our economy, to universities and to education? Also, what is the federal government doing, or not doing, and what would you like to see them do to attract international students?
Ms. Van Rooijen: One of the issues we face when working with First Nations is the readiness for university. We are an open university, so we do not require a high school diploma to get into a university program. However, we work very hard to ensure that any student, regardless, will successfully complete their program.
We need to do an awful lot more front-end work with many of our populations who typically are under-represented in post-secondary education. It is not just with the First Nations group that we are experiencing this. We do know in Aboriginal populations, in particular, that distance learning is somewhat difficult because of the way they learn. This is one instance where the university has gone to more of a blended approach.
One element we see mostly in Aboriginal communities is the removal from their reserve and from their home place. Without that connection, they do not have support. Our model is to take our education, using our distance-education programs, to their communities so that they can stay there, continue to have the family, elder and community support to finish their programs. This model allows them to stay in their communities and serve their communities.
In terms of completion rates, we do see that it is more difficult. We also have to work much harder to prepare them for university, but it is working. We have a small number of Aboriginal students registered. We have a specific faculty centre within our university that focuses on Aboriginal education and different ways of providing it that is much more culturally sensitive to their needs.
The Learning Communities project is being funded now by the Rural Alberta Development Fund. We are doing a number of different programs to see which one is more successful. I do not have all the results yet, but early indications are that it is working quite well.
Senator Merchant: You know that in Regina we have the First Nations University of Canada. That is a unique atmosphere that provides a unique setting for First Nation students. We have been fighting hard in the last little while to keep it open. They have made good changes, and I think the governments will support them; but that was an institution where First Nations students felt very much more at home because it builds on some of their traditional aspects. That is an atmosphere that encourages them to stay at university and to do well.
Ms. Van Rooijen: We hope to create that within their community, using distance education.
Mr. Chase: In my previous institution, I worked quite closely with First Nations University of Canada. You are absolutely right. That institution is critical to the future of the province of Saskatchewan, to be blunt.
It provides a safe place for people who are coming in from tiny, Northern Aboriginal communities that may have only 100, 200 or 300 people. In many cases, this is those students' first contact with Southern, urban civilization, such as it is, and it is an overwhelming experience. To be in an institution that is built around their culture, in which they see similar faces — the artwork, even the cuisine in the cafeteria reflects their own ways of life — is an important way to ensure that they complete their post-secondary education.
Given the demographics of Saskatchewan and also, I think, of Manitoba, getting that right, getting the issue of Aboriginal participation in post-secondary, broadly construed, university, college and technical is absolutely key. I agree with you 100 per cent. It was an interesting and long series of challenges, and that series of challenges continues, but I certainly wish that institution all the best.
On international students, the points I would make come under four main headings; I will do them in an unusual order. First is the strengthening of the social fabric. Bringing highly qualified people to Canada from outside of Canada, giving them a very good post-secondary education here and then retaining them as Canadian citizens and contributing members on the labour market, strengthens the social fabric. It makes this country greater, and I think that is something we need to do.
Second, the selfish side of that is that bringing these people into our universities, colleges and technical institutions gives our own students — native Canadian students, Canadian-born students — a cultural enrichment and an experience of people from other cultures that they might not otherwise get.
Third, we are living in an increasingly globalized economy. That is one of the buzz words of the day. If we retreat behind barriers of whatever type, we will not be competitive; we will not be able to keep up with countries that have taken a very forward-standing approach. Australia is one that Dr. Bates has already mentioned. We need to be ahead of the curve on that.
Finally, the country needs skilled professionals. This is a question of labour-market development. As we are continually reminded in British Columbia by our government, what the universities are doing is intrinsically linked to labour-market development. As a matter of fact, our ministry in British Columbia is called the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development — which makes for a wonderful acronym — but we are continually reminded that those two activities are deeply and intimately linked in the government's eyes.
Mr. Bates: I have no comments on that.
Senator Merchant: You did not tell me what changes you want the federal government to make to make it more possible. Why is it that Australia is able to attract international students? Perhaps we are lagging behind a little. What would you like to see change?
Mr. Chase: I will try to answer that very briefly. Dr. Bates may know more about the Australian situation than I do.
