Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 5 - Evidence - May 6, 2010
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 10:30 a.m. to study the accessibility of post-secondary education in Canada.
Senator Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I would like to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
[English]
Today, the committee continues its study under an order of reference from the Senate of Canada on post-secondary education in Canada and related key issues, including the financing, both direct and indirect, of post-secondary education.
I remind the committee that we have an official end time today. We need to finish on time. Since this meeting is unique with regard to one of our distinguished senators, I want to take a few minutes before we finish in recognizing that senator's contributions. We expect the senator to arrive momentarily.
The first presenter will be Mr. Peers. Please proceed.
Douglas Peers, President, Canadian Association for Graduate Studies: Thank you. I want to extend my appreciation to the committee for inviting me to speak.
I am here representing the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies. We represent 60 institutions across Canada, 165,000 students and approximately 6,000 post-doctoral students.
The important point I want to make in my opening remarks is to emphasize how profound the period of transition is at this point in time with regard to graduate education in Canada and globally. It is a radically different world than it was even three years ago and much different than when I was a graduate student. In the last three years, we have seen a tremendous expansion in the number of graduate students admitted to Canadian universities and, at the same time, we were hit by a recession, which is having tremendous impacts on what we are able to deliver to our students and the kind of futures our students can experience once they graduate.
I think it behooves all of us in higher education to take notice that the nature of graduate studies is different today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. The typical student today is different than the typical student of 20 years ago. When I was a graduate student, most students tended to be young, white, middle class and generally male. We engaged in an act almost of self-reproduction since we were to become the next stream of academics.
Today's graduate student is likely very different from that profile. The student can be in mid career, have a family or have a different life expectancy and expectations.
Increasing numbers of our graduate students will not necessarily go on to academic careers. The research skills, aspirations and experiences they gain in graduate school will be leveraged in a variety of environments: public sector, private sector, industry, et cetera. The statistics are stunning when we look at where graduate students work today. Much of that variety is driven by the student's own expectations.
I will note a couple of other changes briefly. First is the increasing importance of post-doctoral fellowships and those students in Canada. They were typically constrained largely to medicine and the sciences. We are seeing more fellowships taking root in the social sciences and humanities as part of a career training path. Canada's graduate numbers are increasing, but they lag behind the U.S. There is tremendous pressure across Canada to increase graduate students.
Second, I want to emphasize the international context. The international environment is dynamic. The need for increased collaboration is clear. The knowledge economy does not know boundaries. We co-publish and co-research with one another. We need to facilitate that collaboration more for Canada to participate. This trend has also led to intensified competition in other fronts. Canada became rather confident about 20 years ago and we still are. We have a lot to offer the world, but there is danger in complacency.
I was in India in December. We visited various institutions representing Canadian graduate schools. The response was often that we were 10 years or 15 years too late. The Germans, French and others are already on the ground. These countries are not simply recruiting foreign students; they actively seek partnerships to benefit the students.
Regarding Europe and the Bologna Process, I was in Berlin last week. The development of a European educational area that spans from the Caucasus to the Atlantic allows for the mobility of students. It creates dynamic opportunities for students in Europe. Over time, I suspect it will become attractive for many students to participate.
Canada needs to think about how we can participate in that process and offer a viable alternative to foster mobility.
With that participation in mind, the national strategy I advocate is that Canada first needs to have the balance right. We need to support basic research. We must ensure we have faculty members in place to support students. We need to ensure our students receive adequate support to continue their studies, particularly to undertake studies without being distracted by having to take time-consuming employment. Post-doctoral fellowships are a critical issue. They are vital to what Canada can do in the knowledge economy and for an innovation strategy.
Finally, more attention needs to be paid to greater mobility: to allow students to move within Canada; to experience different labs, libraries, supervisors and colleagues to work with; and to gain international experience. The kinds of exchanges in which we engage in academic life today are becoming increasingly borderless.
James Turk, Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers: Honourable senators, it is a pleasure to be with you today. I distributed to you a packet of information containing documents I will reference.
I am doing something unconventional. I did not give you notes for my presentation. Given the number of issues we will talk about, I will make available to the committee a more elaborated set of comments on issues following our discussion. I look forward to a conversation around the issues you are dealing with.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers is a federation of academic staff associations of 122 universities and colleges across Canada. We represent 65,000 academic staff.
There is not a politician in this country that does not talk about the importance of post-secondary education, and how the future of Canada is tied, in many ways, to building an educated population for a knowledge economy. Unfortunately, there is a shortfall in our support for post-secondary education. This is what I want to talk with you about.
There are five items on the list of subjects we are dealing with. I will focus on items C and D on the list in my remarks about evaluating mechanisms for funding research and the transfer mechanism.
In terms of funding research, I want to raise two issues. First is the amount of funding provided. Second is the targeting of funding. Let me explain both issues.
In terms of the federal government's funding of academic research, I preface it by saying that academic research in Canada is probably more important than in any other major industrialized country. The private sector conducts relatively less research in Canada than in any other industrialized country. We have known this situation for 30 years. There has been a greater reliance on university-based research in Canada than anywhere else. The amount of funding for that research becomes vital.
From 1993-94 until 1997-98, we had a net decline year by year in the funding for academic research in Canada in real-dollar terms. From 1998-99 to 2006-07, there was a significant increase in funding, and since that time it has been flat.
In 2009, our government cut funding for the three granting councils that provide the bulk of funding for academic research — the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, NSERC and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, CIHR — by $147.9 million over three years. In 2009, the American government increased funding for its two granting councils by over $13 billion. In 2010, there was an increase to the three granting councils in Canada of less than the rate of inflation. At the same time, the Obama administration has proposed an increase to their granting councils of over 6 per cent.
One result of that funding is that we lose some scientists. The more serious result, I fear, is that we lose some of our young PhDs who take jobs in the United States where there are more serious possibilities to have their research funded, particularly in the natural sciences and in capital-intensive areas.
One issue is the amount of funding and another is the targeting of funding, that is, the Government of Canada directing where and how the granting councils can allocate the research funds they have received. For example, in 2007 the government provided $85 million in resources to the granting councils. Of the $35 million that went to NSERC, they were allowed to use it only for funding research in energy, the environment and information communications technologies. No other scientists could access money for anything else from that funding. In the social sciences and humanities, the total money that went to SSHRC could be used only in management, business and finance. Consider that this council is the granting council that funds all the philosophers, historians, anthropologists and so forth.
It was similar in 2008. NSERC's new money in 2008 could be used only for research into the needs of Canada's automobile manufacturing, forestry and fishing industries. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council money could be used only for research into environmental effects on the lives of Canadians and social and economic development needs in northern communities.
The problem with targeting was solved in 2009 because there was no new money; they actually cut the money. However, they had money for the Canada Graduate Scholarships Program, and the government specified that for the social sciences and humanities, those scholarships could be spent only on students studying in business-related degrees.
As well, in the last four budgets, in addition to targeting where the money to the granting councils was to go, they are also directing money to research institutes — not through a peer review process, not through the granting councils, but by the government specifying in the budget who is to receive the money. For example, in the last budget, the Rick Hansen Foundation received 50 per cent more money directly from the government than the entire Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. TRIUMF, which is an important major subatomic physics laboratory in British Columbia, received almost double the amount that the entire Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada received.
The government has targeted not only the agencies it prefers but also those it does not like. The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the main funding body for university-based research on climate, atmospheric and related oceanic work in Canada, received no new money in 2010, threatening Canada's capacity to continue research in these vital areas.
We are concerned about the government targeting funding in that way, and we find it ironic that a government that acknowledges that it cannot pick winners and losers in business thinks that it can direct where research money goes. We think that targeting is a serious mistake. I am sure by this targeting the government wants to ensure that the public money is spent in ways that will provide practical benefits, but in reality we know that the real benefits, commercial as well as practical, come largely out of basic research.
