The Future of Canadian Universities

The Future of Canadian Universities ISidney E. Smith Josh Billings once said: "Never prophesy nnless you know." It is rash to forecast the future of any institution, even an institution like the university, which is popularly represented as being highly resistant to change. It is particularly rash if one is so close to the subject that details obscure the perspective. One may, however, mark a few dots on the graph, and leave it to more detached observers to discern the pattern (if any) that emerges. Universities in the Western world came through the Second World War with enhanced prestige. Even in GemJany, .where universities had a dismal record of intellectual and spiritual detection, they appear to have recovered and to have resumed their proper role. Moreover, Western universities adapted themselves to post-war conditions and, in the English-speaking democracies, became the heroes of the drama of rehabilitation . But now that the feeling of exhilaration arising from their success in meeting the post-war crisis has passed, they must take fresh soundings and attempt to chart their course anew. During the last few years it has become clear in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, that certain conditioning faclors will profoundly affect the role of the universities-factors that are largely the products of social development. In broad terms, the future of the universities in these three countries will depend upon the adjustment that is made between those conditions and certain abiding ideals, academic and national: the academic ideals rooted in history and tradition, and the national ideals peculiar to each country. While we do not impugn the sovereignty of the supra-national Republic of the Mind, yet every institution of higher learning has its immediate sphere of infiuence, and finds its primary duties, within national borders; in strengthening the higher life of the intellect at home it adds strength to the commonwealth of learning. 185 186 SIDNEY E. SMITH What, then, are these conditioning factors that arise out of developments in society? There are three, and the signpost of statistics points to the first. Barring a sudden interruption in the evolution of societywar , famine, or plagne-there will be, within ten years at the latest, an unparalleled increase in the numbers of those who desire university education. The latest statistical analysis of prospects for university enrolment in Canada is that made by Dr. E. F. Sheffield, Director of the Education Division of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, in an address which he gave on June 10, 1955, at the meeting of the National Conference of Canadian Universities. Dr. Sheffield bases his forecast on the birth-rate figures combined with the upward trend in the proportion of Canadians of college age who go to college-in other words, on a steadily increasing percentage of a steadily increasing population. He assumes that the percentage of students of college age coming on to the university (7.2 per cent at present) will increase in ten years' time to 9, 10, or 11 per cent. In view of the fact that the corresponding percentage in the United States is stated to be at least 30 per cent at the present time, it is clear that Dr. Sheffield has not indulged in baseless speculation . Dr. Sheffield calculates that in 1964-65 there will be from 110,600 to 135,200 students in Canadian universities, as compared with the present 65,600. The second and third conditioning factors that we must bear in mind in looking at the future of Canadian universities are not so easily delineated , but they are none the less apparent. The second is the increasing demand by society for professional people, with the correlative expansion of the universities' facilities for such training. One might say that the twentieth-century university, what President Dodds of Princeton University has referred to as the "multiversity," is largely the outcome of this need. The usual pattern is a group of powerful professional schools surrounding an arts faculty, and there is the danger that the latter may become increasingly a service faculty for its more powerful partners. It is obvious that the pressure to continue this development will not be relaxed. The easiest way in...