Australia took a very concerted approach to attracting and recruiting international students to its campuses. That approach has had some challenges in the last few years, as I think most people are aware. However, effectively, the federal government said that this is the direction they will go as a country; everyone fall in behind. In Canada, I do not think we have had that type of national strategy.
B.C. has a provincial strategy along the Pacific Rim, particularly for labour market development. Our president was in China just a few weeks ago signing agreements with four Chinese universities in the company of Premier Campbell. However, nothing on a federal scale says to the world that Canada is serious about this, and that might be something that this committee would consider.
Senator Merchant: Therefore, it is not immigration issues or anything such as that, or do you know?
Mr. Chase: I am not sure I can answer that question. I think it is a very complex situation.
Senator Merchant: I think students apply to several countries and they are apt to accept the first offer because they want to study abroad. In the past, I was under the impression that perhaps we were not making it quite as easy for students to come to Canada.
Mr. Chase: That might have been an issue. I will conclude my remarks by saying that I also think we are a little too apologetic, in a typical Canadian fashion. Other countries go out and market their post-secondary systems as being of the highest quality and prestige. We have extremely fine universities in this country. We do not tend to remind others of that sufficiently.
Mr. Bates: The Australian universities became too dependent on the international student revenues. When the market dropped, some of the institutions were in considerable financial difficulties. The Bradley commission, which was set up by the federal department of education to look at the future of universities, recommended not scaling back on it but developing a different business plan that made them less dependent on the international fees. They received more money from the federal government as a result.
There is one thing the Australian government did which I have not mentioned, and I have not mentioned it because we really already have a national open university, if you think of Athabasca as a national open university. The federal government created Open Universities Australia, which has open access. Many of our distance programs do not have open access. You have to have high school completion or university entrance qualifications.
Nine Australian campus-based universities across the country that were offering distance programs came together to form this consortium. The government funded the first five years, mainly to develop the first- and second-year online courses, which the universities did not have. That has become so successful that the government does not fund it now. It is a self-financing system.
That is another possibility, but I did not want to raise that because I think Athabasca University could probably do many of those things itself.
Senator Martin: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for some of the ideas and findings that you presented today. As a proud graduate of UBC, I was happy to know, Dr. Bates, that you have worked with UBC, also. I only have one daughter who will be going to university in a few years, but I have had many students of whose educational processes I have been a part, including graduates of Royal Roads University and those that have gone on to other places in Canada.
Ms. Van Rooijen, you pointed out something that I think is a very important barrier that we should address as Canadians. I was so impressed to hear of the relationships you have with other institutions to allow for the transfer of credits. That is one barrier that I have seen repeatedly.
Not all students can go directly to universities for many different reasons, and I have advised many of my students to go to colleges or other institutions as a possible stepping stone to perhaps getting a university degree. Unless they sit down and really plan out their courses with counsellors or advisers, who are not always available, or unless they know the road they will take well in advance, often students will take general courses in the first and second year. I have seen many students having to repeat years of university or do additional years of study because of this inability to transfer credits. Intra-provincially, I have seen this repeatedly.
I am impressed with what you are doing. Where are we with respect to universities moving toward this ability to transfer credits within Canada? What efforts have been made, and how do we move toward that so that all institutions in Canada can make it possible for our students to transfer between institutions?
Ms. Van Rooijen: I will try to answer some of that. I do not have all of the statistics around it, but we know that it is not moving forward the way it should in this country. It is particularly difficult between provinces.
Within Alberta, it is much easier for our students to transfer from college to university or to take our courses. That is because that is what we have set up. I know it is particularly difficult in Ontario to transfer between universities. Over one third of our students come from Ontario, which is why we have focused our efforts on ensuring that they can transfer their one or two courses from us to their home institution.
Also, it speaks to the whole perception of distance, which is a little different than what you are asking. The perception among other universities is that distance learning is not as good and does not have the same quality. We take exception to that because we see our students going out in the world and contributing in the same way that other students do from other universities. They go on to become lawyers and doctors. They come to our graduate programs. In fact, we have one of the largest MBA programs in the country. We certainly have the largest Master of Arts program in the country at the graduate level.
We have to deal with that perception. It will be critical as we move forward as a country that e-learning or online learning is recognized to be as good as a traditional university education.