Think of all the things we use that come from basic research: computers, lasers, medical imaging devices like MRIs and CT scans, global positioning systems, encryption systems that allow us to do our banking, Teflon, and the Internet. The list goes on and on. The best way we know to benefit a country is to build in funding for basic research, and that has not been happening.
Mike Lazaridis, businessman, founder and co-CEO of Research in Motion, commented on this issue. He said:
I keeps hearing that there is something fundamentally wrong with the university research system in Canada. Some very influential people believe that we are not getting the proper "bang for the buck" from our investment in university R&D. In fact, having done some R&D, some say we should take upwards of $100-million from the annual budgets of the granting councils and focus instead on commercializing the knowledge we already have. What a dreadful mistake that would be. . . . The number one reason to fund basic research well and with vision is to attract the very best researchers from around the world. Once here, they can prepare Canada's next generations of graduates, masters, PhDs and post-doctorates, including the finest foreign students. All else flows from that.
There needs to be a refocus on both the amount of money and the funding of it.
The second issue I want to raise is the funding transfer for post-secondary education. Canada now transfers less, on a per-student constant-dollar basis, than it did in 1993-94. The Council of the Federation says that there must be an increase of at least 4.5 per cent per year to meet the needs adequately. The Canadian Association of University Teachers takes the position that we should go back to the level of funding that we were at in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the federal government put one half of one per cent of gross domestic product into post-secondary education; that is, one half of a penny of every dollar earned by the economy.
That will not happen. In fact, there will be no significant increase until we change the mechanism by which we fund post-secondary education. All our federal funding goes in block transfers that provinces can spend or not spend as they want, and they do not have to spend it on post-secondary education.
I do not think there is a cabinet of government that will make the significant increases that are necessary until there is some assurance that the money will actually be spent, and that is why we are proposing the introduction of a Canada post-secondary education act, a copy of which is in the kit that I have given you. This act will create a system modeled on the Canada Health Act with predictable guidelines, some assurance for the federal government that the money will be spent on post-secondary education, and some assurance for the provinces of predictable and sustainable funding for post-secondary education.
That assurance is vital. Without a movement to a different mechanism, we will not have an adequate level of funding.
[Translation]
Olivier Beaulieu-Mathurin, President, Conseil national des cycles supérieurs de la Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec: Thank you for your invitation Mr. Chairman, and I would like to repeat that the Conseil national des cycles supérieurs de la Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec is the only organization representing graduate students in Quebec and although it is part of the association, it has a unique status within that association.
I would like to begin by saying that our organization supports the recommendation put forward by the FEUQ on April 22 at this same committee's meeting, and that is the recommendation regarding opting out, C-288 federal transfers, and funding.
From our perspective education falls under provincial jurisdiction, however we acknowledge that the federal government plays an important role with respect to funding, more specifically in the area of research. Our position on funding research is that this has to be done through funding bodies that already exist, with their peer review process. Funding must occur together with the evaluation of funding body strategic plans. The ultimate goal is that all applications recommended by the various committees — which have not been funded because of a lack of funds — receive funding. There is excellent research but unfortunately there is no funding to support it.
The other issue I would like to raise is that of international students. We are of the opinion that there has to be an overall strategy for international students in Canada. We have to make access to post-secondary education easier for international students by improving access to information and the quality of that information. For example, in order for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to be able to set up a chat service, their website has to be developed so that foreign students can easily and quickly find what they are looking for, and the data and advice provided have to be standardized by providing more training to Citizenship and Immigration Canada's officers.
The other issue is the number of accredited doctors in countries that are a significant source of foreign students. We think that more doctors should be accredited abroad. It would facilitate the process for them to come here and it would facilitate the process from embassies and from Canada. What is apparent is that this is a kin to a market. When these individuals apply, they do not necessarily apply only to come to Canada, but also to other countries. Given everything that is happening with the Bologna process, Canada could be more competitive in attracting foreign students. This is an area that should not be neglected and we have to move ahead because there is added value in having more foreign students here.
All this must be done, of course, in the spirit of complementing each others' areas and respecting the jurisdictions of federal and provincial governments. Procedures must be facilitated for foreign students, a more international outlook for universities must be fostered, and links between organizations must be created.
We would also like to raise the issue of post-doctoral studentships. Since 2009 the CNCS has been representing post-doctoral trainees in Quebec. Two of our main associations have created representation for them within their structure. The Université de Montréal and McGill University have accommodated post-doctoral trainees within their institutions. We are following the situation very closely.
Since the last federal budget the status of these students has been clearer; prior to the budget it was not clear whether they were students or employees. At the same time, the real debate, which is whether or not their grants are taxed, is also taking place elsewhere.
This represents several thousands of dollars more or less in the pockets of these doctoral fellows. The academic aspect to this question is whether or not this is training. Despite the federal government's recent decision, one has to acknowledge that there is strong and tangible recognition of the educational nature of post-doctoral fellowships. Quebec's Ministry of Education recognizes this in its funding formulas for post-doctoral fellowships.
The Association des universités au Québec and the Association des doyens des établissements d'enseignement supérieur officially support the fellows being included as students. Apart from the unionization of some post-doctoral fellows in two Ontario universities, there is little support for post-doctoral fellows being considered as employees. Sometimes there is ambiguity because of the common definition. That is an important aspect to this. Work has to be done in that regard. On the other hand, each of these universities has to decide and there has to be some coordination between them.
I would like to add another measure that we support, whose purpose is to stem the exodus of young people from resource-rich regions, and that is to establish a type of tax credit for new graduates who decide to go back to live in the regions.
Tax credits can sometimes be complex. The FEUQ, however, supports tax credits. For example, we recommended that the Quebec government establish tax credits for international students. International students who decide to stay and settle here — in Quebec at least — would be reimbursed for a part of the fees they paid for their studies. This would allow us to attract individuals who already have a network within our universities and who have been trained in this country and therefore do not encounter the same kind of credential recognition problems that other immigrants from other countries encounter.
[English]
Andrea Balon, National Executive Representative, National Graduate Caucus: Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today about graduate student issues. The National Graduate Caucus is Canada's largest graduate student organization, representing over 70,000 students at over 30 campuses across the country.
As an organization, we see the investment in graduate students and their research as an essential investment in the future needs of the Canadian economy. Graduate students are the drivers of long-term innovation through their research and also go on to become a highly skilled and highly qualified workforce that is needed in a knowledge-based economy.
There have been modest improvements in graduate student funding in the recent federal budgets. However, these improvements still have not made up for the cuts to the granting councils from the early 1990s. The latest increases in funding and the Canada Graduate Scholarships were geared toward specific areas of private industry, a policy that limits long-term innovation. The short-term increase in the 2009 federal budget in the number of scholarships distributed under the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council were directed only towards business-related degrees.
Canada's research community responded negatively as the move ultimately undermines the independence of the council and the internationally recognized peer review standards within academia. This short-sighted research policy undermines Canada's world-class reputation and damages our world-class research community.
Also in the latest federal budget, this council received an increase of less than 1 per cent, following a trend of underfunding to the social sciences, even though the vast majority of graduate students are in this sector of academia.
According to recent studies carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada is falling far behind other industrialized countries in the area of private-sector research, development and innovation. Using public tax resources to subsidize private-sector-driven commercialization projects in universities, however, negatively affects incentives for the private sector to invest in in-house research and development. This policy also reduces the job opportunities for graduate students after they graduate.
We are of the opinion that public-sector funding for university research is essential to reverse this trend.
Today's graduate students face increased challenges. Graduate studies have expanded 37 per cent in the past decade as the demand for workers with advanced degrees has grown with the shift to a more knowledge-based economy. Despite this growth, there has not been an adequate increase in funding for graduate students. This lack of funding reduces not only the affordability of graduate school but also the quality of research.
