Prior to Christmas, my wife and I spent a week's holiday in London, U.K. We had very little news of Canada, except for a brief one-paragraph in The Times of London about Paul Martin taking over as prime minister. On our flight back to Canada I gladly welcomed the free Globe and Mail, even if it was a day old. In addition to the expected stories on the change in government, I was pleased to see an editorial in the Globe urging the prime minister to address his attention to the dire state of Canadian education. The editorial raised several of the same issues I had voiced in my December column's open letter to Mr. Martin.

The Globe's editorial, however, came to precisely the wrong conclusion about what was needed to redress the most chronic needs for higher education. Rather than argue for a restoration of core post-secondary funding to pre-1990 levels, the editorial advocated concentrating research at a few world-class, internationally competitive, elite universities. Somehow, channeling additional human and financial resources into a handful of universities would lead to improvement in the post-secondary system. Needless to say, the editorial did not offer any insights into how the quality of education at the rest of Canada's universities would fare under such a policy.

The Globe's editorial would have found favour with Tony Blair's government in Britain. One of the controversies surrounding the Blair government during my visit was its proposed Higher Education Bill that would allow Britain's 120 universities to triple tuition fees to £3,000 a year (about $7,000) and to charge students for their tuition. Fees would be repayable once graduates were earning £15,000 or more.

The Blair government is arguing top-up fees are needed if Britain's universities are to remain internationally competitive and produce cutting-edge research. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and 160 Labour MPs are opposing the legislation. There is a good chance it will be defeated when it comes to a vote at the end of January. Interestingly, the Tories have taken the position that they would abolish tuition fees, introduced in the late 1990s, once they came to power. The Liberal Democrats have taken the position that more public funds must be put into financing higher education and that they would raise taxes, if necessary, to find the additional money.

Currently, Britain and other European countries spend about 1.1 per cent of their gross domestic product on higher education. This compares to 2.3 per cent in the United States, with the difference mostly attributable to higher
tuition fees in private U.S. universities, according to a recent report from the European Commission. Canada spends considerably less than 0.5 per cent of its GDP on higher education.

In the U.K., the Russell Group of leading research-intensive universities is openly discussing renouncing all public funding and making a "dash to freedom" in the open market.

The Russell Group is moving to create a formal structure for itself that would advance its interests separate from the other universities that would remain dependent on state funding. The Russell Group has already broken ranks with Universities UK, a body similar to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, by advocating its own positions on academic salaries and student fees.

Another option the Russell Group is considering, should Blair's legislation fail, is to emphasize even greater recruitment of international students who are required to pay full fees.

Today, foreign students make up 20 per cent of London's Imperial College's population. They pay up to £20,000 a year for medicine and £15,000 a year for engineering. At the London School of Economics, 62 per cent of its 7,000 undergraduates come from outside the country. At Oxford over the last 10 years, the foreign graduate student population has grown from 33.5 per cent to 41 per cent.

The Times reported that the incoming vice-chancellor of Oxford "has asked the university's policy committee to consider radical plans for raising more fees income from 'outside the controlled economy.'" One component might be a drastic reduction in the number of undergraduates admitted to Oxford. The balance between undergraduates and postgraduates is under review with considerable pressure to emulate American Ivy League schools. Postgraduates comprise 63 per cent of Harvard's student population, compared to 34 per cent at Oxford.

So, what does the Globe and Mail mean when it talks about creating a few "elite" Canadian universities?

If events in Britain are any indication, it means a system where seven to 10 universities would receive substantial increases in federal funding for research activities following the inequitable model used to distribute the Canada Research Chairs. To make up for the shortfall in funding, tuition would increase significantly, particularly in professional programs, as is now the case in several schools. The increased research space would be offered to international students at a premium. The elite "research universities" would reduce their intake of undergraduate students, further separating the university's traditional role of teaching and research. In effect, the elite model would turn a few universities into research institutes whose research agenda would be controlled by government objectives and private, commercial interests.

Implicit in the move to an elite model is abandonment of the principle of accessibility. Ivor Crewe, president of Universities UK, speaking in support of Blair's top-up legislation is quoted in a recent New York Times article as saying, "There's a welfare state tradition in this country in which it's assumed that taxation will fund all public services, including education and higher education." That may have been reasonable when fewer aspired to go to college he said, but "it's quite different when 40 per cent expect to go." In other words, publicly-funded, accessible universities are fine as long as not more than a handful of students, mostly from upper-income families take advantage.

Canadians have shown their long-standing support for the existing post-secondary education system and, as CAUT's polling data shows, want to see increases in core funding to improve accessibility. It is more than ironic that when many Canadian students cannot afford to go to college or university that Canadian universities are spending even more time in Asia recruiting students to take advantage of our own top-up fees. The elite model is one the Canadian public does not support. Martin would be foolhardy to follow the Globe and Mail's advice.