It is not moving as fast as it should, and we have had to really work hard to get those articulation agreements between institutions, so that our students' transfers are seamless.
The Chair: Are there further comments?
Mr. Chase: Since you are from British Columbia, you will be well aware that, provincially, British Columbia has done a pretty good job with the British Columbia Council on Admissions & Transfer, BCCAT, which has been imitated elsewhere, such as Saskatchewan.
Interprovincially, we are still challenged, as Ms. Van Rooijen said. Part of that stems from the inherent conservatism of universities as institutions and that admissions protocols and transfer protocols are governed effectively by academic councils, which do not always tend to be terribly outward-looking; they tend to be fairly inward-focused. Whatever government funders can do to push universities to open themselves would be a great help.
The issue here is essentially one around business models and how universities are structured to attract and retain FTE enrolments as the basis of their business model. We need to rethink that to allow for a much greater degree of flexibility and movement within the system and still allow universities to operate. There are some challenges there.
Senator Martin: I have a quick question for Dr. Bates. More than 15 years ago, I had heard about virtual schools; it was a model out of Alberta. With your work in e-learning and the technology advancements happening in education, are virtual schools essentially the same as what is happening with e-learning?
Mr. Bates: Yes. B.C. has what they call a distributed learning program for the K-to-12 sector. Basically, each school board is free to offer online courses, which can be taken by students anywhere in the province, and the equivalent portion of the FTE is transferred from the residential school to the online program.
This resulted in every school board offering programs in the first year. Suddenly, they realized it was silly: They were all offering Grade 11 English. Therefore, they got together and created B.C.'s Virtual School Society. Now much more collaboration and sharing happen. It has been very successful with the students; the students have really liked this program. It has really been a challenge for some of the classroom teachers because they can see that they are losing students if they are not delivering good classroom teaching.
Senator Martin: That is interesting. Thank you very much.
Senator Dyck: I am sitting here thinking that I am almost 65. I have spent 40 years of my life either going to a university as a student or working at a university. I feel as if I am a dinosaur. The university that I went to will fade away.
If I were starting now in Grade 12 and trying to decide where to go for post-secondary training, it would be confusing because such an array of opportunities exists in terms of whether I would go to the old-style institution or go for distance learning or a combination. Senator Martin broached this idea as well. How does a student decide? Are there programs developed so that the high school counsellors can determine that a student's style of learning is such that he or she would probably flourish more at a certain type of institution versus another type of institution? Is anything in place to help new students decide which way the should go?
You indicated, Professor Chase, that your programming is a graduate program, so you are dealing with students who already have some experience. However, for those who are starting out, how do they decide? Do we let them know that there is a high probability that they will be switching careers over their lifetime and that they may start at university and then end up going to a technical institute? I have met students who have done that. They have their degree in biology, but then they decide to work in a research laboratory, so they go back to a technical institute for two years. They may have to start all over again. They may not necessarily get credit for their biology degree. How does a student decide?
Please address the question of transferability of credits. How do we maximize the cross-talk among technical institutes, colleges and universities so that it matches the needs of the student in the Internet age as opposed to students from my age?
Mr. Chase: That is a complex set of questions.
As I said in my presentation, at Royal Roads our average age is between 36 and 37 years. The people have been in careers typically for a number of years. They come for a specific program. They are highly motivated. They know exactly what they want, and they are very demanding, which keeps us on our toes — and that is a good thing.
My impression of the sector generally is that, although we have a large number of people trying very hard to provide good, coherent, up-to-date advice to students coming into the system, it is not terribly systematic and has a large degree of variability of quality. Hence, we see a great deal of trial and error on the part of students coming into the system and dropping out.
The attrition rate at some of the traditional comprehensive universities in the country in year one is, I believe, as high as 40 per cent. It is a staggering loss of time, money and human capital in many ways. Can we reduce that? I think we can. However, I am not sure that we have a strategy in place that would allow us to reduce that effectively? Perhaps Ms. Van Rooijen has some ideas.
Ms. Van Rooijen: We are in a very similar position to Royal Roads in that our average age is much older than you would traditionally see coming out of high school. Most of the students who choose Athabasca University are well versed in distance learning or need the flexibility because they are working. The decision factor is fairly simple for them.
