Not especially special
The Ontario government has announced that they want universities to narrow their focus in the future by specializing in certain programs. This specialization will help the government save money, an ever-present issue due to their ever-growing deficit. All universities must make difficult decisions about what programs to focus on and what programs to scrap before the end of this year (to be implemented in later years), or they risk losing funding. What to specialize in is up to the universities, however, the government has the final say on all decisions.
The government, like everyone else, knows that money is power. And with this knowledge, the government is abusing their power, using universities’ desperate need for money to control them, as well as limiting the even more desperate-for-money university students who attend the now-at-risk institutions.
Brad Duguid (Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities), made the argument that two institutions may not be needed if both are offering the same course in the same region. What Duguid and his ministry are neglecting to recognize is that there is so much more to universities than the programs they provide.
Choosing the right university has forever been a stressful decision for graduating high school and mature students. However, with this new legislation, that decision may soon cease to exist. Students may not be able to choose a university based on how close or far it is to home, because their grandmother and mother went there, or because they liked the small campus atmosphere. Following through with this legislation would take away the students’ rights to choose a university based on what is the perfect fit for them – a choice that is crucial to students’ success and happiness for the subsequent years.
This new legislation would also put more pressure on students’ decisions, because if a student chose a program and found they didn’t like it they’d either be stuck in it, forced to change into another one of their university’s limited specializations, or forced to switch to another university.
What kind of implications would this have on students? Would they want to start over in a new university after they already built a community of friends at the first one? No one really knows, because students have always had these options. With this legislation, the government is taking away those options, along with students’ right to choose a university based on more than academics and a university’s right to provide their students with a variety of programs to major, minor, or take electives in.
Making universities more specialized would get rid of out-of-faculty electives that help to expand science students brains past the chemical formulas and arts students’ brains past philosophy and sociology. Program specialization would destroy the inclusive environment where engineers and humanities students are friends instead of enemies and limit the possibility of a well-rounded education.
What Duguid is failing to realize is that there is so much more that needs to be added into the equation on university specialization than just dollars and cents. Would scraping certain faculties on a certain campus limit the creation of clubs and groups that help to create community around the campus? Would it lead to narrow minded-ness of students, because nothing would challenge them? Would growth in university become purely educational and lack the important intellectual growth? There are too many unexplored potential consequences if universities and their students are forced to specialize.
Duguid and his ministry are acting like Goldilocks, thinking that they can come in uninvited to all of the universities, mess around with what has worked best for years, and experiment to find what is “just right” for them, while ignoring the possible consequences for future generations of students and staff. Spending less taxpayers’ dollars is something that everyone can support, however the question has to be asked: what consequences will there be if students are forced to specialize in a particular subject without adequate time and experience to make the right choices for them?