Graduate students incur increased debt loads during their programs and face a faster rise in tuition fees than undergraduates, In addition, a Statistics Canada report released early this year showed that PhD graduates can look forward to increasing their pay only an average of $4,000 a year over that of a master's graduate, despite studying and paying tuition fees for an extra five years.
Basic curiosity-driven research that graduate students carry out is the foundation for the future economy, and establishes the long-term innovation possibilities for enterprises.
Countries such as those in Europe, the U.S. and growing economies like China and India have invested heavily in university research in response to the global recession.
Canada has been ranked by an international panel to have one of the most efficient and effective discovery grants programs in the world in producing innovative and top-tier research. However, investment by the federal government in the councils that fund university research was cut by $148 million in the 2009 budget and not restored in the recent budget.
Since 2006, the federal government has provided little in the way of upfront grants to graduate students. For example, the 2008 Budget increase in the number of Canada Graduate Scholarships did not reflect the enrolment trends in graduate studies. Only 15 per cent of the new scholarships in 2008 went to graduate students studying under the social sciences, humanities and the arts, where approximately 50 per cent of graduate students study.
The 2009 Budget continued this trend, with only $17 million of the $88 million going to SSHRC, and earmarking all of that $17 million for those in "business-related degrees," thereby excluding well over 90 per cent of graduate students in the social sciences, humanities and the arts.
Moreover, there was barely any mention of graduate student research in the 2010 federal budget, with paltry and asymmetrical increases to the granting councils favouring market-driven research.
Our recommendation to the pre-budget consultations was to restore the $148 million to the granting councils and increase, in both proportion and amount, funding to go to basic research by graduate students. We recommended that this money be asymmetrically allocated through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to make up for the historical underfunding of these programs.
Our second recommendation to government was to double the amount of Canada graduate students that receive direct funding for their studies through the Canada Graduate Scholarships Program.
I hope that when this committee considers issues pertaining to access to post-secondary education and graduate studies, you consider how graduate students are funded.
With that, I will end my presentation. I look forward to the question period, where I can provide more in-depth answers.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you to all our presenters.
I will now open the floor to our colleagues.
[Translation]
Senator Champagne: Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin, forgive me for being somewhat curious; you stated in your opening remarks that your organization has unique status within the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec. Why and what is it?
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: The CNCF is an organization that represents graduate students, and that, contrary to other members of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, has its own president, budget and the ability to take political positions. Within the federation, only the president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec can do that.
Senator Champagne: A few weeks ago Mr. Savoie appeared before this committee and I heard him again on the radio this morning; allow me to bring you up to date on Quebec news with respect to post-secondary education.
At this point, McGill University would like to substantially increase its tuition fees for its MBA program. In Quebec, the freeze on tuition fees was lifted in 2007 and since then they have been going up by $100 per year. That is not a huge amount. But this time we are talking about a very significant amount.
This morning I heard that the Minister of Education in Quebec, Ms. Courchesne, challenged McGill University and stated that if the university demands such high amounts from its students, then they will collect, from each student, the amounts they usually allocate.
Where do we stand? Of course McGill University's MBA program is one of the most well known in America, but there is also a program offered by the Hautes Études Commerciales; why does McGill University, when it attracts so many international students, want to increase its fees so substantially? Are they right or wrong? How will we manage that, both at the provincial level and at the federal level, the federal government being the one that transfers significant funds to Quebec for university education?
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: With respect to McGill University, I understand that they want to deregulate and go beyond the ministry's threshold. I should point out that up until 2012 fees will not be frozen and there will be an increase.
At that point there will be further consultations and what McGill University is doing in fact is trying to force a move ahead and go beyond what has been decided.
McGill University also provides a program in partnership with the HEC. It is called an EMBA; an executive MBA that costs approximately $60,000. They are allowed to offer that program but when they try to change their entire MBA program for all students and increase all fees, that is deregulate them, then the Ministry of Education refuses.
McGill University also wanted to turn that program into a self-financing program so that they would no longer have to comply with the ministry's rules. One needs authorization to do that and one needs to provide grounds for the change based on the market.
There are two or three self-financing programs in Quebec. This boils down to a confrontation between the Ministry of Education and McGill University. In our opinion, that is not the path to take for now. The McGill Students' Society and the GSS are also uncomfortable with this decision.
Senator Champagne: This would be a form of privatization in a university in Quebec; at least in one of its programs.
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: There is some concern about a domino effect. The rector of Laval University stated that, in relation to their medical program for which there is huge demand and for which they turn away many students, they might also like to increase their fees. That is currently the concern of several groups.
Senator Champagne: I would like you to confirm something for me: Is it true that foreign students pay tuition fees that are much higher than Canadian or Quebec students?
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: There are three differences, between Quebec, Canadian and foreign students in Quebec, with respect to funding.
Senator Champagne: I will give the floor to my colleagues.
[English]
Senator Seidman: Thank you for coming to talk to us this morning. I have come from the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, where we are hearing from witnesses concerned with a vision for the future of the Canadian energy sector.
I was struck by something I heard this morning. We heard from witnesses who said that there is a growing crisis in electrical engineering university programs in this country. They said there were fewer and fewer students, and that this situation was having a profound influence on research and development and the development of new technologies in Canada.
They were speaking specifically as it related to the energy field and our challenges there. Among the reasons they put forward for this crisis of fewer and fewer students was what we have often heard and discussed around this table from our eminent senator, Senator Keon, that there is an ever-decreasing number of young men opting for post-secondary education, for some reason. The electrical engineering programs and the whole area of R&D and new technologies development appeal more to young men than to young women. I was struck by the crossover between what I heard on another committee this morning and our subject today. I would appreciate your comment on this issue.
Mr. Peers: I can try. I have been in my current institution for three years. Previously, I was at the University of Calgary, where we saw a noticeable trend, in particular with the oil sands. Young males, my nephew, for example, can make $140,000 per year as a roofer so why go to university? It speaks to a deeper problem that is not unique to Canada, as evidenced by the data from the U.S. and the U.K. In areas of hard science in general, we are becoming more dependent on international students. In the U.S., for example, 35 per cent of the graduate students in physics and math are international students. We face much the same problem here. There is a gender dimension beyond that but generally speaking, sciences are not attracting students in the way they once were. This issue has to be addressed through the K to 12 system as well as the universities.
Engineering has further challenges in persuading students to take on a research career when the private-sector opportunities are good. Often, they can go from a bachelor of engineering straight into a prospective job and they are not necessarily going into a master's level education. Talking with grad deans across Canada, that is a further pressure on universities to seek international students to work in the labs of faculty members.
Coming back to what other people at the table pointed out, to support graduate students in those areas, we need well-funded labs and researchers that are active, and we have to keep those researchers in Canada. There are multiple elements, but real efforts need to be taken to encourage more men and women generally to look at science as a valuable career. That effort has to start at the high school and junior high school levels.
Mr. Turk: There are a number of aspects to the question that you asked. Mr. Peers mentioned several of them. It is wrong to say that men are more likely to want to go into engineering than women. First, there is a significant surplus of men vis-à-vis women, but much research shows that there are numerous disincentives to women going into engineering. The tradition in engineering is that of a male culture, and women who begin in engineering, even when there are creative programs for that purpose, often leave. A number of universities have been wrestling with how to attract and keep more women, and there has been an increase in the percentage of women. Part of the solution to the problem is resolving some of the gender disincentives to women so that they enter the program, stay with it and succeed in the field.
Second, there is a lesser enrolment in the sciences generally, which has been discussed a lot. Mr. Peers is right: We have to look at that issue partly in terms of elementary and secondary education for a solution. Third, especially in fields like engineering, for people who want to go on to become academics in the field and to teach and do research, the field is capital-intensive. With the underfunding of NSERC, the reality is that it is difficult to obtain adequate funding in Canada. It is much more difficult here than it is in the United States. Of course, we have many top students who go on to the United States to do their PhDs because there is more funding for their graduate work. Then, they often stay in the United States because there is more opportunity for jobs and funding for those jobs. A complex set of issues is at the base of the problem.