We find over the last several years that we are seeing an increasingly younger population coming to our university. We do not know whether this is a trend, whether the younger generation is actually so technologically savvy that distance learning is not an issue for them; but we see younger people come to our university and successfully complete their degree programs, which is terrific.
We have some students who are just over the age of 16, have finished high school early and are excelling. They typically tend to choose the distance component because it suits their lifestyle. They are also in rural areas and do not want to leave home, so that is the other factor. It still has much to do with parental choice. Parents have a huge influence on where their young children go to university.
Awareness is the biggest issue of where to start. That is part of it.
Mr. Bates: U.S. has spent a great deal of time under the Spellings Commission trying to provide measurements of university and college outputs for parents, primarily, so they could make judgments about which universities were performing best. As you know, it is a much more complex system in the U.S. than here. It was not very successful. The institutions pushed back about standardized measures of performance. It is very confusing.
Maclean's magazine provides rankings. My view of those is that they are so traditional. How many books do you have in the library? Is that a way to assess a university these days? The fewer books they have, maybe the better they are because it is all online. We do not have very good ways for parents and students to compare institutions.
It varies from province to province. B.C. has a very good online site that provides guidance on different programs and courses that students can take. Ontario has one, and it also has Contact North. Again, if you are looking at access for Aboriginal peoples and people in remote areas, Contact North is a very good model because it provides local learning centres in small communities of 100 people or so. Contact North has a contact person who will give guidance about programs available across the whole of the system in Ontario.
Some provinces are addressing this issue in interesting ways. Other provinces are not doing that as well.
Senator Dyck: In that case, do you think we need some type of national body? It was brought up that we should have a national body that attempts to coordinate or in some way set standards across the country so that we can have better transferability and better access to information for students to make those decisions.
Mr. Chase: It is something worth considering in the context that if we are to have a truly effective and articulated post-secondary system, that advice would be premised on a recognition that every institution needs to differentiate. We cannot have a porridge of institutions that are all roughly the same, trying to do the same thing. We cannot afford that any longer.
[Translation]
Senator Champagne: I could probably speak in English, but I prefer to use my language, if that is okay.
While we were working on this issue, we were often told about the important role parents play in motivating students to participate in post-secondary studies. We now see cases of parents who left school at some point because they had to.
I am talking about parents who had to drop out of school at some point. They have children now and they have a little more time. Distance education could be a way for stay-at-home parents to continue their studies, so that they may tell their kids that while they had to interrupt their education, their children do not have to do that.
Course curricula are not the same today as they were 20 to 25 years ago. Is establishing equivalences an option? Do prospective students have to pass an exam before they can register and qualify for a correspondence course?
[English]
Ms. Van Rooijen: I can start, and I would say absolutely; yes. There are a number of things. In fact, looking at our demographic, that is largely who we are getting to come to our university. There are many under-represented populations. It is the same situation you talked about: They went to university and had to leave for some reason and did not go back, but felt education was still important and wanted to be an example to their children.
Our convocation is happening now. I can tell you the stories we hear. We hear statements about students, about how they were first in their family to get their degree, and many of them are in their 40s. Seventy-four per cent of people who graduate from Athabasca University are first in their family to get a degree. When they cross the convocation floor, their statements usually relate to how they can now be an example to their children and how their children understand the importance of education.
Without that opportunity, they would not be able to tell their children about and show them the importance of education. Distance education can do this because many of these students are at home and taking care of children. When they know about this opportunity, they enroll.
Senator Champagne: Is it very expensive to take those courses online?
Ms. Van Rooijen: No, they cost about the same as other universities per course. The exception is that all of the books and the learning materials are included in our tuition fee. You do not pay more; you pay one fee and nothing else for your textbooks. We think it is quite cost-effective.
We wish we could offer it for less money because many students coming to us do not have the economic wherewithal to do it. I already mentioned the part-time student issue around funding. It is hard for these parents because they cannot access funding. We are working hard on scholarships and bursaries for these families, but we could do more for them to reduce the financial barriers.
Senator Champagne: Mr. Chase, one thing a person cannot really study at a distance is music. I am talking to the organist. I guess you can become a musicologist, and you could probably become a critic for a newspaper, but you cannot be a performing musician.
