University administrators, like most of us, harbor a wish for world-shaking success in the practice of their calling. But for those at cash-strapped universities, finding the magic remedy that will dispel the financial clouds is a dream that -- in the manner of a famous Goya drawing -- often produces monsters. For one official, it is intellectual property policy which will surely bring the university back from the financial brink. For another, it is multimedia online courses to be sold to distant students that will transform red ink into black.

At McGill the latest cure-all is the proposed creation of a low enrolment, high tuition liberal arts program. McGill College International (MCI) would provide students, selected on the basis of ability to pay, with the kinds of educational experiences we largely deny to our mainstream students, chosen on the basis of ability to succeed intellectually. MCI students paying $28,000 per year tuition would be promised small classes, personal attention, professors who are world authorities in their fields, internships, and an undergraduate thesis.

That MCI is even under consideration is a tribute to the tenacity of one person, Storrs McCall, a professor of philosophy and president of the McGill Association of University Teachers during 1985-86. During his presidency, he chaired a Future Options Group which produced in November 1985 an 11-page discussion paper "McGill's Future: Some Suggestions for the Way Ahead."

The report says: "All options considered were therefore, failing substantial increases in the government grant, variations on the theme of making McGill more independent of government grants, i.e., more of a private university in the financial rather than the legal sense." Two of the options in an unranked list of seven were a private university and an evolving mix of a private and a state-supported institution.

As financial stringency has increased with each passing year, the possibility of introducing privatized initiatives has come to dominate our discourse and the early reflections on the changing public-private mix has metamorphosed, under Professor McCall's guidance, into the MCI proposal.

In August 1998, then Vice-Principal Academic Bill Chan convened an ad hoc working group composed of five deans and Professor McCall to examine MCI: "a unit within the university dedicated to promoting international education, rooted in Montreal but reaching around the globe." In their undated report we read that a key idea behind the initiative is "to reconceive of the financing of post-secondary education, moving towards a model more independent of government, and benefitting from a broader base of financial support."

In the list of risks and specific challenges we find: "Dealing with the issue of cross-subsidization: Is McGill College International meant to subsidize the remainder of McGill?" The issue of subsidization, possibly quite considerable, of MCI by McGill during a startup period of uncertain length is swept under the rug.

Later in the report it is made clear MCI should benefit faculties that offer programs in direct proportion to their participation and the university would benefit from part of the surplus of this "financially independent" enterprise.

As for ensuring "appropriate academic autonomy," the only quarter from which a threat is contemplated is from governments in the jurisdictions where MCI might operate.

The MCI proposal offers nothing immediate -- not even discussion -- to deal with growing shortcomings in the quality of the educational experience in Arts at McGill. The MCI proposes to create two categories of students at McGill: the low-paying ones, and the high-paying ones for whom commitments will be honored and backed up with resources. At present, McGill students have limited opportunities for internship and little support in arranging these. By contrast, we read that "MCI will organize an internship of up to four months for each student."

But what about our chronic lack of funds for "course delivery"? Some of you may know the logical puzzle about connecting nine dots arrayed in a three by three square with four straight lines without lifting your pencil. At the risk of spoiling the challenge for those of you who haven't encountered this before, the point is that as long as one assumes the lines must be kept within the implicit boundary of the square, the problem can't be solved. That, I submit, is our problem at McGill.

MCI doesn't solve the problem, it leaves it aside and builds a separate square and promises, not merely to recover its costs, but to provide subsidies to the low-tuition students. Projections are at best crystal ball gazing -- it is quite plausible MCI will turn out to be a continuous drain of financial and human resources.

Professors are expected to dwell intellectually on the frontiers of knowledge in their chosen field. Should we not have the same expectation about pedagogical approaches? Does the MCI proposal reflect in any way current debates about the nature of learning? Where is the "autonomous" learner? Where is learning to learn? Where is student-centered (and directed) learning? Where is the World Wide Web and the emerging network paradigm?

We need to begin wide-ranging discussions that take us well beyond the confines of conventional approaches to learning, not a narrowly focused examination of the financial viability of one "solution" that doesn't address the immediate needs of current and incoming Arts students. At a time when the world is abuzz with talk of new solutions for a new millennium, the MCI offers mostly yesterday's fashions in education.

What I find remarkable in our present hand-wringing and search for what Principal Shapiro has called "blue sky solutions" is that we appear to renounce the possibility of having a role and responsibility as educators beyond the walls of the cloister.

Governments and public opinion are assumed to be beyond our influence. It is almost as if we believe we can only be effective in shaping opinion when our relationship with the learner is based on an imbalance of power. That effective engagement in political discussions is not regarded as a serious option reflects the unease of universities with democratic processes and our ingenuous conviction that resort to private funding has principally benign consequences.

Changing the societal discourse to restore funding for programs that serve the public interest may in the long run be the most promising avenue to pursue. We should be making common cause with other universities in Quebec (and across the country and the world) in a public education campaign to affirm that the notion of the "public good" must be rebuilt and that publicly-funded universities represent an important part of that public good. Without support for the public good, which includes funds from general revenues for education, health care and other public services, the future of all of us will be severely compromised.

The irony of financing a liberal education and a center of independent intellectual inquiry with an elitist sauve qui peut strategy seems to have been lost.

Myron Frankman is professor of economics at McGill University and president of the McGill Association of University Teachers.

For additional details visit the McGill website at http://vm1.mcgill.ca/~inmf/http/mciwatch.html.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of CAUT.