A perspective on graduate studies in Canada

42. op. cit. 43. For example, the very long bibliography In the recent textbook by Richard J. Van Loon and Michael S. Whittington, The Canadian Political System, McGraw-Hill of Canada, 1971 is overwhelmingly given over to reference to writings of the previous decade. 44. After Strange Gods, op. clt. 45. See for example the strictures on ne~lassical economics by Kari Levitt in Silent Surrender, Macmillan of Canada, 1970, Toronto, Chapter 2. 46. University of Toronto Press, 1972, p. 9. 47. University of Toronto Press, 1954. 48. "The Electoral System and the Party System In Canada, 1921-1965," I Canadian Journal of Political Science, No. 1 A perspective on graduate studies in Canada A. E. SAFARIAN Canadian graduate studies have been the subject of harsh criticism in recent years. We are told that the large public subsidy to such education is not matched by adequate returns to society, that there are more pressing social needs, that substantial unemployment exists for highly-skilled students in any case, that graduate studies and/or students represent an elitist approach to education inconsistent with present day tendencies and that the organization of graduate studies is both wasteful and increasingly irrelevant to present needs. The Draft Report of the Commission on Post-Secondary Education in Ontario is one of several recent studies which was particularly critical of graduate (and professional) education in some or all of these terms. Any general charges of this type are likely to find some bases. I am going to suggest that, however valid in some cases, the overall direction of this criticism is misleading and - if carried through to policy - dangerous to both the universities and to society. Moreover, it has had the effect of concealing and distracting from some of the more pressing real questions which should be getting more attention. 42 {March, 1968), pp. 55-80. 49. Prentice-Hall of Canada, Scarborough, 1971. See particularly the contributions by Hockln, Schindeler, Doern, Wright, Smith and Wearing. 50. University of Toronto Press, 1972. 51. University of Toronto Press, 1969. 52. University of Toronto Press, 1971. 53. Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1973. 54. This is essentially the argument made by Allan Kornberg and Alan Tharp in their essay "The American Impact on Canadian Political Science and Sociology" in The Influence of the United States on Canadian Development: Eleven Case Studies, Richard Preston, Editor, Duke University Press, Durham, 1972, pp. 55-98. The need for graduate study has been evident since the inception of the University. The forerunner of the University of Toronto, King's College, opened in 1843; when its first degrees were awarded in 1845 there were three recipients of the degree of Master of Arts. The first Ph.D.s at Toronto were awarded in 1900. The scope of human knowledge has expanded so much and in such unimagined ways that its systematic understanding and improvement required some organized approach. A great deal of intellectual development occurs in other institutions or by the individual working alone. The thrust of human understanding has been uniquely aided by the resources which a great institution can concentrate, the systematic education which is offered, and above all the contacts among scholars with similar objectives but different backgrounds and accomplishment. Let me point out first what a major achievement the decade of the sixties represented in graduate studies, and pay tribute among others to those politicians who urged us to bend every effort to expand and gave us the incentives to do so. For a decade the universities of this country were given substantial public support to develop graduate work beyond the disgracefully small numbers and often low quality of programs which we had ten or fifteen years ago. Now that Revue d'etudes canadiennes we have developed programs of some depth and breadth, at least in a number of important fields, there are disconcerting signs that strenuous efforts are or will be made to substantially reduce these programs, even in areas where the strengths are spotty. This expansion and enrichment at the graduate (as well as undergraduate) levels is one of the great social accomplishments of our times. Instead of pride in it, however, we find increasing restiveness about it. This is...