Senator Seidman: If we can pursue this a little more, you talked about better information at the secondary level. Can the universities do something in terms of marketing and public relations?
Mr. Turk: The issue is not primarily a public relations issue or a marketing issue. If students do not come to university with a background in mathematics and the sciences, they will not be able to study engineering. The elementary and secondary curricula in the different provinces have been wrestling with how to strengthen curricula in maths and sciences to attract students to those fields. Sometimes educators have made missteps, as in Ontario, where they altered the curriculum in such a way that algebra in Grade 11 was so difficult, it discouraged many students from going forward. The focus needs to be on the secondary level curricula in terms of preparing more people to go into the field at the university level. That is my recommendation.
Mr. Peers: I agree. Many people in Canada are actively trying to promote science in high school. One can point to the recently installed President of the University of Calgary, Elizabeth Cannon, who is an engineer. She has been active in bringing more women to science and engineering. One of my female associate deans is a mathematician, and she is active. There is a growing recognition that we need many more role models and mentors going out to the schools. Universities are stepping up, but it comes back to the curriculum, parental expectations, et cetera.
Senator Seidman: Do Ms. Balon or Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin have anything to add?
[Translation]
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: Several universities offer initiation studentships for research to undergraduate students. These students are paired up with master's or doctoral students in various research groups that they work with during the summer. That serves as an initiation and can motivate them to undertake post-graduate studies, which represents an added value in training. That is why students may make that choice.
One of the main reasons why there are fewer graduate students in natural sciences or engineering is that it is easier to find a job in those areas with an undergraduate degree. Students realize that it is not really worthwhile pursuing graduate studies. They may go on if they have a passion for it or if they want to work with a particular professor. Many of my colleagues from the Association des étudiants de l'École Polytechnique (AEP) would say that for now they do not want to undertake graduate studies.
[English]
Ms. Balon: Funding is a huge issue. In the last federal budget, funding was directed at infrastructure and building labs. As Mr. Turk said, little funding has been directed at graduate student researchers who conduct this research. That situation has huge implications for why students are not continuing in the science sectors.
We also have to consider that students are coming out of their undergraduate degrees with high debt loads as well. As Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin said, they are moving into their graduate research and have to decide whether they should take a job to pay off their debt or accumulate more debt.
With regard to international students working in the sciences, international students pay twice as much in fees. If they are given scholarships or grants, they are not allowed work permits on most of the scholarships, to my understanding. They too struggle at higher amounts because they are isolated when they come here to study. Funding is a huge issue.
Senator Cordy: My first question relates to the intense competition for international postgraduate students. Mr. Peers, you spoke about going to India and said that you arrived and were told that you were too late because European countries are offering partnerships for study in their countries. We have not been able to offer these partnerships.
We heard yesterday that the same challenges exist for the recruitment of undergrad students. We heard that Australia spends $20 million per year to promote Australia to international students. Canada spends $1 million, which is less than what some universities spend. I had the opportunity a few years ago to talk to officials in our embassy in Malaysia, where I brought this up. They said that Australia has what I will call university information days that the students from Asia — either China or India — attend. They are accepted to the university, and at the same time they receive their student visas.
We have a challenge because what I heard at the time — and I gather from talking to some of the university people in Halifax the situation has not changed for Canada — is that students are applying to universities in Canada and being accepted, but after months and months, they still have not heard whether they have been granted a student visa. Rather than wait until the end of August or early September to make their decision, they are either studying at home or going to places like Australia or European countries that offer the visas in a more timely way.
What do we do about that situation? We have the public relations aspect, but also the student visa aspect. What kinds of measures should we recommend as a committee?
Mr. Peers: It is interesting. I was here on Tuesday for a meeting with Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and we talked about this issue. Canada has been slower at processing visas and it has been a long-standing complaint for many of us. I wish we were not that slow but, on the other hand, Australia has inherited a number of problems. The instances of fraud are high. Several months ago in the U.K., they were not accepting any student visas from Northern India due to serious problems of fraud.
Australia was aggressive in going abroad, pursuing students and setting up branch campuses. That approach has led to certain quality concerns. One thing we have done well in Canada is to maintain the quality of our programs.
The real challenge with international graduate students is not so much the visas — though they can be a hassle — it is supporting those students. The days when students come in with money and pay for the privilege of being a graduate student — like I did when I was a graduate student — are long since gone. For any good graduate student — a PhD-research student, and it does not matter whether they are in history, political science, chemistry or whatever — we need to be able to fund them.
There are scholarship programs, like the China scholarship program, for example. We now have the Vanier scholarships and we have been using them to bring in top international students, but we have to be able to fund them. Depending upon provincial jurisdiction, that funding can be difficult for an institution. We are competing with the top institutions. Several of my own master's students have gone to the U.S. for their PhDs and are receiving lucrative packages. We need to be able to offer the same.
Mr. Turk: Every university wants international students because broadening the diversity of the student body is valuable for all sorts of reasons.
Let us be frank. The desire of most countries to attract large numbers of graduate students — and Australia is the most extreme, especially for undergraduates — is that they see it as a way of funding their post-secondary system. As a result of difficult economic times, competing challenges in health care and social assistance, there has been, worldwide, in varying degrees, underfunding and a desire by virtually every industrialized country to see international students as a way to bring money into the system. There is vigorous competition.
If you look at literature in the U.K., Ireland, Australia or New Zealand, you see the same rhetoric as here: We want to be the destination for international students. They are all out recruiting.
At the end of the day, this recruiting is a mug's game. We want to have information programs and visas available appropriately, but thinking that somehow we will be able to lure more students away from the U.K. or Australia, at the end of the day, that is not how to build our post-secondary system. We will all get our share. There is too much of a false belief. If we were the only country recruiting it could be a possibility, but we are not. Everyone is asking the same questions. There are discussions going on, I imagine, in every equivalent committee in every capital of every major industrialized country.
We must ask more basic questions. We want international students. How do we make it possible for them to come here? How do we sustain them when they are here? How do we have adequate funding?
I will pick up on something Mr. Peers said because it is my experience too. I know loads of Canadians undergraduates who have gotten their BAs in Canada and have left Canada because there was not adequate funding for them to do their PhD studies. The amount of money available for scholarships and research in the U.S. is drawing them away. We must look more basically at the funding before we focus on international students somehow and take the issue out of the larger context.
Senator Cordy: The suggestion seems to be to take a balanced, practical approach.
I want to talk about the funding for research. Funding for research is vital, but a number of you have talked about the 2009 Budget funding cuts for funding councils, whereas the U.S. increased funding by $13 billion. In 2010, our increase was less than inflation while the U.S. increased by 6 per cent. In addition to the cuts, funding was targeted. You itemized where it was targetted, so I will not repeat that.
Ms. Balon spoke about how some agencies seemed to be favoured. Some received 50 per cent more; some received no increases or less money.
We tend to have winners and losers. Should we have strings attached to funding? How will those strings attract postgraduate students to Canada? It does not seem to me that they will be helpful.
Mr. Turk: The federal government puts considerable money into research. We argue the funding is not adequate and leaves us disadvantaged vis-à-vis the United States, which is the place that we can lose most faculty and students to.
The government, in funding, understandably is concerned about appropriate use of significant public money. Where government makes its mistake is in thinking it should be the body that decides who receives the money and what kinds of focus there should be for the money that it gives to various granting councils; or that it should bypass the granting councils altogether and give money to certain research centres.