I will end my comment, Mr. Chair, if I may, by inviting Mr. Chase, if you are in the Montreal area, to my hometown, where the Casavant organs have been made for the last 120 or 150 years. If you want to try the best one, it is in my cathedral. I would be happy to call the pastor or bishop and invite you to play the organ at the cathedral there.
Mr. Chase: I have actually played that instrument. I have many friends at Casavant Frères. It is a very fine company, and it is a lovely instrument in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. Montreal, too, is filled with very good organs, such as those at St. Jean Baptiste Church, St. Joseph's Oratory, et cetera.
To answer your question, the Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition, PLAR, is key in our systems. I know Athabasca University does a tremendous amount. We try to take people from non-traditional backgrounds — people who may not have completed a high school qualification or, indeed, a first degree — and ask them to present us with a portfolio of what they have done in their professional and working lives. We evaluate that and letters of reference, and consider them for admission to a degree program, even a graduate degree program, on the basis of non-traditional backgrounds. That must become more a part of the Canadian system, generally.
Mr. Bates: I worked at The Open University in Britain in 1969, and we used to run preparatory courses for The Open University. We dropped them because students were self-selecting. The students pretty much knew whether they would succeed. We had completely open access — no prior learning assessment and no high school grades. Approximately 45 per cent of students would go on to graduate of those who had no qualifications whatsoever. It was a lower completion rate than those who had high school completion, but nevertheless they were very successful.
Not as many opportunities existed in those days as there are in Canada now to go to post-secondary education. Therefore, we had many very able people who did not have any high school qualification for whatever reason.
I am a great believer in completely open access. The Open University's criterion was the following: We do not care what you have when you come in; it is what you go out with that matters. The Open University in Britain had a quality assurance process that was run from the ministry of education and went to every university. The U.K. was in top 10 universities, both in teaching and research, despite the fact that many of its students had no prior qualifications whatsoever. I think we are far too conservative about prior learning.
Senator Champagne: I will just end by saying to Mr. Chase that, in the mid-1950s, I was the organist at that church for the young people's choir.
Senator Demers: You should have said the 1970s. You are very young.
Senator Cordy: This has been an excellent discussion. I taught school for a number of years, as well. Having been out of the school system for 10 years, I realize how much things have changed, even within the last 10 years.
Senator Dyck whispered to me earlier the suggestion that we should have a virtual Parliament. It might be worth a try. Question Period might contain better questions with actual answers.
We talk about it as being distance learning, but I think if we do innovative and great things for distance learning, then we are doing innovative and great things for all learners at university. Some of you mentioned earlier that it is not just those who are living far away who will take advantage of it.
I actually looked at some of the statistics for the distance learning for the university that I graduated from in Nova Scotia, and for which I served for a time on the board. While students from outside the Halifax area were using it, so were stay-at-home parents. Halifax is a great military town, so a number of military people who might not necessarily be at home used it. People who work shift work, such as nurses, doctors and so on, were also using it. If we make the programs good for distance learners, we are improving them for others.
There are some challenges. You talked about isolation being one of the things that could happen. You can be on your own. Of course, Dr. Bates said that it depends on what age you are. If you are 18 or 19 years old, it might not work for you, but if you are 35 years old, it might work well.
Dr. Chase, you talked about a teen-based cohort model that you have that provided support. Could you explain what that is?
Ms. Van Rooijen, you talked about social media being helpful in terms of people staying connected after the course itself. It is a wonderful idea that we continue learning; we have no choice, we have to do it. We must ensure it is successful.
Mr. Chase: Thank you for your question, senator. Distance learning online does not necessarily mean distance. If you have an online course running on your campus, you may well have someone in Abu Dhabi registered in the course. You might also have a 19 year-old student in the dorm room in the next building taking that course rather than a face- to-face section because the only seat left in that course was at 8:30 a.m.. Dr. Bates referred to it, but this is transforming the face of education.
With respect to the Royal Roads cohort model, if I were to come in to our MBA program this fall, the first thing I would do after being accepted is to be put into an online cohort. I would begin emailing with other students and an instructor lead. I would then come out to campus, as the first official segment of the degree program, and spend two weeks on campus in an intensive residency, living on campus with 50 or 60 other students in that cohort, formed into teams of 5 to 7 students and working about 18 to 20 hours a day. It is a tremendously intensive and exhausting process for these students. By the time that initial residency of two weeks is over, they have bonded, worked in teams, problem- solved and formed a series of communities.
