PSE mood swings
Interesting that Pat Darrah doesn’t want the government to impose changes on the apprenticeship structure, but it’s all very well for them to dictate to the universities. What’s sauce for the goose, as my mother would have said.
Barry Ogden has an irritating commentary in the T-J that misrepresents post-secondary institutions as turning up their noses at less privileged students. In fact, most institutions outside major urban centres have been fighting drops in enrolment for quite some time now, and that and the popular new education-as-business model that treats students as customers means that Ogden is out of date. He is setting up “snobbish” educational institutions as straw people, but he tips his hand in his closing lines: “Our post-secondary institutions have to grow, change, be accountable to all and include more. Post-secondary education has to be accessible, affordable and flexible.”
If I hear the word “flexible” one more time in a conversation that is not about yoga, my head is going to explode.
Fred Hazel’s “New education plan big improvement over first try” also misses the mark. Listen, the phone book would have been a big improvement, and a lot cheaper. Most commentators are ignoring the very serious threat in the “Action Plan” to put a new government body above the public post-secondary institutions in this province, thus effectively politicizing higher education. Hazel comments that at least the “campus of UNB Saint John and satellites of the Université de Moncton, will remain academic-focused centres.” Not necessarily; not if this new government body decides that PSE in N.B. needs to focus on, I don’t know, widgets. Not if this government opens the university Acts and mandates otherwise.
The exercise of grading the various cabinet ministers and others was fun, though personally I would have failed Kelly Lamrock, as is standard policy in the case of academic offenses, and I would have had Shawn Graham share in that F as he either supports Lamrock’s agenda or is not in control of his own government. Or both, I suppose: definitely an “F.”
Thank goodness for the inestimable Marty Klinkenberg, who calls the PSE debacle one of several “disasters of [the Liberals] own making.” He calls for “new blood, and a new approach that invites debate instead of stifling it.”
I, for one, am not holding my breath.
Mr. Pat Darrah’s article addresses the issue of integrating different higher education institutes such as universities and colleges or colleges and vocational schools. This proven failed idea which is being sold as the cure for all of New Brunswick’s post secondary education’s ills and being used to integrate New Brunswick’s higher education institutes from north to south and from east to west will again be found to be a gross mistake. But this time the cost of implementing and reversing it will be in tens of million dollars. Unfortunately, the central point of UNB President John McLauglin’s vision for the post secondary education in New Brunswick as outlined in the article titled “PSE: not money , but vision” on July 1, 2008 issue of the Telegraph Journal, which is being implemented as part of the “action plan” by the government of New Brunswick indeed is a receipe for a disaster for our educational system in New Brunswick. Mr. Darrah mentions that when about thirty years ago the old and wrong idea of integrating two different types of higher education was implemented the result was a total failure. The question is why should New Brunswick take such a huge risk and integrate almost all of its higher education institues without understanding of the risks involved. Transformation of the University of New Brunswick’s Saint John campus to a polytechnic like learning and training institute is a good example of this wrong direction that New Brunswick is considering to take based on Dr. McLauglin’s model. This undertaking is more like what New Brunswick did about thirty years ago and will certainly end up to be another proof for disastrous consequences of repeating the same mistake. Mr. Darrah lists names of almost all of the knowledgable and experienced individuals involved in trading and giving certificates to the trades people. The list includes experts from fields of welding, truck driving, break laying, carpentry, etc. The disturbing point is that inspite of the valuable advise from the people who know their business a group of university presidents and college principals are recommending actions that will certainly result in failure.
As for UNBSJ, if McLauglin gets his wish and manages to transform Saint John’s university to an IALT, a renamed polytechnic, Southern New Brunswick will lose its invaluable university and generations of Saint Johners who want to get university education will have no choice but live Saint John and go somewhere else, exactly like 43 years ago. No wonder why Dr. McLauglin at the end of presentation of the “Action Plan” said lets celebrate. I do not blame him, he has done what those who have opposed the idea of having a university in Saint John have not been able to do for over forty years, i.e. to get rid of UNBSJ.