Our argument, to put it simply, is that there is ample evidence over many years that the best decisions about how to allocate research money is made best by the scientific community through a peer-review process that is properly accountable. I made the comment that our current federal government acknowledges that it is difficult for governments to pick winners and losers in the business world. It is even more difficult to pick winners and losers in research.
Research advances by failure as well as by success. Many things we try do not work out, but we learn from that experience. Experts in the field, and expert scientists generally, are in the best position to advise as to priorities and, within those priorities, which applications are most meritorious.
For all three granting councils now, fewer than 20 per cent of the applications that come in for funding from academics are able to be granted. Difficult decisions must be made. When the government targets by saying all the money for the humanities and social scientists can go only for research in business administration and finance, it means that granting councils are not able to consider potentially important applications in other fields. We think that decision should be made by the research community in an accountable way.
Mr. Peers: As someone who has enjoyed multiple perspectives on the peer-review process, I am one of the most outspoken defenders of it. However, it is important to realize that one of the unique things about the research landscape in Canada is how dependent we are on those three councils. Other countries have multiple councils, agencies and private-sector foundations. A researcher in another country like the U.S. will have more opportunities for funding. We tend to be much more dependent on those three councils.
Ms. Balon: The targeting of funds to produce marketable, commercial research is concerning, especially with the granting councils. The universities have had a poor track record in producing marketable products. In fact, there has been a consistent reduction in the rate of return on investment in the commercialization of university research. We spend more money at most universities maintaining these commercialization programs than we receive in royalties from selling the intellectual property. That situation is something we need to consider.
I will echo the previous comments that we need to respect the peer-review process and we need to respect curiosity-driven research.
Senator Hubley: Welcome, and thank you for your presentations this morning. My question will follow upon Senator Cordy's question. I was interested in your review of the 2010 Budget, where the government has moved money out of the granting councils and into the budget to have the opportunity to give monies to specific organizations or foundations. That may be the reason why that happened.
Do you feel the federal government has a role to play in ensuring that research conducted in the universities meets the needs of society and the Canadian economy? The government may be looking at funding through a different lens. Can you comment on that, please?
Mr. Turk: The federal government has the right, if not the obligation, to be concerned that the money it provides for research serves the needs of Canadians. The question is how best to serve the needs of Canadians. I suggest that the best way to do that may be counterintuitive. It is not for the government to say: Spend it in this area; spend it on that project; or give it to this centre. It is not to say, we will focus on things where researchers can tell us that the funding will have an impact within six months or a year. That might seem the obvious way to provide funding, but that is not how scientific research proceeds successfully.
I have a friend who is a senior researcher at the Montreal Neurological Institute. He says that every time he fills out a grant application, he has to lie because the application asks him to talk about what benefit will come out of this research. He says that he is a scientist pursuing various issues in neurology that he thinks are scientifically important, that he does not know where the issues will lead, yet he has to make up some explanation of where they will lead.
I will give you one example. Some of you may know this one. Paul Berg, who received the Nobel Prize for work at Stanford in the mid-1970s that laid the groundwork for splicing DNA to make hybrid molecules, which arguably helps underwrite a multi-billion-dollar biotech industry today, said that when he was doing this work, they did not have any sense of where it would lead or what value there would be. He said that if he had had to pass through a commercialization screen, he would not have received a dime.
We do not have time here, but I can give you dozens of examples. In my presentation, I read off all sorts of things that came out of basic research that are important to us: computers, lasers, medical imaging devices, global positioning systems, encryption, Teflon, the Internet, and so forth.
The point is that the best way for the government to ensure that its funding benefits Canadians is to give money to granting councils that, through a rigorous peer-review process, identify what they think is the best science, and out of that process, benefits will flow. There is no better way to achieve the end. Trying to tell scientists how to research or trying to tell the council where to spend the money we know will not benefit Canadians in the same way. The desire they have is right; the method is wrong.
Senator Hubley: My next question relates to involvement of the private sector. How involved is the Canadian private sector compared to other countries? What is your role in perhaps inviting more participation from the private sector in our educational systems?
Mr. Peers: From the graduate education perspective, probably the area where the private sector is most involved is through donations, fellowships and scholarships. We actively pursue these sources, and they have become an important area of funding in many of our institutions. There is a risk to that funding, as we discovered with the recent economic crisis, when the payout from our endowments diminishes. It showed in my bottom line. That is one important area.
Another area is through various partnerships. Many graduate schools in Canada are looking at internships. One of the most telling statistics that we have to keep reminding ourselves of, as graduate deans, is that the majority of our students, even at the PhD level, will not become academics for a variety of reasons.
In chemistry, for example, colleagues at my institution have told me that about 90 per cent of their chemistry PhDs will seek work in industry. Part of the training for them, in my view, ought to be greater attention to outfitting them with the skills and networks. We are responding to that need, in cooperation with industry, through internships and various partnerships.
There will always be issues. One of the most pressing issues at our institutions is intellectual property. If a student is working on something, then who owns the intellectual property to that work? This issue can become messy and complicated. I spend too much of my time speaking to lawyers these days as we try to pick our way through this issue.
This area is evolving in new ways. Again, I am a historian and I look backwards, but looking forward, I think we will see a lot more activity in that respect.
Senator Hubley: I have a short question relating to international students. Ms. Balon might respond to this question.
Is there a fear that the number of seats that international students are given will interfere with Canadian students and those seeking higher education?
Ms. Balon: To my knowledge, there is no fear amongst students.
Senator Merchant: Thank you very much, and welcome to all of you.
I was looking at material given to us by the Library of Parliament. I will switch the emphasis a little bit. Canada ranked twentieth in the OECD in the number of new PhD graduates per million population.
First, can you help us understand how we can improve this number? From the point of view of students, I am interested to know what kind of debt levels a PhD student has at the completion of the program. Perhaps you can compare that debt level to the debt level that someone who is taking only a master's or post-secondary education incurs.
Is that a disincentive for people to go into a PhD program? How does that situation affect women? Why are fewer women pursuing PhD studies in Canada? You mentioned a nephew who prefers to stay a roofer than to go into graduate studies.
Mr. Peers: If the OECD study you referred to is the one I think it is, I have serious problems with the data. The study uses a snapshot of a cohort that I believe is up to age 27. Most of our PhDs in Canada will not convocate until they are 30 or 31. Therefore, our numbers probably look more comparable.
The study is also skewed by the fact that in America they tend to have a lot more master's degree and PhD degree students for areas of study that we do not necessarily have here. I tend to use that data with a certain degree of caution.
Financial concerns are obviously a big matter, particularly for women. A PhD program typically will take five to eight years, and that time tends to correspond to the time when many women are looking at having a family. Our systems and structures internally, as well as the funding process externally, have to be made much more flexible.
Ms. Balon: When we talk about PhD graduates, we need to look at the big picture. Undergraduates, once they graduate, come out with an average debt load of $20,000 to $28,000, depending on where one studies in Canada. If they go into a master's program, they incur more debt. Despite some programs that fund well, overall, 95 per cent of graduate students do not receive direct funding for their research; only 5 per cent do. Funding is a huge issue.
I do not have the statistics with me with regard to the debt load after completing a PhD program, but it takes five to seven years to complete a degree. They are at a different stage in their life. They may have dependents. They may need to pay off their debt and take a job. To be frank, if a PhD student realizes that a master's degree graduate earns only $4,000 less than someone who has a PhD degree, and the job market to teach within the institutions is slim and competitive, it is discouraging. I do not know about the study or the statistics, but I can understand why we rank low.
Mr. Turk: In that bilious green folder I gave you is an almanac we publish each year, which has all the quantitative data available in Canada on post-secondary education. For example, on page 35 is table 3.19, "Doctorates Awarded by Major Discipline, Field of Study and Sex, Canada, 2006." It talks about levels of indebtedness. You or your staff may find this information useful in answering some of those questions.