When they leave campus for the first distance-learning segment, or DL segment, typically 9 to 10 weeks, they are formed into teams, and they work online as teams using various technologies, such as Elluminate Inc., that allow them to do this effectively through web conferencing. They then come back to campus, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and spend another two weeks, at the end of which they leave campus looking absolutely exhausted. That is how the programs are structured.
It is the bonds and community built in to that intensive residency that we feel carries them through the online components and also produces a high degree of alumni satisfaction. When we talk to our graduates, we ask them if we gave them what they wanted. They often tell us that we changed their lives. It is the cohort that does that.
Senator Cordy: If you have a conference call with people you have never met before, it is challenging. If you have a conference call with people you know and have met, it works much better. That is what you are saying.
Ms. Van Rooijen: We have a very similar program to Royal Roads, except we do not do the residency. We have a week at the beginning where they do very similar activities and do bond; we find that is critical in a team-based approach. Most of our graduate programs are that way. Our undergraduate programs are different. They are self- paced and individual. You register for a course, and you take it. You do not necessarily connect with other students. In some of our courses, you do because of the instructors, but in others you do not.
We are finding that many students are using social networking sites such as Facebook and other public sites to actually form their own study groups. This is the power of social networking and the social media. We find that is happening much more than it did even a year ago. We anticipate that will continue and, as Facebook morphs into something different, that will continue there, and there will be more connections. We encourage the students to connect with others, and they find each other on the social network sites. It is working.
Senator Cordy: Dr. Bates, you talked in your expectations for 2010 about e-publishing, which is quite a fascinating trend. When I am reading for relaxation, I have to admit that I love to curl up with a book and not with a Kindle, but I do see the advantages of e-publishing in the university sector. In the old days, when I was a student, we were waiting for the book to arrive at the bookstore, and we were into the course for a month or a month and a half and still did not have the textbook. I remember lugging a backpack of books around campus. How do you see that developing? What are the trends with e-publishing at the university?
Mr. Bates: In some universities, students are spending more on textbooks than on tuition fees, in some programs. It is a huge financial cost. E-publishing cuts down that cost because you are only paying for what you use, and publishing models are much cheaper because they do not have the distribution costs and so on. It is the cost issue as much as anything that will push the market toward more e-publishing.
There are all types of issues, though. We do not have time to go into the new copyright law and how that will affect e-publishing, and particularly how instructors can use that material in class. I have some concerns about the new copyright law and how that will affect the free use of printed materials that are now digital. I am not sure that the new law has really taken that into account. That might slow things up a little while people work out what they can and cannot do. I am not an expert in copyright, so I think someone would have to come before the committee to tell you how that might impact it. I do think that is the future.
There are many issues around things such as Google Books. I am a Canadian author, and they can take copies of my book, if my publisher agrees, and I cannot do anything about it. I am not protected by U.S. law on that. Some problems exist with Canadian publishers about Google Books, which is storing all the books. Their goal is to take all the books in the world and have them available on line. Problems exist with that model, and it is still before the courts in the U.S.
However, it is the way of the future, and I am struggling myself because I have a book coming out with a traditional publisher. I am wondering whether this should be an e-book because if it was, I could put in all manner of things such as activities, URLs for students to follow up and so on. Yes, I think that is the way of the future.
Ms. Van Rooijen: I am glad that you mentioned the issue of e-publishing because I agree with Dr. Bates. The new copyright legislation will have some significant impacts on how we can use information and, more importantly, how students can use information. I am not an expert in it, but I know our university has been in the forefront, working with the federal government to bring to light some of the issues that will result from the copyright legislation.
Four years ago, Athabasca University started an open access press. We were told we were absolutely crazy and that there would never be a revenue model in this. It was not about the revenue to us; it was about making the books, which are published through the research money we receive from public dollars, available to the public, so they are more readily accessible, free of charge. Every manuscript we have is on the web, and you can download it and read it freely. If you want to order a book, then that is where you pay for it. We found, as we suspected, although it was not a proven business model, that we are making more revenue because people want the books. They have read them online first, and then they want the physical books.
