Mike Harris has embarked on nothing less than a Common Sense Revolution in postsecondary education.
The Premier has wrested control of the province's universities and colleges at least partly from their powerful senior administrators. He has exploited an internal split within their ranks, and faced them down in a bitter exchange of confidential letters, the contents of which have been disclosed to The Globe and Mail.
The government intends to stream the coming swell of college and university students away from the humanities and social sciences and into computers, engineering, medical research and communications courses.
To achieve this, Training, Colleges and Universities Minister Dianne Cunningham launched last week a $1.4-billion building program, the largest investment in postsecondary education in a generation, lavishing funds on high-tech courses at major universities and colleges, while starving the liberal arts and smaller schools that focus on them.
Students not academically inclined toward degrees in mechanical engineering or molecular genetics, will be encouraged to take a job-oriented diploma at a community college instead of settling into a pleasant BA in English or sociology.
With the province's elementary and secondary education systems already massively restructured by the Progressive Conservatives, students from kindergarten to graduate school will now focus on preparing for the 21st-century work force. Rather than expanding the mind, education will now train it.
It is a formidable reform for a politician who lasted one year at university before quitting to work for his father.
Mr. Harris has long been convinced Ontario's universities and colleges aren't doing a proper job of preparing students for the work force. Too many, he feels, graduate with diplomas in fashion design and degrees in women's studies, while the province imports sheet-metal workers from overseas and the computer industry faces a critical labour shortage.
"We seem to be graduating more people who are great thinkers, but they know nothing about math or science or engineering or the skill sets that are needed," he said recently.
Student enrolment in postsecondary education is expected to grow by 25 per cent over the next five years, as the children of the baby boom enter the system. In 2003, a "double cohort" of graduates will arrive, thanks to the Tories' elimination of Grade 13.
To prepare for their arrival, Finance Minister Ernie Eves has promised to pump $742-million in capital funding this fiscal year into universities and colleges, to be matched with an equal amount in corporate investments.
But universities demanded an additional $1-billion in increased operating funds to staff the new classrooms. The presidents of the most powerful universities even privately warned that unless the Tories came through with the necessary money, they might cap their enrolments, leaving an increasing number of would-be university students with nowhere to go.
Wendy Cecil-Cockwell, chairwoman of the University of Toronto's Governing Council, wrote Mr. Harris a letter on behalf of her fellow chairmen at the Council of Ontario Universities in December, demanding that the government reveal this year's operating grants by the middle of January, and that it also end the delays in announcing the capital grants.
Mr. Harris replied in a letter that one senior university executive described as "absolutely scathing." The government would announce its plans in its own good time, he told the council. And if any university didn't feel it could meet its construction deadlines for the capital grants, then it should say so, and the money would be given to another school.
The growing rift between Mr. Harris and the university presidents prompted Frederick Gilbert, president of Lakehead University, to send Mr. Harris his own letter, disassociating his university from the council's ultimatum, and promising to work with, not against, the Ontario government.
The province's community colleges were also taking a more conciliatory tack. For years they had struggled as poor cousins to the powerful universities. The new building program offered a unique opportunity to expand their campuses and, better yet, win the right to offer applied degrees in conjunction with universities. Mr. Harris was happy to oblige.
When the the new SuperBuild postsecondary infrastructure program was first unveiled last week, no academic university president was invited. Instead, the presidents of Ryerson Polytechnic University and several colleges beamed as the Conservatives announced the equivalent of three new universities and four colleges for the province.
About half the funding went to schools in the greater Toronto area, and about half of that went to community colleges. Overall, 75 per cent of the money went to expand programs in information technology, applied technology, health sciences and general sciences. Only 25 per cent was set aside for general academic funding, which includes the humanities and social sciences. Even there, much of the money is dedicated to multimedia and communications programs, and to new classrooms that will be used by students in all disciplines.
Universities that place a heavy emphasis on liberal-arts programs -- including Brock, Trent, Windsor, Nipissing and the Ontario College of Art and Design -- received not a penny. And while the larger urban community colleges were ecstatic about their promised new state-of-the-art facilities and degree-diploma programs, 12 smaller and regional colleges -- from Confederation in Thunder Bay to Fanshawe in London -- were also completely frozen out.
The result? When the double cohort arrives in 2003, students will find very few new available spaces in the humanities and social sciences, or in small regional schools. Students not able or willing to pursue a degree in the new technology programs where there are spaces will find plenty of practical courses available at the larger community colleges, some of which will even offer a degree.
And the major university presidents, who two months ago were throwing around ultimatums, have willingly acquiesced as the government reconstructs their campuses, and stand silent as the Tories starve their smaller cousins into irrelevance.
There are still some who believe in the value of a liberal-arts degree, even in the work force. But Mr. Harris is convinced it has little future in our information-technology-based society.
And he has personally seen to it that the universities agree.
John Ibbitson