One thing we know about student debt is that it is particularly onerous in the professional fields. I was at a committee two years ago with the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Dental Association and a professional engineers association. Dentistry has the highest tuition of any professional field. I remember the head of the Canadian Dental Association saying that there are two problems with the high tuition fees and the anticipated high debt load. They have an effect on who goes into the field. Students from poorer families with less experience in dealing with debt will be discouraged by $20,000 tuition fees, and incurring a $50,000 or $100,000 debt by the time they graduate. What I found interesting in his presentation, and it was echoed by others, is that it also affects Canadians in the choice of fields that the students who do enrol go into. He said at the time he was a student in dentistry, tuition was $400 a year and he came out with no appreciable debt. Now students typically come out with over $100,000 in debt so they do not want to practise in smaller communities. He was from Alberta. He said that dentists do not want to practise in Red Deer; they want to practise in Edmonton, Calgary or Toronto where they can be part of a large existing practice to pay back their debt. The Canadian Medical Association says that, in part, fewer people go into family medicine when they have big debt loads; they go into specialties and they want to practise in large urban centres. In law school, we were told of students shifting into areas of corporate law and others, where the University of Toronto led the way in raising its tuition fee for law to $22,000 a year. We see students, because of the debt ahead of them or the debt they have incurred, choosing areas of study and choosing places to locate that have negative effects on the ability to have people locate in smaller communities or undertake certain fields. That aspect is another one that is not often talked about.
[Translation]
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: There is a perception that debt weighs enormously in the decision to undertake further studies or not. Other factors are more personal, for example wanting to have a family, relationship, et cetera. One of the measures we have put forward is to include a provision in the Quebec system of parental insurance, that would provide funding during maternal or paternal leave, for both men and women. When you undertake a five- or eight-year doctorate, there is a limit to how long you can put off your family plans, that is when you will have children. We could improve conditions for student researchers and we would in so doing increase the number of people who make that choice.
The other issue with respect to the number of doctoral students we train in Canada is that of employment opportunities for doctoral graduates. No one will be underemployed or will have to undertake two or three postdocs in order to have an academic career. The number of professors being hired in universities should increase. However, the increase in the number of doctorates and the number of positions in universities have not been equivalent and most studies prove this: most graduates will not work in the academic field. There is also the issue of receptiveness on the part of the private sector. Areas that have to be developed are professional skills, team supervision, and several research and communication projects.
There could potentially be problems with respect to granting agencies, that have to fund the development of these teams. Universities also have to do their share of the work. Some universities are more committed than others. But there can be several choices.
[English]
Senator Merchant: You mentioned, Mr. Turk, that there are students from backgrounds who do not have much financial support. Do the granting councils then ever take need into consideration in awarding bursaries or are they awarded simply on merit? How does that process work?
Mr. Turk: I imagine the two student representatives can answer this question better than I. Canada, in terms of supporting students, is focused primarily on a loan program, more than most countries. In fact, the present government was the first to introduce, finally, a national needs-based grant system. We were complimentary to the government when it did that. A loan-based system serves as a disincentive to certain types of students, depending on their background. We favour much more of a needs-based grants system. I am talking primarily about undergraduates.
For PhD students at the major research universities, by and large there is an expectation — I know this expectation exists at the University of Toronto — that the department will provide equivalent of tuition funding for all the PhD students. There is a limit to how many students universities can take in, depending on the amount of money they have. At all the leading American universities, a PhD student in their program pays no tuition. Students are charged, but the cost is covered in other ways. It has proven a challenge for Canada to meet that funding. We lose students again to the U.S. where we do not have the funds.
Dr. Peers will know better than I whether the majority of Canadian universities at the PhD level remit the graduate tuition fees.
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Balon indicated she wanted to answer this question, and then I will turn to Mr. Peers.
Ms. Balon: On graduate tuition fees, it is my understanding that faculties of graduate studies at universities across the country are now looking at ways to scale back because of constraints in these times. We are hearing of cuts from 5 per cent to 10 per cent across the board. That situation ultimately may come down to covering the tuition fees of PhD students.
In regard to the needs-based grants, in 2009 this federal government introduced the Canada Student Grants Program, much to the benefit of students. Unfortunately, graduate students do not have access to this program. The position of the National Graduate Caucus is to call for graduate students to have access to this needs-based grants program. We call for the tax credits for scholarships to be used to fund the upfront needs-based grants for graduate students.
Mr. Peers: Most Canadian graduate schools will either waive fees or try to increase other funds to compensate for them, the assumption being that the PhD level is not a revenue-generating mechanism. As far as the scholarships go from the councils, those scholarships are all merit-based. There are no needs-based scholarships. Most institutions, such as my own and others, have a separate bursary fund that we try to use to ameliorate some of the problems. Obviously, the fund is not enough, but we try to use bursaries to offset some of the other costs.
[Translation]
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: The system of financial assistance in Quebec is based on loans and bursaries. Bursaries maintain a certain level of debt and are allocated according to need. The system is well designed in that way. In some universities in Quebec, a certain level of funding is guaranteed to students who undertake graduate studies.
Grants are based entirely on merit and it should remain like that. The systems should not be mixed.
Bursaries for graduate students should continue to be free of taxation. In our opinion, given the amount that government would gain compared to what the students provide as added value, it would not be worth changing the system because the situation is already a positive one.
Most of funding involves indirect funding. The funding that researchers receive allows them to hire students from within the university, which is also fundamental. The issue still is to increase funding for research.
[English]
Senator Keon: I will focus on the so-called crème de la crème. I hate to do that but I want to focus on it for a reason.
Post-secondary education is an enormously complex subject when we look at the entry students and the bachelor students, but when we focus on the PhDs, this is where the rubber hits the road in education. I do not mean at all to subdue the importance of education for the average young Canadian to find a job, but PhDs are where the rubber hits the road.
I am convinced that, frankly, I have never met an elected politician of any political persuasion or in any jurisdiction who really understands this point. They have to have been in it to understand, because what drives the frontier of knowledge is the peer-review process. They lay down a grant and the researchers must be peer-reviewed. Enough people cannot be found in Canada or in America, so in Germany someone reviews the grant and once the grant is awarded, the reviewer is on the computer saying, this is fantastic stuff; I can complement what you are doing. Then, we have the birth of a consortium. Out of that relationship, the wave of new knowledge grows and grows.
Politicians, some of whom I have known well over the years, some of whom were ministers of health provincially and federally, cannot get this point through their heads. Therefore, I wonder how the scientific community has failed them that we cannot educate them. Politicians throw these pots of money at things but fundamentally, that is a waste of time, right? It receives political kudos, but from a scientific point of view it is a waste of time.
There are occasions, particularly with more time, where targeted research has paid off. However, that research has paid off because the aces in the scientific community were collected and put in a single room and told to solve this problem. Throwing a pot of money at some foundation that is not disbursing that money by the peer-review process is a waste of time.
I am too old now to do this, so how will you convince the political community — it does not matter what party it is, and it does not matter what jurisdiction it is because all the provinces now have their own granting bodies — and how will you educate them on what new knowledge is all about? How will you educate them on what it takes to develop that little piece of new knowledge that falls out of the big funnel that started with the undergraduate students who moved up to master's, who moved up to PhDs?
I believe educating politicians is a major challenge. Money is not the major challenge. Education of politicians is the major challenge.
Mr. Turk: We wrestle with that question every day of our lives. You might say you are too old, but in many societies, it is the older folks who are valued because of their knowledge.
One thing I think we have failed at is explaining the importance of basic research. There is a common-sense view that money is expended and we are told what we should do, without knowing the research has to be based on work others have done. As you said, sometimes we bring all the best players together but even then they draw on a lot of the basic research that went before them to solve concrete problems.