I do not know what the future of that is, and I do not know where that is going, but we are now experiencing a transition period. The critical point for us was ensuring that the information and the research that had been produced by our researchers through public dollars were readily accessible for free to the public.
Mr. Chase: My prediction is that there will be a differentiation in the market. Books for pleasure will remain available in physical form, the one you want to curl up with or take to the beach or read in the hammock. I believe traditional textbooks will disappear. The idea of the enormous introductory economics book or the biology textbook, which had to be revised into a new edition every three years at enormous cost to the system and to students, is gone. It is not only ineffective, but, as Dr. Bates pointed out, the traditional format does not permit the embedding electronically of links or simulations.
To return to Senator Champagne's idea of learning music, if someone were doing ear training now, you could do that effectively online because you can look to audio samples of intervals. You can be taught intervals online, as you would in a face-to-face situation with a teacher. You would not be able to learn how to play, but you would be able to train the ear that way.
For people trying to learn a language, we can now, with learning objects of various types, not only provide the audio narration of an effective teacher in the classroom but show on-screen words actually moving around to demonstrate syntax transformations. If you are trying to teach someone the difference between active and passive sentences, the voices and verbs, you can move the words around on the screen or in the e-book in a way that replicates what a teacher would do at a blackboard in a classroom. That will transform the sector out of recognition, I believe.
Senator Fairbairn: Thank you. I have probably said this before, but I will say it again. I have enjoyed listening to your courageous thoughts on this issue.
It was wonderful to listen to what you were saying, particularly when you were talking as well about our Aboriginal people.
I was recently in Lethbridge, Alberta, and the University of Lethbridge was having its big weekend. We have a very nice university up on the banks of the Oldman River with the mountains right behind. As we marched in, we did not have a band but rather a great and quite delightful group of Aboriginal people, including the students themselves. They took us in.
It reminded me of when I was growing up there. We are in Treaty 7 and the Kainai Nation, and for a long time now they have had the Red Crow Community College on their reserve. It has been a wonderful to watch what has happened over time with that college. It was there long before Lethbridge had a university. Because of how much work and pride went into Red Crow Community College, when the university started in Lethbridge, we made it clear that they would have people from Red Crow Community College come and teach at the university. In that way, they would include young people and show them this was a place to try.
The other day, it made me think both of them and of all the other young people who were there. When I was young in Lethbridge, there was no college. Sometimes people would drive up to Calgary or ride the bus up to Edmonton, which is what I did. Since then, many changes have been made, and it has been very vigorous for everyone, particularly the Aboriginal people.
When the University of Lethbridge began, they were clear in bringing in teachers from the tribe itself to start teaching, from Red Crow Community College to the University of Lethbridge.
We were marching in the other day and there they all were; so many young people who previously never had that shot. We also have a college in Lethbridge that works very vigorously to bring in the Aboriginal people.
Many difficulties still remain, but the one thing that has been shown and has helped tremendously is the communities in the area. The work of all the people, the teachers, the ones who have taken care of all of those places, has opened a door that has been quite outstanding. I would hope that it stays that way.
People came from many parts of Alberta just for the event. Both sides have made a huge effort in many ways in Lethbridge and all around. When I look at all of you and all the work that you have done and are doing, you are really changing lives. Here in this small place in the corner of Alberta, it is just hopping.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Fairbairn. That completes my list. We are just about out of time. Would our panellists like to make any closing comments before I bang the gavel?
Mr. Chase: Other than to thank you, senators, for a fascinating discussion, we hope that we have brought some thoughts that will be useful to you in your deliberations. Thank you very much. It has been an honour.
The Chair: Thank you. You have brought much.
Ms. Van Rooijen: Thank you. I would repeat those sentiments.
The Chair: That does bring to a close our meeting for today, but thank you very much all three of you, again, for the contributions you have made. You have a wealth of knowledge and expertise that is most helpful to us in our deliberations on access to post-secondary education, and particularly on the theme today of distance learning. We learned a few other things as well in the questions and comments. We learned about organs; we got some commentary about international students, as well.
Again, thank you, and this meeting is now adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)