One direction I know we have to go in — and I keep hoping to have the time to do this — is to write a popular book about basic research and what it has meant; how putting money into a granting council through a peer-review process that goes out to study all sorts of things that do not make sense to a particular politician or to a particular member of the public nevertheless is important.
I remember many times after one of the granting councils announced its grants, someone standing up in the House of Commons mocking some of the grants, saying this grant is going for the study of a kind of pigeon in the Northwest Territories. They ask, why are we wasting our money on that study, without understanding that kind of research underlies a series of questions that need to be answered that have broader scientific importance.
Part of the issue is being clearer about how science proceeds, as you suggested, and how, much of the time, it is our failures we learn from. It is not a simple matter of saying, I want to go from A to B and here is money for you to tell me how to go from A to B. Science does not work that way.
Mr. Peers: We must also take a lot of responsibility ourselves. As a community, we are guilty of a number of sins, one of which is obfuscation. Another one is speaking down to people. Another one is defensiveness and a tendency to whine that sometimes creeps in; all of which is perfectly understandable in a human relationship. However, we need to go out there and remind people of the value of basic research, and also of the fact that too much planning — and I am not speaking of a government particularly because universities can be guilty of it too — is wrapped up in the short term. We are trying to solve this week's problem, when it is the long-term problems that will jump up and bite us.
The example I often use is that my own field of research is specialized and not terribly strategic. It was not strategic on September 10, 2001. I work on the British frontier with Afghanistan as a historian. That is rare. After 9/11, suddenly my research became important. Strategically, two weeks before, there was no sense in supporting what I was researching because what was it going to do? Now, suddenly, they could not find people in Canada that were working in the area, and I am not as expert as some are; I am somewhat peripheral to the area. We saw that in the U.S. too. They were running around trying to find people who could speak Farsi or Pashto. They had not trained in that area. Allowing people to conduct that basic research is important because the problems that will hit us five or ten years from now are probably best addressed through basic research, not through a strategic plan where we cannot plan for the future.
The Deputy Chair: Senator Keon, is there another question?
Senator Keon: No; I only want you to go home and solve that problem.
Mr. Turk: Dr. Peers mentioned something where we are at fault. I believe we are at fault in another sense. In our desire, as educators and as universities, to get money, when the government says we need this, we say, yes, giving money to universities will benefit the economy and do all these things.
We give the impression that if they give us money, we will solve the problem. That leads to the notion that for us to solve their problem, then they will have to tell us what problems need to be solved. It is similar to when I call in a plumber because I need my toilet fixed. That is not the way science works. Yet, in our desperation to get funding, we often give credence to that notion by saying, yes, we will do what you want. Give us the money and we will deliver.
We see our granting councils doing that. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has set up a Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation where they basically say, we can solve your problems. They have a new Engaged Grants Program where they say, we will use this money so that scientists can be brought in to solve company-specific problems. They have another program on their website where they state, "We are helping to organize 'speed dating' events to bring interested researchers and companies into brief and structured contact to discuss needs and capabilities."
It is like scientists are this core of fixers who can be brought in. That impression contributes to part of the problem.
Senator Martin: Thank you for being here today. Listening to the questions and the conversation around this circle has enabled me to cross out things I wanted to say and to reframe a few things.
While my glass is half empty, I can look at it being half full. Today, there is a lot to celebrate. In Canada, we have innovation and places like TRIUMF that is world-class. I live in Vancouver and I went to the University of British Columbia. When you mentioned TRIUMF, Mr. Turk, I thought: Yes, this is something that we must all celebrate and be proud of because outside Canada, people recognize our achievements.
In answer to Senator Keon, Mr. Turk, you talked about educating politicians. I also think we need to deliver the message to the public, because we serve our constituents and the Canadian people. Talking to groups that represent the colleges, the private institutions, the Aboriginal communities, and so on, packaging, branding and marketing seem to arise at different sessions. I find the package you gave to us interesting. We have not talked at length, and I am sorry I missed some of the presentations this morning.
Many of you call for a national vision — that is, the leadership of the federal government — but I am mindful of the important jurisdiction that the provinces have with education. I will read this draft of the post-secondary education act you propose with great interest. In the Introduction on page II, you state that to address potential provincial concerns, we need "A declaration that the legislation does not alter or encroach upon the provinces' jurisdiction of post-secondary education." You continue by calling for an advisory council and by talking about the concept of bringing the provinces, the federal government, academics and other stakeholders together.
How much consultation have you had with the ministers of education in the provinces in drafting this act? How realistic is something like this proposed legislation? That is an important conversation to have.
Mr. Turk: You ask an important question. Our starting point, as I mentioned in my remarks, is that we do not think there is a solution to the funding of post-secondary education in Canada without some version of this kind of arrangement. The federal government will always be short on money for all the thousands of causes it supports so to put money into post-secondary education, the government will need assurance that the money will be spent on post-secondary education.
The provinces have an interest — and this brings in the realism part — in having more sustainable, predictable funding from the feds. There is a trade-off here. We have had experience in Canada. It is always a challenge when we talk about something where there are clearly pan-Canadian needs, as there is in post-secondary education. At the end of the day, the provincial responsibility comes from the British North American Act that talked about education. There was no concept of post-secondary education in those days. It has been interpreted that post-secondary education is provincial. It is, but the system is a global system. It is not even a provincial or a national system. We cannot operate as if every province is different. I think provinces understand that but want to find a mechanism where, in return for agreeing to certain kinds of things, they receive something in return; that is, predictable, adequate funding and mechanisms that are set up. We base this proposed act in part on the Canada Health Act, where there was a similar need to deal with things nationally and to ensure, on a pan-Canadian basis, certain predictable and accessible factors for all Canadians. We have had discussions about that need.
Concerns are expressed particularly in Alberta and Quebec. Any meeting of ministers on federal-provincial relations becomes testiest vis-à-vis Quebec and Alberta. On the other hand, we think there is a mood to move ahead with this legislation.
I want to share one other thing with you. CAUT conducts two national public opinion polls each year through the Harris-Decima polling firm. The sample size that we have them use is twice the normal sample size for a public opinion poll so that we can have regional breakdowns. In the poll they conducted for us last month, one of the questions was: Should conditions be attached to federal transfers for post-secondary education?
Sixty-eight per cent of Canadians indicated that the federal government should set conditions; 29 per cent said the provinces should use the money as they want.
I can send your committee the poll results. The breakdown across Canada is interesting. In every single province, the majority of Canadians said that the federal government should set conditions. It varied from 58 per cent in Quebec to 72 per cent in Ontario. In Alberta, 69 per cent of Albertans favoured the federal government setting conditions on post-secondary education.
There is a base of support for this legislation among the population. At the end of the day, politicians do pay attention to their constituents. There is recognition that we have to find some way. We do have a glass that is half full. We have a wonderful public post-secondary educational system, and that is one of our strengths. It is a public system, unlike the United States, which is a hodgepodge. There is recognition that we have to deal with this issue now, in the 21st century, on a pan-Canadian basis and find a mechanism to deal with it that is fair to the provinces and recognizes their role, while, at the same time, gives the federal government assurance that substantial money invested in post-secondary education will be used for post-secondary education.
Senator Martin: I have a question regarding Quebec and challenges for international students who want to study in Canada — and, Quebec is one option — with regard to the language issue. In B.C., for instance, a large proportion of our international students are from Asia and from countries where French is not the first language. How do you address that challenge in Quebec?
[Translation]
Mr. Beaulieu-Mathurin: The issue of involvement in post-secondary education is a very sensitive one for Quebec. I know that those I represent are certainly very uncomfortable with that. It would create more tension that we do not need right now.
With respect to foreign students, Quebec universities do not recruit in the same market that most other Canadian universities do their recruiting in.
There is another important factor to consider with respect to students of Indian or Chinese origin. It is important to understand the significance of McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal, because they bring another dimension to the recruiting market that is different from other universities in Quebec.
With respect to the government side, clearly there is the issue of promoting French, and making it possible to reunite families.
We think that a type of reimbursement or tax credit for those who decide to settle would also attract more students.
[English]
Senator Eaton: I am the chair of a post-graduate institute, which is the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto. I am well aware of how difficult it is to access research money. That said, I read with great interest the part of your introduction where you say, fewer faculty, larger classes, fewer offerings, reduced library holdings, et cetera.
However, my other hat is as a taxpayer. I am offended when I read about strikes at universities over tenure and hours of teaching. Although I would love to have a federal envelope that funnelled money expressly to post-graduate degrees and basic research in each province, I think there must be some kind of reform within your institutions before we will try to support funding from the federal government directly to them. You were talking about perhaps how your image in the greater Canadian public is not all that it should be. Have you thought about that aspect, or does that aspect come up?
Mr. Turk: I would be happy to answer that question. The issue does come up. Let me address it in several ways, if I may.
Yesterday, Statistics Canada released faculty salaries. Faculty salaries at the University of Toronto are the highest in the country, averaged at $122,000. I think the lowest salaries were at some small institutions at $80,000.
One question comes up, and you mentioned strikes. Our faculty at the University of Toronto, which has the highest salaries in the country, is not unified. What sets faculty salaries more than anything else is the market.
Senator Eaton: I am thinking of York University, for instance.
Mr. Turk: What I am saying, though, is that faculty salaries are primarily driven by the market. Therefore, salaries at the major research universities are higher than at the smaller and undergraduate institutions; salaries are lower in the Maritimes than in Ontario; and so forth.
However, academics, especially good academics, have job offers all the time from other places. I do not think faculty salaries are out of line. In fact, I argued in the media that faculty salaries, if anything, are less than salaries of equivalent professionals in other fields with the same degree. You were talking about money.
Senator Eaton: I am not talking about money so much as the idea that, for that money, you do not have to teach but three or four hours a week and you have the summers off.
Mr. Turk: Can we address that issue?
Senator Eaton: It is not the money. I do not think you are overpaid. I am not sure you are accountable for the same hours that most people work.
Mr. Turk: CAUT is right now finishing the largest workload study conducted in Canada, but there have been studies of academics in other countries. Academics typically work between 50 and 65 hours a week, which is far more than most Canadians. When one teaches a course at university, it is not like teaching a course in high school. I taught for many years at the University of Toronto and it was not three hours a week. I had three courses, so nine hours a week.
Typically, I spent six to ten hours writing a one-hour lecture. We are expected to be advancing our knowledge. It is not only rote learning. The reason the hours in university are different than in high school is that the university lecturer is supposed to bring forth advances in their fields.
Also, only 40 per cent of an academic's time is in teaching; 40 per cent is supposed to be research and 20 per cent service to the university and community. When we look at the actual workload of academic staff, it is higher than most other Canadian jobs.
Senator Eaton: I think you have a big public relations problem.
Mr. Turk: That is interesting. In our poll, which I will send you, we asked whether university and college teachers earn too much. Twenty-six per cent of Canadians said yes; 48 per cent said no; and 16 per cent were neutral. When asked the question: Do you have trust in university and college teachers? Seventy-two per cent of Canadians agreed; and 12 per cent disagreed.
I will mention on last question: Who do you trust on post-secondary issues? They were given the choice of student organizations, university and college teacher organizations, presidents, the provincial government or the federal government. Ms. Balon will be happy with the results: 39 per cent said they trusted student organizations; 20 per cent said they did not. Second in that group were university and college teacher organizations at 38 per cent. Twenty-seven per cent trusted university and college presidents; 23 per cent trusted the provincial government; and 22 per cent trusted the federal government.
I suggest we do not have the public relations problem you are suggesting. The polling data suggests that is not the case. Most of our members will agree with you, however. They think their neighbours are always joking about how they do not work in the summer and how they only teach six hours or whatever. However, the reality is different. When we conduct polling, it is not the public's perception of us.
Mr. Peers: There is always a danger of arguing on the basis of the cartoon academic character. I am ribbed by friends that I have four months off every summer, et cetera. One can single out other professions and find examples of other professionals that do not exemplify the whole profession but can often be used to caricature it.
Much of the problem with strikes hinges upon the biggest change happening across the higher education sector — I will let others speak to it — which is the earlier, seamless transition between being a graduate student and then achieving a tenure track and eventually a tenure job.
That transition has been substantially ruptured. With the kind of growth in higher education, when we look at the growth in universities and the numbers of students coming in, the number of permanent faculty positions has not kept pace for a number of reasons. We have created this new culture. The problem also exists in the U.S. The U.K. and Germany are also experiencing it.
As we move to more of a mass education model — and that is what they are experiencing in Europe, and having serious troubles with — how do we increase teaching capacity to cover that model and not create the kind of tenure and tenure stream positions? We are facing this problem across Canada. It is a structural problem. It is not unique to any one particular institution, though it may manifest itself in those places.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. I think I will forego the opportunity to exercise the prerogative of a last question, because of certain other possible uses of our time. Also, I think a substantial number of critical aspects of post-secondary education issues have been brought out today. Our witnesses have touched on aspects of those issues that were important for us to hear.
I thank you all for your presentations, for the frankness and directness of your answers, and for keeping those answers focused so that we could have the entire committee participate thoroughly in the discussion.
I thank you all on the committee's behalf for your appearance here today and your contributions. We will welcome any additional information you want to provide us.
You were also here at a historic time on the Hill and in this room, in fact. One of the most distinguished senators ever is attending his last meeting of a committee that he has served long, well and in an exemplary fashion. I refer to Senator Keon of Ontario. He has been involved, as I said, with this committee over a long time. My overlap with him has been way too brief. I have known of his enormous contributions to Canadian science and medicine, indeed to world science and medicine, for a long time, and have considered him a colleague at a distance for a long time. Nevertheless, I must express regret at this moment because my personal time interacting with him here in this venue is far too short. Others at the table have had a far greater opportunity to benefit from his wisdom, experience, genuine enthusiasm for the country we call Canada and the contributions he has made to attempting to identify characteristics that will lead us to solve major issues that we face as a country. We are a leading, well-educated country in general, a country blessed with great natural resources, but nevertheless we still face the challenges that all countries face in a democratic system.
You have made an enormous contribution to us. I know that you have heard that from more senior members of this committee recently, and you will hear it in depth next week in the Senate of Canada. On behalf of your current colleagues on a committee on which you have served so long, so well, and with such enormous contribution, I want to, on their behalf, pay tribute to you today on this, your last day. I am sure we will welcome any final sage words you might have to us as you leave us with the remaining duties we may face in the future.
Senator Keon: Thank you very much, chair. Nothing can be much nicer in life than to have nice things said about you by your colleagues. That counts for more than anything else I can think of, because they know you. It has been a real pleasure serving on this committee. We have completed numerous reports. I have not yet counted the number of reports my name is on, although I have them all. I have to cart them out of here and up to my cottage, and then I will count them.
It has been enlightening. As you look around the table, you see a wonderful blend of a great Canadian social mosaic. We have people from all different disciplines, and together we have come to do some truly great work. This committee has had tremendous credibility. Much of what they have written has been implemented by governments of different political persuasions, and sometimes in continuity. One government starts it and the next one continues it, which is of enormous importance. Who can notice that better than the scientific community?
Senator Ogilvie is an outstanding scientist in his own right, topped up with tremendous administrative experience as a university president. It was straight out of heaven that someone parachuted him in here, because all I have to say now about everything I am leaving behind is: Just call Senator Ogilvie.
The Deputy Chair: There are downsides of your leaving, I can tell you. With that, and having noted on your behalf this historic moment and the deep gratitude we have, I declare the meeting adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)